I’ve decided not to chime in on the leggings craze until now. I have patiently held my tongue, although if you know my opinion on jeggings
you can guess where this is about to go.
My theory is that those who wear leggings as pants are the socially acceptable versions of the little girls who would run around in their opaque tights holding their skirts up. Because let’s face it, leggings are one or two thread count away from being footless tights.
So tomorrow is my birthday and to be honest I’m not too excited for it, not dreading it, just not excited. Thanks to romantic comedies and teen movies I have visions of grand surprises, flowers and smiles. Haven’t had them yet. Every year I expect a grand gesture, not because I think I deserve it but because it seems like thats what everyone else gets. Don’t get me wrong, I am so lucky that I have been alive and able to celebrate for 29 years. My parents have always been there to turn around any bad birthday even if I was a birthday brat when I was younger. I know they will never forget my birthday and that is something I will always be grateful for. This year is difficult because I have school stress, no income, a not so reliable car, no social life to speak of and I am working tomorrow. In comparison to the random person off the street I probably have it pretty good. I don’t go to bed hungry (heck, I have a bed), I can afford a cell phone and gas money, I have four legged confidants that always listen to my bellyaching and my parents who support my hopes, dreams and crazy schemes.
This entry isn’t to get pity birthday wishes or free Edible Arrangements and it’s not an insult to those who have been around on 9/16, it’s just an explanation of why I may not be giddy and beaming on the anniversary of my birth. So finally I made a conscious decision to not get my hopes up. Unfortunately my subconscious, always seems to have other plans. I know that tomorrow I will go to clinical and come home with just enough energy for dinner and dessert and then I will tuck myself in and wake up in another “year.” I also know that deep down I will expect fireworks and roses around every corner because damnit, I DO deserve it!!
To some a Hurricane may be a tasty summer drink. To others it may be a place to call home. To me it means a dog that will be as nervous as Porky at a pig roast. So while my dog is trying to crawl as far under anything as she can, I will need music to drown out her whining. Voila…playlist. So here are some songs to pass the time while your patio furniture goes for a dip in the pool:
“It’s Raining Men” – Weather Girls
“The Rain” – Missy Elliot
“Blame it on the Rain” – Milli Vanilli
“Rock You Like a Hurricane” – Scorpions
“Lightning Crashes” – Live
“Purple Rain” – Prince
“Don’t Turn Out the Lights Now” – New Kids on the Block
“The Thunder Rolls” – Garth Brooks
“The Storm” – Lenny Kravitz
“After the Storm” – Mumford and Sons
“When the Sun Comes Out” – Barbara Streisand
“Spirit in the Sky” – Norman Greenbaum
“Here Comes the Flood” – Peter Gabriel
“Pump It” – Black Eyed Peas
“Gonna be a Blackout Tonight” – Dropkick Murphys
“Tubthumping” – Chumbawumba
A word to the wise. If you wait to enjoy all of these videos until Irene crashes your party, with YOUR luck, your power will go out and you will be sitting in the dark singing nothing but the freecreditreport.com song because it’s stuck in your head and you have no way to enjoy other music. You know who you are…
A funny thing happened on the way to my Associates…
I could write a whole long story outlining the events of today, but I will spare you my rambling prose and will give you the ADD version
1. We were told to show up to orientation at 8AM
-No one told us there would be breakfast
-No one told us we would get our badge pictures taken
-No one told us where to go AFTER orientation
2. We return to the classroom after lunch break to meet the librarian (for the 2nd time today)
-We think the librarian is late and she thinks that we are late, because neither of us were told where to go.
3. You can’t park on campus, or anywhere else for that matter, including the public streets surrounding the hospital
-We are required to park at the old Malden Hospital and take a shuttle to school. My house to school is 1.7 miles, my house to Malden is 3.7. Did I mention that the school says they can ticket us for parking on neighborhood streets? I find that funny since the streets don’t require resident permits and my taxes pay for them…I can’t wait until they ticket me for parking on a PUBLIC street.
4. If by chance we are caught parking on the premises, we need to move our car to Malden and pay $25.
-AND we need a written note from the shuttle driver saying we parked off site. They are going to get much better than that from me. My “written note” will be my mother (oh yeah, I ‘m playing the mommy to school card) attesting to the fact that I parked my car at my HOME, less than 2 miles away.
5. We needed to complete an anatomy review packet. We were supposed to review it this afternoon
-The teacher didn’t have half of the sheets that we did and responded with “I’ll be damned.”
I couldn’t make this crap up!!!
A funny thing happened on the way to my Associates…
I could write a whole long story outlining the events of today, but I will spare you my rambling prose and will give you the ADD version
1. Schedule said to show up at 8
-No staff was there
-No one answered the door
-When we finally got in to the classroom, we were told we should have been there at 9
2. We were told to show up in our “uniforms” (navy scrubs, sneakers)
-The 3 of us who actually did were told that street clothes would have been fine
3. You would think that a hospital owned facility would have lockable bathrooms
-You would also be wrong. We were instructed to always remember to slide the little sign on the door to “Occupied” and if possible, have a buddy stand outside
4. Being the only one with more than 2 years of community college under her belt, I tend to think I’m the smartest student there…seriously.
5. Regis College orientation is tomorrow, the school has yet to send me any information about my Stats class
6. On the schedule for the next 3 weeks there are items such as:
-”Meet with Librarian”-to teach us how to cite texts
-”Jeopardy”-”There won’t be questions about where Marco Polo traveled….like to the pool”
-Pot luck lunch
- ~6 hours on aseptic techniques (i.e. washing hands)
-We got a sneak preview: pull down paper towel, turn on water, wet hands, get hands soapy, sing the alphabet, use paper towel to dry, turn off water and pull door open. Pretty sure I don’t need 5 hours and 59 more minutes of instruction
-How to make a skeleton out of gimp (NOT a real item, but since everything else seemed camp-like, I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar existed)
7. The professor/director forgot where he placed his radiation monitor, on two separate occasions….within an hour (it was on his collar).
8. Our first unit was on communication: there is a sender, a channel and a receiver. All are affected by noise (aka distraction). The End.
9. We can’t wear perfume because the professor/director has emphysema
10. We learned the history of buffalo wings
11. Supposedly the program is drowning in grant money yet:
-We are in the basement of a nursing home. Our classroom is right off of the hallway they use to remove the residents who “permanently check out.”
-The “lunch facilities” include the Lawrence Memorial Hospital Cafeteria and 2 vending machines in a different building
-The fake skeleton has no head
-We are located right under the activities room for the blue hairs. Today must have been aerobics because Macarena was blasting! We were also warned that Tuesday is hair salon day so we will detect an odor of “permanent solutions.”
-Because we are in said nursing home, in order to get to our classroom you need to enter two codes on two different keypads in order to open one of the doors. If you don’t close it in 15 seconds, an alarm sounds. To get out of the same door, you have to press two red buttons simultaneously. I’m wondering if they had a problem with run away alzheimer’s patients or something….
12. 3 administration=3 professors
-professor/ clinical coordinator
-professor/ Director
-professor/ student services coordinator
None of the above were able to figure out how to turn the AC on.
13. Everyone in the class agreed that everything being said is being made up on the fly and that if nothing else it would be “interesting.”
I’m going to wait a few weeks before I declare a bait and switch. I was supposed to get training in radiography, but was fooled in to clown college or a cult.
I am not going to touch why the producers of “16 and Pregnant” thought it was a fabulous idea to have a spin off called “Teen Mom”, so don’t go there. What I do know is that the spinoff’s spinoff will be something titled “32 and a Grandmother.”
When I was having my goodbye moment with streaming Netlflix this evening I saw that “Teen Mom” was a recent addition to TV Series. Really Netflix? Let’s be real, the only people that think that is a good idea are the stars of the show. Only when I say stars I mean chunks of skanky rocks hurling their way towards the harsh reality of the end of their 15th minute in the form of a maladaptive child. Phew, glad I decided to use “stars” instead.
In the grand scheme of things, the children should at least have to work at ruining their lives, but you are making it too easy. Instead of having to Google mommy and daddy’s names and search a bit, they can one-click their way in to therapy. Now I’m reaching here because there is a chance that they will not be able to get internet in the trailer they share with their chain-smoking, boyfriend-abusing moms, but by then I’m sure they won’t need the DVD. If the mom’s were smart, they would invest some of the money they are getting from their magazine spreads and promotions in a high-interest (like that might EVER exist anymore) savings account, so they won’t be bankrupt by the bills from their kids’ shrinks. After all, I guarantee that the new tattoos and boob jobs they are getting will definitely NOT have a high rate of return.
Of course, when the time comes, the ex-teen moms can spin it and tell their children that the DVDs are just fancy home movies of the end of their “fun lives” (i.e. partying lifestyles/one-night stands). In that case, thankfully the producers made a point to display a person’s name when they come on screen. Because if some of the mom’s keep living the way they’re going now, they might need a name tag to remember who be the baby daddy. Before you get all huffy, I know there MAY be a Teen Mom that could make something out of nothing (and I mean NOTHING), but I wouldn’t bet your last Pabst Blue Ribbon on it.
Too harsh? Nah
Facebook can be described as many things. It’s a social network, a giant party invitation, a worldwide photo album and an split-second way to share our feelings. For my generation, and those to follow, FB has become an outlet for many (and sometimes, all) thoughts, feelings and experiences. While we are safe in our own homes we are able to share things with those “friends” that we would never share face to face, both joyous and sad. In a way, the internet has allowed us to show other aspects of our true selves that we would have kept well hidden if it were a few decades ago. A user’s mentality must be “This is me, these are my feelings. If you don’t like it, block me.”
But what happens when Generation Now clashes with Generation No-facebook? Those generations that wrote in longhand and not txt spk, those who had party lines instead of mass e-mails, and those who were more guarded about presenting themselves to the world as opposed to posting every picture from “last night”? I’ll tell you what happens, nothing pleasant. Things are misinterpreted and feelings are hurt because there is a disconnect. I kind of think of it as two sides of a coin. The “heads” and the “tails” have only known their side of the coin, they don’t understand where the other may be coming from, but they are serving the same purpose. [That last thought totally works in my head] While the generation before me may use FB to reconnect with family and friends, my generation’s only way of connecting is through instant media.
What I realized tonight is that we ALL need to balance the two views of facebook and we should all wait a few breaths before typing something, no matter what the situation. Because the problem with reading words off of a screen is that you have no idea what the other person may be experiencing/thinking at any moment and the last thing you want to do is hurt one of your “friends” (as in FB friends, not a dis. See what I mean about words on a screen?!)
Like many others my mind starts to go crazy when I want to go to sleep. I could be asleep on my feet but once I turn out the light and get comfy, mental NASCAR starts. But unlike NASCAR cars that only turn left, my thoughts go in all directions.
So here are some goodies from the past couple of nights…
When animals go swimming in cold water, do they pee?
Why do birds like to fly through sprinklers, but they don’t fly in the rain?
Does Donald Trump ever let his wife see him without his hair combed over?
Why do people spend years to become a judge? Just be like Nancy Grace and get a TV show.
If education is priceless, why do I have tons of student loans but no job?
If a bear poops in the woods, and I step in it, will my mom hear me swear?
What is it about cupcakes that make them taste so much better than a piece of a big cake?
Why do kids on summer vacation find it necessary to clomp up and down the street in flip flops at 2 AM on a Thursday morning?
Would I burn off more calories if I went to the gym RIGHT after eating cheesecake or a few hours after? Because I WILL eat cheesecake
If A+B=C and Train X leaves Philadelphia at 8:20AM, why the #$%@(* am I not asleep yet?!
My life hasn’t been thrilling lately, but I’m OK with that. But despite a random tornado here and there, there hasn’t even been a good news story to throw my $.02 in for. And a product of a non-thrilling life is TONS of time to observe life. (Sounds deep, but not so much) Which brings me to my topic: something everyone does, everyone loves and no one gets enough of-sleep.
First things first, if a narcoleptic randomly falls asleep when they are supposed to be awake, why don’t they randomly wake up when they are supposed to be asleep?
Why can’t we remember our last thought before slumbering? For example, if you count back from a hundred, you never remember what number you last thought of. Of course to remember would imply consciousness which is the opposite of sleep, but c’mon. I have fabulous ideas when I’m all snuggled in bed as a sheet burrito, the LAST thing I want to do is turn on the light, search for a pen, search for paper….what was my idea again? All I know is that I have devised a world changing product more than once but I can never remember what it is. It’s like my brain is an annoying 5 year old sticking out it’s tongue and saying “I’ve got a secret about you, but I’m not gonna tell you.”
For my next idea, I always get strange looks. I would love to see how I sleep. Sometimes I wake up and have NO idea how I wound up with my arm IN my pillow case and one leg off of the bed. I have even thought of devising a hanging bracket that I could put my macbook in and use the isight camera to do a time lapse. I refuse to be that nerdy. But I also refuse to be sketchy enough to buy a night camera online. That is soooo modern day stalker-chic.
So call it what you want: consciousness confusion, dreaming doubts or slumber scrutiny, it’s enough to confuse the Sandman
When the news of THE wedding first came out, I was excited. The Pretty Pretty Princess in me couldn’t WAIT until April 29th. The glitz, the prince, the gown, everything. If you were born with 2 X chromosomes, the chances are excellent that you dreamed one day of being the Princess marrying her Prince. I was born a year too late to have lived in a world with a royal wedding so this is my chance. My mother, and most other people that were over the age of 5 at the time, speak of how they got up early for the “event.” When they describe their own experience with Di and Charles’ wedding you can see they travel back to that very early morning and you share what they feel. I want that memory, that experience. I want to drown in the diamonds, flowers and horse-drawn carriages. I want to be breathless as a woman I will never meet becomes the bride I have always wanted to be.
Unfortunately for my generation, that’s not possible. We are smothered with marketing, shameless promotions and updates that have done nothing but subtract from the royal wedding. Perhaps we remember how the last fairy tale didn’t have a happy ending and we are cynical of this one. Maybe, we have just come to see marriage as something more of an act than a commitment. It’s all very sad. Instead of the American public being respectful of the enormity of this event for a country and for a people, we are chastised. There are three types of people. The very few who will be up in the wee hours of April 29th to have their own princess moment, there are those who will watch it when they can (maybe) and then there are those who react with disgust if you admit you are of the two other groups. Why can’t we just realize that it isn’t everyday that an heir to the throne picks his princess from the masses? That with such a bleak future for our children, we are throwing away the chance to give our kids the princess/prince fantasy to hold on to? That maybe Wills and Kate don’t want any of this unbridled attention either, but it is something for their country to celebrate?
Is it really such a bad thing to lose yourself in the moment of something so intoxicating as a royal wedding? For me, I remember the day Diana died. I was in my room watching TV and crying. The Princess was dead. I’m sure Friday will bring a similar situation. I’ll be in my room watching TV and crying. Crying happy tears because a girl like me will marry her prince, ride off in a horse-drawn carriage and start her fairy tale.
I won’t be alone either. That little girl inside me, wearing her plastic Cinderella high heels and bejeweled tiara, will be watching in awe and dreaming that maybe one day her prince will come too!
