in which there is tiny cars, shitty wine, & big steps

easter is one of my favorite holidays. easter easter easter. I end up liking it for a lot of reasons some of them high holy churchy and some of them more down to earth & somehow lowbrow.

three weeks ago my brother wrecked our van. this huge, hulking monstrosity, white and gray, eight-seater, truck engine, and he wrecked it. so okay, it's bad news these days to drive a van that guzzles gas and racks up the credit card bills / ruins the atmosphere for future generations. I actually like the atmosphere a lot. some people are waaaay more down with that shit than I am, but I'm just like whatever, atmosphere. stick around. I enjoy breathing you. I'm not about to get all crazy on my congressman to preserve you, but please don't go anywhere. maybe that's shallow of me but I'm just apathetic I guess. it feels hollow to try and pretend that I'm really excited about shit that I'm not excited about. and it's hard to get behind a cause if I'm not excited.

ANYWAY. this may be news to you, but according to a recent study of my family, 6 people who do at least one crosscountry camping trip drive per year (never mind monthly trips to Chicago) are actually in need of a bigass van. but my brother wrecked it. so my parents have been surviving with 2 cars for the past few weeks. and then... we realized it was Easter and we were somehow going to have to drive to Chicago. 6 people... 1 car.

"6 people 1 car" is a fun college past time. you might have played it! here's how it's done in case you want to relive your college career:

get six friends together. decide to go to steak 'n' shake at 4 am. now everyone, pile into one car. drive maybe 3 minutes down the road. giggle a lot. get out of the car at steak 'n' shake.

6 friends crammed in a car, and it's the funniest thing in the fucking world--because in just 3 short minutes, you know you're going to unpeel yourself from your neighbor and go eat a chocolate malt. "6 people 1 car" is not a fun family past time, not for 2 and a half hours. not with dad snoring in the back seat. actually it wasn't all that bad. but it was difficult driving on the toll road at night maria's elbow in my side. and it's a good thing we all get along. I can't even imagine what the trip would have been like if we hated each other. probably it would have ended with somebody's still-beating heart getting tossed out the window or something jazzy like that. oh well. we like each other and that didn't happen. I think I even kissed someone's forehead at one point like this beneficent presidential elect or something.

so far, I've eaten about 15 lbs of salad this week. I feel like the world should be ending. 15 lbs of salad is an exaggeration but not by much. it was an ass lot of salad. curry and chicken and couscous and celery and apples and grapes yum yum yummmm. I sit around indian-style chowing down on this shit like it's crack freaking cocaine, and then I drink the shittiest glass of wine I've ever had.

TIP: if you're ever at the grocery and you see wine selling for $4.00, and you start thinking "holy fuck four dollars! that's such a steal! I'm a poor collegiate on a limited budget! sure, I'll buy that!"--STOP YOURSELF. PUT YOUR HANDS IN YOUR POCKETS AND WALK ON BY. YOU WILL REGRET BUYING IT. if for whatever reason you end up buying that wine, you'll shell out the four george washingtons; you will get all excited; you will go home and pour a big glass, and then you'll take this huge enthusiatsic gulp--and then, you will spew. and while you're spewing you'll realize that someone mislabeled the wine, and it's actually just vinegar and food coloring and maybe some shitty grapes. the kind of shitty grape that has fucking mold growing on it. in your few minutes of spewing, you'll learn that "bohemian highway" is actually the path leading to some hilljack fucker's outhouse. and when you're done spewing, you're really going to want your four dollars back so you can buy a box of wine. eight dollar wine. beer. anything to wash that nastyass taste out of your mout.

that negative experience doesn't stop me from sitting on the stoop in the evening with Carol, nursing the bottle and wondering why bohemians would make wine on the fucking highway anyway. but whatever, I hate things going to waste. and some people just never learn. don't you follow my example.

in which there are cups and countdowns: 10, 9, 8 it's over.

my mother called me last night to exclusively tell me that the jobs I applied for were filled. not by me. then I yelled "I WISH I WAS BRIAN WILSON" and climbed into bed with a glass of wine.


I have a mountain of cups on my desk. seven cups stacked on top of each other, leaning precariously over me when I sit & type. a stack of vultures just watching me. I use the cups and then I never take them back downstairs again. there is a wine glass next to the cup, making sticky reddish rings. I never wash it, I just fill it up over & over again. most of my life has been not finishing things. leaving them half assed. just once I would like to finish something & think YEAH. thank god. that was good.

I guess it's good to have something to look forward to.

I am not so much in love with my life right now. I am waiting and waiting for things to happen; I have a list of countdowns that I keep counting down, and it never seems to get any closer or better.


I didn't get out of bed till 11 today. I laid there and stared at the ceiling and thought of all the things that I miss & all the things that I am waiting for.

"spring at last
spring at last
great god almighty
it's spring at last"







I've been opening windows and pulling back curtains. drinking wine upstairs and schluntzing on the keyboard. not wearing socks, not wearing coats, watching the sun rise. it's only march and maybe too soon to celebrate but it's been so long in coming. climbing into the car this morning in a halfawake dozy daze and it was fourty degrees. fourty. a number not seen since texas. a climate too warm for south bend. a temperature that I will never complain about no matter what.

in all my springtime exhuberence I managed to clean up my room. I was a week away from stringing yellow caution tape around it and leaving it for dead. but it's been revived. no more creepy dead spider stuck on the wall. no more leaning tower of empty dirty cups. sometimes I honestly live so disgustingly it's disgusting.

in the same temporary excitement, I also managed to sautee some peas and thyme and shit. now I feel like a real professional.
instructions:
1. put peas in pan.
2. put pan on stove.
3. add some butter.
4. turn on the stove & sautee.
5. add thyme and peper.
6. stuff your face.
7. maybe add some chicken?
8. keep shoving your housemates motherfucking dog off your lap until he almost bites your face, and then stuff him in a kennel and finish your sautee peas.

that dog is seriously pissing me the fuck off. yesterday whenever I laid on the couch, he would run up and yip in my face till I paid attention to him. he's a puppy and he wants to play but godfuckingdammit I hate yippy barky dogs,especially up in my grill. I mean not cool motherfucker. and this morning when I came downstairs he'd shit all over the floor. even LESS cool. I am ten steps from leaving him outside for wolverines.


there are only two months till I am out. two months wherein I have to do something with my life. two months to try and still go to classes. two months within I have to not kill any dogs. good luck.

I spend so much of my time just wasting time.

all last week I was in Texas. TX TX TX. sunny and 70 one day, cold and 35 the next. it was also just fucking unrealistic. guys tipping their cowboy hats: evenin' ma'am. people kept holding doors for me. there was a boy in a cowboy hat and boots riding around on a bike with a kitten in a milkcrate. no one tries to rev up in front of you and cut you off when you're trying to get on the highway. everyone drives a truck and has a dog. I ate steaks and went to the fanciest hotel buffet I ever saw. & when I came back to the northcountry it was fucking snowing again.

C brought her drumset to the house. we carried it upstairs. I had a blanket wrapped around me and a cowboy hat on my head. like a douchebag, or just a stupid hippie. she played all night and it was cool, and then I got a headache. like forehead axe splitting headache. couldn't get to sleep, just sat in bed. read outdated magazines from 2006 and drank outdated milk from a week ago, while it snowed little icy lace flakes outside. it was this poetic moment. and then my lightbulb just burned the fuck out.


while stitching today, I thought about what I would do if I got a phone call that my dad suddenly died. I couldn't even figure it out. if I were science minded I would want to learn what it is about people that makes them think dull stupid morbid thoughts like that.

when I sit in the computer lab and I hear footsteps coming up behind me, I worry that they're reading over my shoulder. another question for science: where does that mindless paranoia come from.