those terrible tomes.

why is this so hard?
i have stacks of books that i have already decided i can do without and i was merely waiting for an appropriate venue that would allow me to rid myself of them. and now here it is - the spring fair at my work, where profits will benefit my school and my kids and all that great stuff. and still, i sit here going through them and wondering how i will possibly be able to part with them. i mean, they are MY BOOKS. they are one of my favorite possessions. i can't quite explain why. it's not like i'll reread most of them. i just like having them for some reason. what is it about books? looking at a full bookcase is so hypnotic. it's calming and inspiring. but it's not like i'm getting rid of all of my books. hardly. i still have a ton, and they are all still looking for little nooks and niches in which to live. then there's the fact that i am constantly moving, and books love to add up in weight rapidly.
so why is this so hard?

how to have a good morning.

the day started with a pleasant surprise when the dentist told me i was there for only one filling, not the two that i had expected. but you must know that it was a small filling, nothing major. i still have good teeth. good teeth that i will keep until i am an old old woman. no falsies for me.
so then i made a wise decision by going to the pantry for breakfast. it was a difficult choice, but i finally ordered the banana pancakes. the man asked me if i wanted strawberries. fresh strawberries. and i wish i had a picture of it because it was f-ing decadent. that plus the coffee i had been craving since i woke up and a book were a splendid combination.
but, of course, nothing is perfect. being a wednesday morning, the place was not all that crowded. this combined with the loudmouthedness of the man a couple of tables over made it nearly impossible to ignore his conversation. conversation implies that two people are involved, but he definitely dominated. at first i cursed yale. but as i got more involved in his soliloquy i realized i had no one to blame but his mother and father's reproductive organs. what an annoying schmuck. all talking about independent film and how he's decided to just teach himself. okay okay....it doesn't sound necessarily annoying, but trust me, the attitude and delivery .... perfectly detestable. oh he was accepted to the ny film academy but then did it all on his own with a hand me down computer and a monitor he found on the street. it sounded vaguely like he was talking to this other man (oh, i didn't get a great look at them, but the talker was probably in his late 20s, his guest maybe 40s or 50s? possibly a professor of some sort?) and trying to get information from him about filmmaking. in theory, trying to learn from him. but he was far too busy sharing his life and philosophies. fascinating. the pay-off came towards the end of my delicious breakfast when he began to discuss what his documentary (did i mention it was a documentary? even better, right?) was about: f-ing hip-hop. oh my god. and he did acknowledge that it would be a little difficult being a suburban white boy from new jersey trying to bust in on the hip-hop culture, but he thought it was important and that he could do it. some of his questions to the man (that he barely had a chance to answer) included questions about scripting a documentary and "do you call the cast of a documentary 'actors'?"
i don't know if i'm really capturing this moment, but it was highly absurd and a semi-rewarding eavesdropping that made me appreciate that i was not this person.
so then i was finished and it was time to go to work. the man came over to take my check and money as i was putting away my book and preparing to leave. he tilted his head to look at the cover. "ah," he said, "the master and margerita." which caused me to blurt out, "are you obsessed with russian literature, too??" and he really was. he had been getting into it for the past couple of years he said and we had a brief chat about anna karenina and war and peace and dostoevsky and it was just wonderful and perfect.
and after that, work was pretty okay, too.

i hate wes anderson.

man...i didn't know the life aquatic was going to make me shed a tear. "i wonder if he remembers me." oh how sad.
stinkin wes anderson. if he only knew how long and how many times we sat outside of the plant pool waiting for him.
i'm not sure how i feel about the cgi (or whatever) created sea creatures, though. haven't determined that yet.
before the life aquatic was i heart huckabees. haven't really decided how i like it as a whole, but there were definitely a couple of times that made me laugh. good enough for me at this point. it is good that i stayed in tonight and did not go to new york and watched movies instead. my head is still so congested ..... i can't even come up with a clever metaphor for it. movies movies movies. no writing, though. have to get on that. i'm pretty sure if i don't write anything this week i might be permenantly banned from nhwc. or not. but i still want to write something.
more about my surreal pre-school experiences later.

feline frenzy!!!

a) there are a lot of cats here. it's fabulous.
b) i really have to write about the mall adventures. imperative.
c) something else.....can't remember.........sick, brain not working so well. i just said that my head is flying away. i think i ought to hit the hay, as they say. yay.

california benedict.

quite possibly the most amazingly delicious thing i have ever consumed. english muffin, AVOCADOS, grilled tomato, egg (usually poached, though i got mine scrambled since i cannot eat eggs when the whites and yolk are seperate), hollandaise sauce. f-ing fantastic. a necessary indulgence after a strange night's sleep. first there was waking up thinking that my friend was peeing in the closet, which would come to mind each time i woke up after that. fortunately, the morning light brought a dry closet, but i was pretty convinced of the reality of this event at certain times of my half-awakeness. i also woke myself up whining about some annoying thing happening in my dream. i wish i could sleep quietly. it's weird to have your own voice wake you up. then there was the intense shoulder pain that actually got me out of bed because i could no longer just sit there trying to pretend it didn't hurt that much. after moving it to every possible position and trying to convince myself it felt better, i got up and took some pain relief pills (i even went for the naproxen, even though there was no food in my belly. the threat of an ulcer seemed a small price to pay in exchange for the dulling of my shoulder pain), then sat up at the computer waiting for them to kick in. i couldn't even raise my arm enough to put my hair up in an elastic. and what happened to cause this, you ask? i have no idea. yes, there was the moving, but that was last weekend and this didn't start until a couple of days ago. both of my shoulders do this periodically. the last time it was the other shoulder and was a result of using the mortar and pestle to make pesto and made me feel incredibly lame. a hurt shoulder from making pesto?!?! come on. so i am starting to wonder what the hell is wrong with me. i am 27 years old, for christ's sake, i shouldn't be having this much trouble with my joints (then there's the issue of my knees locking up on occassion, also for no particular reason, which began happening in junior high school. god...the first time it happened i remember how awful it was not so much because it hurt, but because i couldn't totally straighten my leg and i had to walk around the halls of jfk jr high school all gimpified and i hated it). it has never occurred to me to ask someone about this (say, a doctor perhaps) because it seemed like one of those things that "just happens". what if i have rheumatic fever or something? is that even a real thing? did i just make that up? for some reason i think rheumatoid somehow fits with this. rheumatoid arthritis? i'm pretty sure i used to know what rheum- referred to. clearly i do not know now.
but now i think it is time to pop some more pills and go help my new roommate find a graduation dress. i have guaranteed her that i can protect her from the evils of the mall. i will cast spells to ward off the spirits. ooh....i wish i had some sort of magician's hat to wear because that would certainly help us.