9:49

The events of this week lead me to believe that I could really use a personal assistant.  This position would mostly entail fetching me more wine when I ran out, but would likely also require a person to find me a job, find me an apartment, work the aforementioned job, pay my rent and take dictation when I was feeling particularly poetic.  Oh, and he or she would have to be okay with working for a pint of Haagen-Dazs per week because I'm broke.

4:34

Someday, I will publish a book of all the unsettling things I've found in the search histories of the computers in public libraries.  Today's two entries are "Why is reflections?" and "I'll kick these diabetes, God willing".  I must have asked myself that question a thousand times: why is reflections?

2:15

I acknowledge that it's probably unfair, but there are certain names (Monikers of Evil, I call them) which I have never met a decent person with, and, accordingly, I avoid anyone I know to have one of these names.  I have never met a good Alexis, Toby, Garrett or Tiffany, for example.  I barely know what to do when introduced to a Garrett.  My instincts say run.

11:53

Guilty Pleasure #9: Prompting people with speech impediments or odd voices to continue speaking once they've started.  I don't do it to be mean or to make fun; I just really like listening to how different the words can sound.

12:21

Care for some gross, mouth-related Fun Facts?  When my baby teeth came in, my dentist alerted my parents to the fact that I had three front teeth.  Because they were baby teeth, it was not painfully obvious, but I remember my mother making a really big deal of it.  At about this time, I entered preschool, where lunch was served a whopping three hours later than I was used to eating lunch at home.  Biting on the insides of my cheeks became a bad habit that ended when I accidentally bit out two matching sections of cheek, one from each side, spit them into my hand and presented them to my preschool teacher.  I still have deep hollows on both sides.  When my permanent teeth came in, I only had two front teeth, so nobody talked about them anymore.  Soon after I had a full mouth of permanents, my razor-sharp canines became the orthodontic issue of discussion.  I loved them, but it was decided they would be rounded down because of the pinprick scarring dotting my tongue.  At about that time, I was made to get braces, a process which required a total of eight molars to be pulled because of the fear of overcrowding in my small mouth.  Even though my teeth look normal now, I still sometimes remember how messed up they were at times when how messed up my teeth used to be has nothing to do with the conversation, and it makes me self-conscious.

9:39

Recently, I have been compiling a revised list of goals for myself for the coming six months or so (apart from finding a job/buying a car/moving out/generally getting my life together).  It goes as follows:

• bake at least one new item a week
• obtain a credit card and, thus, a credit score
• learn how to iron clothing without leaving terrible creases/invest in a steamer
• plant those indoor, upside down tomato plants
• master Excel
• at least attempt to quit biting my fingernails

My only immediate goals (apart from generally getting my life together) are to get my glasses fitted so they stop sliding down my nose and to finish Jane Eyre.  My immediate goals are decidedly dweeby.

7:12

Guilty Pleasure #8: Post-oral surgery YouTube videos.  In my heart of hearts, I know them to be one of the great scurges of the internet, but I will probably never tire of watching them.  Maybe it's just the allure of a peek into someone elses' subconscious, although it could just as easily be that I think it's funny when people talk with their mouths full of gauze.

4:48

All the machines I invent in my head reveal themselves to be bizarre and somewhat creepy when I try explaining them to other people.  I want a device that looks like a tank tread and continually combs through my hair, not because I want my hair to look neat, but because combing it feels nice.  If I had such a machine, I'd spend most weekends getting mechanically and needlessly groomed.  To another end, I've also reinvented the wheelchair (not for use by the immoble, but the lazy) countless times while drunk.

1:32

I'd like to know the reason that Saturday night isn't called "Saturnight" and why this doesn't seem to bother anyone else.  Sure, I'm a stickler for linguistics, but there has to be some wiggle room for modification when it's a matter of logic.

9:36

I feel like I have more nerves than usual sensing more sensations than usual.  I wish I lived in a world with more rounded edges.

4:27

I spent a good deal of time when I was little imagining all the ways in which a mastery of origami would improve my life.  If I became phenomenal at folding paper, I thought, I could construct the treehouse I had been denied by my overly protective and lawsuit-minded parents.  I imagined creating whole tea sets made of paper.  Now that I am older, I wish I had honed my paper-folding skills enough to build an apartment.  I would cover it in wax to waterseal it, run electricity into its paper lanterns and instantly have one less thing about which to worry.  Unfortunately, I remain unable to even make a stupid swan.

2:46

Twice a year or so, I go on a wicked Magnetic Fields kick where all I want to listen to for three months is Stephin Merritt, and right now I'm buried deep in the middle of the second month.

2:17

When I watch the Politics and Economics segments of the morning news, I often feel like I'm watching two kids fight over whether the Tooth Fairy is real, except they're both arguing that she is real for different reasons.  Both arguments are irrelevant, yet the two still fight over which is the best means to reach the incorrect end.  It's enough to make a woman interested in going back to the barter system.

9:09

Last night, my sister came home with a manicure.  She showed my mother, who said, "I can tell you went to Asians.  Asians are amazing at doing nails."  My sister told her that her statement was racist.  My mother countered by saying that what she had said was a positive stereotype and, as such, could not be racist.  She then had me look up the Merriam-Webster definition of racism, which proved her wrong.  My mother's final argument was that racism is not racism if the stereotypes are true, her example being, "Some people say that all Muslims are terrorists.  All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim".  I have got to get out of my house.

3:42

Guilty Pleasure #7: Collecting those concentrated scent room sprays.  I've somehow amassed almost fifteen in the last couple of months without realizing.  It's not my fault, though; I'm pretty sure anyone with working nostrils wants their laundry room to smell like eucalyptis stalks and asian plums.

10:26

Early last week, I applied to be a Creative Writer for the WWE.  At the time, I felt this was a new low.  Now that eight days have passed with no word from them, I have to assume they do not want to interview me, and now I'm trying to decide which is worse: rejection from a soap opera pseudo-sport or the fact that that job was one of only two open positions as a Creative Writer in the state of Connecticut.

8:51

I get this pang of heartwrenching disgrace every time I walk past the copy of Jane Eyre laying sadly on my floor and remember that I haven't picked it up in a few weeks.  It makes me feel like a neglectful parent, but I just don't have the time.  Maybe I'll take it on the train this weekend, but I can't make any promises.  Oh man, I feel like half my life has been spent on one train or another.

11:44

I'm looking forward to finding an apartment and moving out because it means I'll get to sleep in my bed again.  Moving home after college meant I had to begin sleeping on the wretched collection of sparse, twenty-year-old coils that has been facetiously passed of to me as a mattress.  My mattress, however, is a ridiculous cloud of both memory foam and pillow top.  How is this possible?  Beats me; ask the Swedes.  All I know is that A) I have never slept more soundly or felt better upon waking than I do after a night on that mattress, and B) at seventeen hundred dollars, it is the most expensive thing I own by about fourteen hundred dollars.  Actually, my parents bought it for me two years ago out of guilt for making me sleep on the Hell Mattress all through middle school and high school.  So where is that guilt now that I am separated from my beloved?  Take it from an expert: it is certainly not better to have loved and lost.

4:00

A spring just fell out of my office swivel chair while I was sitting on the floor.  I watched it drop and froze.  Now I've convinced myself that I have been justified in my recent feelings of insecurity.

3:05

Lately, my internal narrative has started sounding a lot like Daria Morgendorffer, which sounds like it might be comical or refreshing, but really just sucks in practice.

11:43

My mind seems very cleanly divided between its desire to become a buttoned-up cardigan- and wool pencil skirt-wearing office mouse and its desire to go parasailing every day until I run out of funds, and I've been struggling more and more with trying to reconcile the two.  I'm trying to decide whether this is evidence of the invalidity of the recently-defunct Left Brain/Right Brain theory or if I'm just having a particularly difficult time with growing up.  I've never even gone parasailing.

12:01

I really like puns, and I don't care who knows it.

9:32

The office shredder broke, so now my job consists entirely of ripping paper into sixteenths.  I'm the unenthused Akaky Akakievich of my workplace, for those of you who only understand things by literary reference.

11:50

I just walked by the living room, and my father sat up quickly from the couch, half asleep, and asked, "What is a Snoodie?".  I glanced at the television, and, to my surprise and horror, The Jersey Shore was on.  I'm relatively certain he meant "Snooki".  I'm also repulsed that I know that.  The generation gap has become a canyon.

2:45

It's strange to ponder all the little stipulations by which I live my life.  I don't even really think about them.  They simply exist, so I adhere.  I don't read science fiction or fantasy books, and I don't watch fantasy or science fiction television shows or movies.  I've never seen any of the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings films.  To some, this will seem a declaration of heresy, but when I was in elementary school, I had difficult time taking the characters and plot lines in these genres seriously enough to get emotionally invested, and I just haven't tried since then.  I also do not eat coconut.  I don't dislike it; I just don't eat it.

12:39

I was flipping through a stack of documents this evening when I remembered the date of my birthday, realized my driving test is scheduled for ten days after my birthday and promptly proceeded to accidentally slice my index and middle fingers a thousand ways to Tuesday.  Nothing stings quite like a swiftly delivered combo of prematurely felt birthday disappointment and multiple, simultaneous paper cuts.

8:01

Is anyone else terrified of that the infomercial for the Slap-Chop (that ridiculous veggie dicer advertised solely on late-night television and described by that guy who looks like he likes herion and got arrested after a fistfight with a prostitute in a hotel room) which promises to "make America skinny one slap at a time"?  Anyhow, I passed my permit test.

8:38

So far, there are three neat things about today:

1. I saw a pink hummingbird on the back fence.  I don't usually see hummingbirds, and I always forget how little they are.
2. My boyfriend sent me a video of a sheep wearing a Scream mask and chasing a bunch of other sheep.  Coffee came out my nose for the first time in years.
3. I'm going in to take the written test to get my driver's permit.  I'm nervous as hell.  If you're driving through the state of Massachusetts today and come across a car mostly submerged in a lake, don't worry about it too much.  I can swim pretty well.

3:54

It's kind of frightening how society has romanticized all those children born with congenital insensitivity to pain.

2:54

I wish my French was better.  I would translate directions for the lost little Moroccan families I always overhear on the subway (there are so many of them!) and sound more elegant while drunkenly cursing out those I don't like.  I suppose I could pull a book from the library or invest in one of those Rosetta Stone kits.  As it is, my French is mostly reserved for my pets, who seem to agree that it's much more appealing to the ear than English.

2:09

The fattest chipmunk I've ever laid eyes on lives in a crevice of the stone wall underneath my office window.  Every morning, he creeps out of his home and alternates between serenading me with vivacious chirping melodies and stuffing so many acorns into the gutter drain pipe that the water gets backed up and pours over the sides of the gutter in a sheet right in front of my window.  Because of this chipmunk, it looks and sounds as if it is torrentially raining outside my window every single day.  I still bring him croutons, though.

1:22

I get a real kick out of all the spelling errors in the postings seeking writers, editors and proofreaders on job-search websites.  They're much more prevalent than I would expect, so I'm always tempted to respond in my cover letter with some snarky comment about how the company must be desperate if their programmers are writing their advertisements, but I don't because, you know, I need a job.

11:47

Guilty Pleasure #6: Hokey and overtly sexual pick-up lines.  There is no grand explanation here; I just like to whisper them under my breath in public to make my friends uncomfortable.

9:25

Monday mornings are intensely less pleasant (which is, of itself, almost inconceivable) when they are cold and overcast.  It would take real effort for me to be any less motivated to shred paper.  At least it's an excuse to wear wool socks all day.

12:10

I've been thinking about carrier pigeons a lot lately, and I think I might like to own one if I ever fulfill my dream of moving out into the desert.  Also, I ate curry for the first time yesterday, subsequently felt stupid for feeling so profoundly like a badass of taste-testing, then realized that small accomplishments are much easier to come by when one sets one's own standards of success.  So, huzzah: by my logic, I'm awesome because I said so.

8:42

When I was a child, I would practice trying to move Cheerios along countertops with my eyes like Matilda.  Afternoons were spent staring at cereal.  Even now I sometimes catch myself trying to blow up televisions sets with sheer mental force, and even now I'm disappointed when it doesn't work.

5:45

I'm getting tired of living in the first-person subjective.

12:12

203-913-XXXX: Stole you two hideous skirts from my old Catholic high school.  Brown and blue plaid.  Hideous.  Seriously fucking ugly.
781-254-XXXX: I have never been more in love with you.
My boyfriend is the best boyfriend, and today looks pretty okay to me.

9:48

After almost twenty-two years, it seems I'm finally surrendering to public pressure and obtaining both a driver's license and a vehicle of some sort.  So the hunt begins for a car under $2000 that has never passionately embraced the backside of an eighteen-wheeler.  Simultaneously looking for a job and a car makes me feel markedly grown-up.  I wonder if I could get more for my soul at auction...

11:57

I've started realizing over the past few weeks that my thoughts are becoming increasingly self-censoring.  Today, for instance, I thought both "Holy smokes!" and "Dagnabbit!".  Where have all my cusswords gone?

5:24

Without thinking, I dated a document April 3, 1997 today.  Suddenly, things make a little more sense.

2:21

My dad is an attorney for a big railroad company, and, at the close of this most recent case, a couple of the grumpy, southern men he represents made him a mix CD of twenty-four songs about trains.  He listens to it any time he's in the car, and anybody riding with him hears about how neat he thinks it is.  It's pretty adorable.  I really want to get him a Lionel set one of these days.

9:16

Some mornings, I feel like, instead of sleeping the night before, I was drugged, laid inside a barrel and rolled down a hill for six hours.  Here's wishing a very merry birthday to Otis Redding and Leo Tolstoy, however.

11:31

I might try to be a nanny for a while.  Despite everything I know about myself which would seem to suggest the contrary, I like kids.  They nap sometimes (which I consider a favorable trait in anybody), and I've never found them to be as needy as adults.

4:41

I've been made to eat my words; Jane Eyre really isn't all that bad so long as the reader is able to enjoy the titular character becoming overwhelmed by her own faculties four and five times a chapter.  She is forever on the verge of fainting or vomiting from excitment or worry or, even less plausible, appreciation.  It really shouldn't be as funny as it is, especially for a book about an overwrought orphan.

2:58

Very little in life makes me feel as gross as having a dream about somebody I don't know very well and seeing him or her the next day.  Do I get it over with, tell them I had a dream about them and endure the awkward look I receive?  I don't know if this is universally true, but I always find that they assume the dream was sexual, an assumption which is rarely true but exacerbates my anxiety all the same.  In these instances, I usually just opt to go on feeling nauseous and guilty and terrified they'll somehow see the thought seeping out my ears.

3:33

Guilty Pleasure #5: Judging strangers by their posture.  Yesterday I saw a woman testing her blood pressure in one of those blood-pressure-testing chairs at the grocery store, and her back sloped forward almost forty degrees.  It has inspired or frightened me into sitting up straight.

3:18

I have often wondered whether there will come a point in my life at which I'm comfortable to lean back and declare my honest contentment with every decision which has lead me to my present.  I don't know if I will ever feel that comfort, or that anyone ever does, but I'm starting to think that the contentment of not knowing when I'm going to die might be the closest I'll get.

1:05

I've never been much of a whiskey drinker, but things get weirder as I get older, and I'm forced to recognize that bourbon and mint tea heal all wounds.

4:24

I'm currently taking an online test which promises to assess my likes and dislikes and list the English-related careers for which I am best suited.  There are one hundred questions, each one a multiple choice with three workplace activities to rate one to three in the order that I'd prefer to do them.  The choices for Question 71 are "A. Running a fruit farm, B. Repairing refridgerators, C. Sculpturing".  I've spent the last ten minutes debating whether I give up or continue on since I've already commited to 70 ludacris questions.