Christmas is really one of my favorite times of the year. I love hanging out with my family- when they are behaving. This year, everyone was on their best behavior. My mom and aunt even teased each other jokingly in the kitchen. I thought at first maybe I was still at home asleep in my bed. Only in a dream could they pretend to be so cordial. But no, they carried on the rest of the day. We played the White Elephant game like every year and everyone laughed and teased each other like we were a normal happy family. I was seriously beginning to wonder what alternate universe I had been sucked into on my way to Gonzales. These were not the bitter angry people I had braced myself for. But I was so grateful. I don’t think they have truly buried the 100′s of hatchets they need to take care of, but they put on a good show. Maybe it was because it was Christmas. Maybe it was because it’s the first Christmas without my grandfather and they just wanted to keep the peace for my grandmother. Maybe they really are just trying to get along. I’m not sure. I almost felt a little better when late in the afternoon, my aunt pulled out a bottle of champagne and got toasted because my other aunt was blocking her car in and wouldn’t let her leave. That seemed a little more like what I was expecting…
Merry Christmas! (I know, I’m a day late and a dollar short) Saturday, Dec 26 2009
Holidailies Christmas, Family 1:50 am
The power of song Monday, Dec 21 2009
Emotional Outbursts The Future, Unruly Emotions 12:25 am
I drove around this afternoon. After sitting in my house all day like a recluse, I had decided that I needed to at least be away from it for a few minutes. I had been indoors, battling the internal conflict that has been raging inside of me all weekend. So I left, hoping to get a little air. But the more I drove, the more lost I became within my own thoughts. I’ve lived here and driven these streets for so long that I was barely paying attention except to notice when the car in front of me slowed or put on his brake lights. I was stopped at a red light, internally berating myself for pretty much every wrong I’ve committed in my life, when an old favorite song came on the radio. The first lines of the song broke through the fog surrounding my head. Instinctively, my hand reached out and turned up the dial. The melodies of Rascall Flatts flooded through the car. I turned the music up until it drowned out the negative voice in my head. The intersection was deserted, so I sat there through another light cycle just to listen to the words. Each time the chorus played, I felt a little bit more determined. They were right, my life has been a series of struggles, and this one was no more likely to kill me than the last. I’m pretty sure the guy in F-150 stopped next to me at the light on the third cycle thought I was nuts as I crooned along at the top of my lungs, but I didn’t let it get to me. I have more important things to concern myself with.
Five Years Ago Tuesday, Dec 15 2009
Holidailies Christmas 10:17 pm
Today’s Holidailies prompt is “Five Years Ago”
Five years ago… hmmm… let’s see….
It would be the year that I lived in my own apartment. I use the term “lived” rather loosely, as I spent 65% of my free time over at my boyfriend’s apartment which was literally just across the street. He was an engineering major and mommy and daddy paid most of his bills, so he had cable and a washer and dryer at his apartment. I washed his clothes in exchange for letting me use his washer.
I spent Christmas Morning and New Year’s Eve alone that year. Daddy still lived in Shreveport and the ExEngineer was in Vegas with his own father. I was a bit of a wreck emotionally anyway, so it was just as well.
It would also be the year that I cut down my very own Christmas tree. I was broke, so ExEngineer took me to a Christmas tree farm near his parents house. His Stepdad knew the owner, so I was able to get a pretty nice one for free. ExEngineer kept offering to help me, but as usual, I insisted on cutting it down myself. It probably took me longer than anyone in the history of Christmas trees. Most people will saw a few times and then let the guys that work there finish the job with a chainsaw. But not me. I sawed my heart out.
I loved that tree. My mom loaned me some red glass ornaments and wide gold ribbon from her shop. The boyfriend even bought me lights. It was the most beautiful thing sitting there in my usually abysmal living room. Christmas passed, but I couldn’t bring myself to take it down. My friend teased me in January when she stopped by the apartment and saw it in the corner. It was wilting, but I was still watering it. Sometime around Spring Break, ExEngineer offered to haul it out to the dumpster. I feebly admitted defeat, taking my time to pull off the ornaments and wrap them up, one by one. I went upstairs to my room as he took it outside. I couldn’t bear to see him casually toss it in the garbage with the rest of the trash.
Some days I’m just so darn nice Saturday, Dec 12 2009
Uncategorized 12:36 am
I like to think that I am enlightened and tolerant. But every now and then, I think things that would probably appall most people.
Today, for instance, I was entering the restroom in a local restaurant. There was a sign on the door that read, “Please do not throw paper towels into the toilet.” At first, I thought, What a stupid sign. Then I remembered that I saw that same sign in several public restrooms recently (what can I say? I hydrate often). This lead me to ask, “Who are these people that throw paper towels in the toilet???”
Seriously, no one throws paper towels away in their toilet at home. If they do, they learn a rather expensive lesson when the plumber comes. So why would they do this in a restaurant? It makes no sense to me. I tried to think of how this would happen.
1. Wash your hands
2. Dry your hands with paper towel
3. Instead of dropping the paper towel in the wastebasket by the door, walk all the way back over to the toilet….
See, non-sensicle. Maybe there’s another reason people try to flush paper towels down the toilet?
Scenario two:
1. Relieve yourself on the toilet
2. Leave the toilet to get a paper towel?? What? Why would anyone want to do that? Might as well use sandpaper…
Nothing could make this seem right in my head, which led me to the conclusion that these perpetrators are clearly stupid. They are so stupid, someone should gather them and send them on a space shuttle to be the first inhabitants of Mars. Let them go fuck up another planet.
Can I Have a Minute Here? Friday, Dec 11 2009
Uncategorized 12:59 am
Getting this post in under the deadline. Barely. I haven’t had two seconds to myself to breathe in the last two days and it’s killing me. I don’t want to be around people right now. So why do they all want to be around me?
Booty Call Tuesday, Dec 8 2009
Uncategorized boys 11:15 pm
This is why I will die an old maid:
I ran into an ex-boyfriend, FineAss, over the weekend. FineAss has decided he needs to rebound after his last relationship. Now, he keeps texting me, saying we should hang out. And by “hang out” we know he means “let’s go back to my place and I’ll do that thing where I pull your hair as I hit you in that crazy sideways position and leave you sweaty and panting, but in the good way”. Any normal, red-blooded woman in need of sexual satisfaction would at least consider it. However… here I sit… at my computer… blogging. Meanwhile, FineAss is at a bar getting schwasted. I could be there on the next barstool, drinking and taking full advantage of his weakened emotional state and impaired judgement (because let’s face it, FineAss is a 9.75 and I’m more in the 6.8 range). I hope that you all realize it’s not my commitment to Holidailies 2009 that has me here at home. No, the simple fact of the matter is that I am too tired to go out, spend time at a bar and then have to go back to his place and have sex. Hell, I’m tired just from writing this blog about sex.
Snow night Monday, Dec 7 2009
Uncategorized 7:18 pm
For the second year in a row, Louisiana saw snow in early December.
This year, it was mostly just chaotic flurries of snow trickling down from above. The next morning, the sky was clear and there were no traces of the strange white stuff that had fallen from the sky. Maybe the birds ate it. Last year, the blanket of snow hung around on the trees and the rooftops for a few hours after sunrise. This year, the only proof is a little shimmer of some sort of precipitation I caught in this photo of Penny.
Side note: Yes, my dog wears clothes. No, it is not cruel. I swear she enjoys it. Or at least pretends to for the sake of my own feelings.
So much has changed since that snowfall last year. My life went from hopeful then, to determined now. My dreams were doused in gasoline and set ablaze, but I have a Plan B if you will. I won’t live that life I so desperately wanted then. I still deep down want that life, and would still sell my soul for it, but I know it isn’t mine to have. So I’ve decided to do something with the life I can have, the one I do have. Let’s just hope it takes me somewhere soon before I lose my mind.
Riding in the car Sunday, Dec 6 2009
Uncategorized 3:53 pm
They sat side by side in the car. The wind whipping through their hair as they drove down the winding roads. She looked over and smiled at him, running her fingers through his thick, black hair.
Before she could take the moment in fully, reality began to sink in. The windows were down. He would have never let to wind blow his hair around like this.
She looked down at her hands in her lap. “This is a dream, isn’t it?” she asked quietly. He smiled at her, but she couldn’t see it through the tears she tried to blink back. “But I can feel the wind in my hair,” she murmured, ”I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin.” It was a cruel joke- for a dream to be so real, for her to have been so happy, only to realize that she was still asleep.
He leaned over and whispered, “Don’t think about these things. We can enjoy this moment for now.”
She closed her eyes.
“For now,” she whispered.
A bad week to be a deigo Friday, Dec 4 2009
Uncategorized bad reality tv, Italians, too much hair gel 7:26 pm
Yeah, totally using a racial slur… But it’s ok. I’m one of them.
Firstly, there was the unveiling of MTV’s Jersey Shore. Go here to check out an episode. Please do. As a half-guid myself, I invite you to laugh with me at these people. I’d like to think it is the Jersey in them and not the Italian heritage…. Ok, maybe a little of the Italian heritage is repped as well. We do like to get our tan on.
Then today was the verdict in the trial for Amanda Knox. The sweet and innocent American exchange student who was framed for murdering her awfully pretentious British roommate. Or at least that is what Amanda’s family would like everyone to think. I mean, if Knox had been convicted and her very pretty Italian boyfriend had gotten off, then maybe I would say, “Hmmm… Maybe they are just trying to pin it on the American girl.” The evidence and circumstances around the whole thing are just too coincidental for her to be completely innocent. Even so, for a brief moment I felt sorry for her. Being locked up in jail for 20 years far from home would probably suck. But then I remembered the pasta in Italy. And I’ve decided that the worst prison pasta in all of Italy would probably still taste better than the best pastas we have here in the States. 20 years of pasta. Mmmmmmm…
Oh, has anyone actually followed that trial anyway? I mean it was of particular interest to me because The Italian and I were dating when it all started getting media attention. But no one I knew really had heard much about it.
Yeah, so it was an interesting week to be Italian-American. There are a lot of heritage groups that are very upset about how “our people” are portrayed. And honestly, these kids are really trashy. But I don’t think that people will start expecting me to wear bikinis out to the nightclub or install a tanning bed in my house (maybe I could fit one on the back patio?). And despite them locking up supposedly “innocent” co-eds and eventually leading to the procreation of what has showed up on the Jersey Shore, you have to love Italians. They use defenses like “She couldn’t have killed this random girl. She was too in-love with her boyfriend. And happy, in-love people don’t need to kill other people.” They gave us pizza and pasta and some great works of art. Oh, and I’m one of them 
