Done.

Figure A: Susan passed out on the living room floor.

Halfway through our full day of manual labor, we discovered belatedly that there was no water at our new house. The landlord had unfortunately forgotten to tell us that he had shut the water off and after hurriedly calling the water district, found again unfortunately that it would take 24 hours for them to send someone out to turn our water back on. The rest of the day later, it took us exactly five seconds to determine that we were not desperate enough to use the public shower located in wide open view next to our pool so took advantage of our 24 hour fitness memberships, walking in with a full day’s worth of sweat and grime and walking out happily squeaky clean in our jammies.

Moving Day.

Took a day off to move, clean, and set up house. See y’all on the other side!

Death By Packing.

So...many...boxes....so...so...many....boxes.....(die)

Unpacked.

Moving day is this WEDNESDAY but the closest thing to packing I’ve done so far is lugging a grip of flat boxes home from work. Achievement of this grand feat has been sending so many pat-on-the-back neurons to my brain that I have since believed that the great bulk of the work for moving has been accomplished and that I deserve a break for all that harrowing work done.

Young Me 5

This year I was halfway through freshman year, the shock and dismay of being rejected by Stanford after being so thoroughly convinced that I was to go there (on what completely deluded basis I know not) having by this time been completely absorbed by the unexpected awesomeness that was the University of California, San Diego. The most awesome factor, however, was most detrimental: the food card (insert angels trumpeting and sparkles sparkling), a prepaid card I could use in any cafeteria at any time to swipe any food I could ever possibly want in extreme excess. I happily bought myself a buffet for every meal and consumed whole pints of ben and jerry ice cream practically in replacement of water. I ate with vengeance all the foods my mama never let me eat for sake of my weight, and stocked my teeny dorm fridge with ice cream I could eat all through the night and also during the five minute walk to the dorm cafeteria to buy more. Them was good times… A time of freedom, a time of wealth in food points, a time of new clothes because for some reason all my old ones done gone and shrunk on me (read: FRESHMAN 30).

Young Me 4.

I distinctively remember this year being immensely stressful thanks to SATs, AP and honors classes, graduation looming, having no idea what I wanted to do with my life or what college I’d go or if I’d get into any at all, and probably most significantly thanks to my mama and every random family member informing me every ten seconds how fat I was. Looking at pictures from back then, I do now heartily agree with their sentiments, but back then I was a sensitive teenager, stressed out enough as it was trying to produce decent practice SAT scores, and also trying to get to the cafeteria before they ran out of Pizza Hut breadsticks. Best. Breadsticks. Ever.

Young Me 3

1998 was a tumultuous time of tween angst culminated from a sudden move clear across the globe to a new school in a new country (USA), an immense growth spurt that shot me up from a dogged history of being the teeniest kid in class to one of the tallest, and a crazy wild-haired old coot of an eighth grade science teacher that never turned the lights on and in the dark detailed daily different scenarios of how the demise of human kind will surely occur with aid of transparencies and sometimes creepy and terrifying movies that would rob us of our appetites for weeks. With his face hovering over the transparency machine as the only light source in the room, he whispered with frightening shadows cast over his old wrinkly face that the sun would grow several thousand times its size and swallow us up, but not before detailing what the heat would do to each of us, and also gave us the impression that none of this was just theory but stone cold FACT, and that it would happen not in a billion trillion years, but TOMORROW.

Young Me 2

This momentous year, my mama, after many months of my woeful pleading, bought me my very first pair of baggy jeans, and also my very first scrunchie. These two wardrobe objects, in combination with an extra-long braided brown leather belt and an authentic blue leather-bottom Jansport bag with straps extended to hang lower than my butt, instantly shot me up to a completely new level of insane cool. Also in seventh grade, I won a school-wide essay contest about our highly unanticipated new middle school building for which I was awarded a certificate, a ballpoint pen, and publication in the next month’s Highlights magazine. What I was not awarded was rights to subjective expression, and only found out whilst reading a copy of the “final” essay before my class, that the school administration had changed segments of the essay in which I detailed any negative opinions of the new building, omitting such gems as: “vomit-colored orange stairway railings”.

Young Me 1

In 1993, all moms the world over must have gotten together and agreed that they shall all dress their grade school daughters in floral print leggings and little polka dot (or some other equally jarring pattern) skirts complete with oversized T-shirts. In third grade I was in Cursive Club, learned multiplication, and stayed in class during recesses burrowed in the little classroom book corner reading and writing epic illustrated multi-chapter stories about the adventures of my third-grade class. It was also this year in third grade that I got my first pair of glasses. My padre, after catching me a couple times sneaking his glasses on while he was asleep, told me that if I kept wearing his glasses, my eyes would get bad and that I’d have to wear glasses too. Of course this was exactly what I wanted and was ecstatic when my sneaky hard work paid off with my very own pair: These awesome pentagon-shaped ones colored in smears of pastel pink, blue, and purple.

Runaway Hair.

My hair is pretty hell-bent on escaping off my scalp during showers and I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the fact that I take a hot iron and brutally burn them into straight submission most mornings.
Don’t you know, hairs, I am doing it all for you! So you can be beautiful! At least I don’t pump drugs and chemicals in torturous combination with hours of intense heat in order to force you into “permanent” shapes and unnatural colors! You have it good living on my scalp, I’m telling you! Be grateful for my tender loving care you renegade fools!!!

Collision.

For some reason unexplained, every single person in our office (including me) has tendency to storm like bulls around the office at dangerous speeds, especially whilst veering around blind corners, resulting in several near-death collisions a week. I have a sneaking suspicion that we all just happen to walk like we drive. This is all normal everyday occurrence, however, but the new boy causes awkwardness because he is tall and where regularly I’d expect a near-collision to cause a head-butt to my mouth, now I am the one incurring near head-butts to the new boy.

Fainted.

(Figure A: Susan fainted in the office. Chance of likelihood: 0%)

J and I consider a woman fainting to be a sign of the highest top-ranking super-special level of femininity, a level only the most feminine of femininity-exuding-feminine-females can attain and usually assigned only to skinny people and Disney princesses. It is a most coveted feature, as we are both quite sturdy females and have never come even close to fainting in our lives, even after giving blood for the first time in high school (the mission: faint and get rescued by hot doctor), or even after treacherous tenth grade PE weekly mile-runs (the mission: faint and get rescued by current crush and also be excused from PE forever). Instead, while girls were fainting after giving blood we were raiding the snack table (forgot about mission in face of free food), and while girls were fainting during runs and throwing up blood I was the one nastily wheezing and heaving dry coughs like a pervert. I’m pretty sure those fainted and blood coughing girls were in pain (also there must have been some serious physical ailments involved), but in my jealousy-spiked view they looked like the most helpless, dainty, feminine, story-book damsels-in-distress I ever did see and aspired to be.

(Figure B: Susan rescued from nasty office floor by prince from out of nowhere. Chance of likelihood: 0%)

(Figure C: Susan “rescued” from nasty office floor by the boys. If ever fainted, then chance of likelihood: 100%)

Soda.

Funny story. There’s this person I know (that’s not me) who (is not me) when really irritated at her boys (not mine) will sometimes (sometimes) passive-aggressively shake up random cans of soda in the office fridge in hopes of getting one to explode in someone’s face and somehow by that cause them to stop being annoying. So far it’s proven to be a failed experiment and no booby-trapped can has ever exploded in anybody’s face. But then I wouldn’t know. Because It wasn’t me. Yeah… (Shifty eyes)

I want.

I was at the mall over the weekend when I nearly tripped over this tiny child running rapidly across my charted course of walking. She had on the most adorable flouncy white lacy sundress and the most amazing red cowboy boots complete with cute little pigtails and I was immediately in love. With her outfit. I want a flouncy white lacy sundress and red cowboy boots…NOW!!! So what if she’s four and I’m twenty four and she’s tiny and I’m not!!! (Throws tantrum)

Found!

After some mild fights with the landlord, some intense fights with the landlord’s girlfriend (long story), and an amicable agreement to leave the property within two months, J and I had been again on the treacherous seas of home searching when we came across the PERFECT place that matched every single item on our search list and MORE, exactly within our budget! We immediately fell in love with the two stories, the open kitchen, the bathrooms in each room, the skylight over the stairs, and the amazing location, but what may have impressed us most of all over all these things: The landlord’s hot Australian accent.

The Secret Life of.

The secret life of Susan’s hair is one of stark contrast indeed with help of trusty Revlon hair straightener, my forever sidekick. After religiously doing straight-perms every five months for over half a decade, I stopped all hair treatments since graduating college (no more of my parent’s monies at my unlimited exposal booo) and my hair was finally given leave to grow forth undeterred back into it’s crazy, natural, weed-like self. It was very touching to see it being true to itself after all these years of chemical confinement.

Don't Go.

How cruel of you to leave so soon, Summer, when I have not yet even a decent tan! When I have not yet even been once to the beach! When in my closet are still new and unworn summer dresses! Today in denial I wore a thin summer outfit and sandals, pondered over whether I’d need a cardigan, and dismissed it in hopes that Summer had not gone but lingered. Outside it was cold, windy, and RAINING. Alas, alas! Summer you are but gone so woefully soon!

Joke.

I was babysitting two of my favorite little kiddies over the weekend who, over breakfast, started sharing jokes. Swept up in the excitement of the moment and determined to prove my own hilarity over theirs, yet being without any clever jokes in my reservoir (note to self: keep reservoir filled with good jokes), I made one up on the fly, which at the moment seemed pretty awesomely hilarious but actually was not, as quickly registered from the looks of disdain on their usually angelic little faces. They said only: “That’s NOT a joke” and went back to eating breakfast; joke time had been irrevocably shut down by yours truly.

Susan vs. Alarm.

This is Susan finally gone berserk after the company alarm’s incessant beeping over the past two weeks due to alarm issues that the alarm company was refusing to service. Susan had found one of its power sources in the warehouse and disconnected the battery to no avail, she disconnected everything else there possibly was to disconnect in the stupid box to no avail, she then found it’s mother ship in the building’s buzzing phone room outside and dismantled the main power to no avail, then finally went crazy exactly as pictured above and savagely ripped out the stupidly huge battery and carried it ceremoniously and victoriously over her head into the office, ALSO to no avail. THE ALARM WAS STILL BEEPING. After all that savagery and unscrewing and disconnecting, it turned out that the main power source for the alarm was actually NOT that box in the phone room which I had completely dismantled (the identity of that box is still unconfirmed; most likely the next door building’s alarm) but a dinky little chord plugged into the wall right inside the office that just needed to be unplugged. So though in the end I did kill the alarm, it felt more like a win for the alarm than for me.

New Hire.

Our company recently hired another middle aged boy to add to the collection, but unlike the others, this one is taller than I am (gasp!). The unfortunate and immediate implication of this is that where before, the visual space above the cubicle walls was exclusively mine, shared only by the other boys’ heads barely peeking past the tops, now it is encroached upon by another set of EYEBALLS, meaning CONSTANT EYE CONTACT. It is strange and awkward and disturbing.

Shock.

This is me discovering last week (but drawn with my new haircut because I am so in love with this hair right now), whilst listening to a recording of my band, that my voice is not as great as I always figured (read: it sucks). Unlike the melodious and beautiful and amazingly awesome way my voice sounds within my cranium, once released into the world through my mouth, that same voice apparently becomes – immediately upon contact with oxygen – flatter than two week old soda, more lackluster than a soapy mop, and worst of all just excruciatingly, painfully average. Since then the shock has only ebbed enough to enable whining and pining, much to J’s great annoyance. She thinks I need to shut up and man up. She is right and I know it, but I’m in the middle of this really great pity-party and would much rather mope in here with likeminded depressed fellows (read: Fred) until time does its thang and numbs it all up.