making lemonade

now what

what is this, some kind of sick joke?? i JUST decided to stay away from boys, that i don't have time to deal with them, that i have too much going on and i want to have more going and... and then i catch the most recent potential boy carving pumpkins with his 2 year old neighbor.

and gosh darn it if i didn't just post about how fall gets me all warm and fuzzy inside and how i should stay away from all potential boys this time of year.

and gosh darn it if he wasn't being all cute and fallish with a small child. that's a recipe for disaster right there, my friends.  

i was driving around with aubs looking at halloween decorations in the neighborhood surrounding campus when i spotted him sitting among the fallen leaves and pumpkin seeds with a little girl. it was quite picturesque.  it was also quite unfair of the Good Lord to allow mine eyes to fall upon such a crush-inducing scene. i made aubrey drive quickly away before i had a conniption fit over the cuteness.  yes, yes i am one of those girls who finds a genuine love for kids in a guy THE MOST ADORABLE THING EVER. don't judge me.

oh Lord, why must you tease me so?  ...sigh.

here comes a cold

break out the winter clothes and find a love to call your own.

oh JM, how you tug at my fragile heartstrings.

what is it about fall? it's like magic. it's only here for a short, sacred time. i love drinking in the warm fall colors and the cool air, but more than anything i like drinking in the hot chocolate. i have a very special place in my heart for hot chocolate. had some tonight, yum.

nothing says fall like changing leaves, the first cool day, an exciting college football game and some hot chocolate.

the thing about autumn is that it makes people fall in love all over the dang place.  couples are EVERYWHERE. they're being all cute and holding hands in the falling leaves and carving pumpkins and going to haunted houses. it's like a disease. 

in fact, fall gets at my romantic side so intensely i should completely avoid eligible bachelors at this time of year for fear of waking up from a holiday-induced coma at st. patrick's day to find that i have been dating someone i was not meant to be with.

i've told you before, i'm a 0-60 intensity dater.  autumn just perpetuates the problem.  it's easy to see things through rosy colored glasses when things are already so nicely colored for you. those dang leaves. they make you feel all lovey-dovey and romantic and shenanigans. ack.

this is my first fall without a, well you know,  in quite some time. it's probably my turn though. i should be single right now. i've got a lot going on, and i want to have more going on. i desperately need to focus on where my life is headed (that's what i get for changing majors so late in the game!) and what my next move will be.

but plotting "next moves" is hard! it takes time and energy and research! which is why i need to keep far away from potential boys for the rest of the semester. (on this campus, it's not hard to avoid them.) 

...we'll just see how well this goes.

poor alison

alison made the mistake of coming in my room at the height of insanity the night before the QUALITATIVE METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH project was due. i had been working for hours, and was experiencing some last-minute technical difficulites. i was a rubberband stretched to the farthest it could go. one more tug and i would break.

alison tugged.

poor alison. she appeared in my doorway and in typical alison fashion simply asked, "do you want to be my friend?"

i just shook my head no, trying to indicate somehow without words, "please leave me alone i have to just finish this one thing and then it can be all glitter and rainbows and unicorns but until then i can't have friends, you see i'm a rubberband stretched too far and i don't want to snap so please don't say anything mean or anything nice or anything at all because i'll just start crying".

shockingly she didn't get the message.  i can't remember what she said next (probably along the lines of "are you okay?", "how can i help", "do you need a hug" or something else horrifying and completely out of line) but whatever it was, was enough to tug my rubberband beyond it's capacity to stretch.

poor alison. she didn't know the girl who monograms everything and wears pink everyday could be that crazy over saying hi. or get that crazy at all. period.

all i could say to her was "I'M LIKE A RUBBERBAND. I I I I AM A RUBBERBAND. I'M I'M STRETCHED. I JUST I JUST NEED TO FINISH AND NOT BE A RUBBERBAND ANYMORE."

in between sobs, of course.

y'all would have been scared too.  wednesday night i had started working on that project as soon as i got out of class and continued working on it well into the evening.  upon finishing at about 11pm i realized very suddenly that some things were amiss. i was starving, i was thirsty, i hadn't used the bathroom in hours, my rear-end was numb and my underwear was on inside out. 

after taking care of the essentials i pranced into kate's room to show her the completed project and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  i looked like a homeless person.  i was in sweatpants, my hair was dirty and in a pile on top of my head where a small animal could have made a home, i was lacking the essentials in makeup, my glasses were shoved to the tip of my nose and i had on 2 different pairs of shoes. cute.

this wouldn't be too awful if it was only my sorority sisters seeing me at the height of my craziness, but it wasn't.

"WHY DID YOU LET ME LEAVE THE HOUSE LIKE THIS???" i calmly and collectedly asked aubrey and kate.  i had used the computer labs to print of the millions of pages of transcript i needed. and i sat next to a cute boy. and i think he talked to me. only lord knows what i said back, if anything. that's horrifying- i can't even remember!

after that i carried my project around for about 20 minutes. sometimes i would just set it down and look at it. i think once i actually asked someone to take a picture of me with it, but thank goodness my sisters love me too much to listen to my crazy sleep deprevation talk and document any part of that night and what i looked like. 

it was then that i remembered the incident with alison. i walked downstairs in my sweatpants and rats-nest hairdo with 2 different shoes on and climbed onto her lap and apologized.

"it's okay." she said. "you were a rubberband."

yes, yes i was. i think we all have rubberband moments.

PROOF

...that i picked the right major: i stole my roommates book "med school confidential" even though i have no intention of ever going to medical school simply because i found it fascinating from a sociological point of view.

...that i'm uber-lame: i spent the ENTIRE WEEKEND working on my qualitative research project.

...that i'm sleep-deprived from working on said project: i fell asleep in the shower.

...that campus construction is ruining my high heels:  i found a nail sicking out of my cute brown ones today, and it's not the first time!

...that i'm a broke college student: i have no money to buy new heels, so i walk around on nails.

although i love me some heels, i love, you know, silly things like eating food and being nourished more.

also, i don't know how the shower thing happened. i just sat down on that conveneient little ledge for one second and, well, i don't know long i was in there for but suffice to say i was pruny. very pruny.

it's been a week since i've said hello to y'all, but i have been a slave to QUALITATIVE METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH all this weekend/week/day/hour/every second of my ever-depressing exisitance.  it's my 4th night in a row to be up till 3-4am even though i very meticulously scheduled every nanosecond of free time so i wouldn't HAVE to be up till 3-4am every night. sigh. sometimes there is just too much work.

or, to quote one of my favorite movies, "sometimes there just aren't enough rocks."

it's from forrest gump.

i don't know. it's late. leave me alone or i'll tell you more about QUALITIATIVE METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH.  trust me, you don't even want me to go there, girlfriend.

apologies and the like. once i turn in this (INSERT FOUL, FOUL, DIRTY, VERY FOUL LANGUAGE HERE) project on thursday i will be going on a date.

his name, is andre.

the pseudeo date

friday. thought i was staying in. got the invite to a house off campus by a fun couple i'm friends with. hung out with them and a potential boy around a fire in the backyard. it was a nice relaxing autumn evening.

saturday. breakfast at queenies. impromptu trip to gap outlet in the next town over. got some great new fall clothes including a gorg red peacoat.  fun time with girls.

saturday night. haunted house with fun couple and potential boy. feels like a date.  potential boy isn't as outgoing as i am, which makes him harder to get to know.  however, potential boy was great fun to hang on to while i was getting the living stuff scared out of me at the pyschopath haunted forest.

potential boy is my type, minus the shy factor. he really is cute; he's tall and really muscular and he dresses well which is always a plus.  but the thing is, i am so deep-seated in the personality factor that looks honestly come 100% second. case in point; although he is my physical type, i just don't find him attractive.  what's up with that?? i feel like a lunatic saying it, but it is what it is, and i can't help it if i'm really THAT picky or really THAT crazy.

upside; i got to go to the haunted house like i wanted, and i got to hang out with a cute new boythat'safriend. i'll think of it like a practice date.  could come in handy someday.

after all, practice makes perfect.

i'm perfectly normal, right?

"i really don't think you do that many weird things."
-my roommate

i've been tagged.

7 weird things about wonderful me:

1. i don't like sandwiches.
2. i don't walk around barefoot due to the fact that i broke my calcaneus bone freshman year of college.
3. i have recessed eardrums.  this basically means i listen to the TV/music really loudly.
4. i. monogram. everything.
5. i always have at least 1 item of pink clothing on. and no, i don't plan it that way. it just happens.
6. i have a birthmark in my eye.
7. 

i'm leaving #7 open because i'm brave (and insane, apparently) and i don't know if i can think of another truly weird thing i do.  i have some serious OCD tendancies, but don't we all?  some people think it's weird that i love Dolly Parton, but if that really is weird she wouldn't have any fans!

so i guess it's (YIKES) open-ended. if you know me from life or from the internets, you can leave a comment and tell me what you think is weird about me.

be nice, y'all!

i just wanna be friends

one of the other things about sorority life is that you're really not regularly exposed to humans of the male variety.  being myself rather (read: very) girly, i tend to have an even harder time finding things in common with boys.  recently i've found myself wanting to be around no-drama no-fuss boys.  i have whereabouts of 1 guy friend, and i pretty much have to bribe him to spend time with me with cookies.

well, there is another one, but i don't know what you can call him yet. it's that gray area, you know?  i'd say he's an acquaintance, but we text rather often and he called me this weekend just because, and i think that takes me into the "friends" realm of relationships. so maybe he's half friend half acquaintance. so that puts me at a grand total of 1.5 guy friends.

see, my problem is that i speak sorority and i see in paisley and polka-dots.  i blush too easily and am afraid of bugs.  i wear at least one item of pink clothing a day.  i have so much pink clothing in fact, that whereas a normal person's lint from the dryer is a mixture of color from all their clothes (usually gray), my dryer lint is pink. always.

that's an important part of discovering something about someone, don't you think? the color of their dryer lint? i personally don't feel like i truly know someone until i see the color of their dryer lint.

there are a few non-girly things about me. i love of baseball and all things outdoors. i like to work out and run and sweat.  i love dogs, but my one guy friend would tell me that's pretty girly, that all girls love dogs.  i guess i should believe him, since he's my only connection to the male-world.

i just enjoy some boy perspective on life from time to time.  maybe that's why i enjoyed talking to mike so much.  sometimes i just wanna talk baseball. or hit some balls at the batting cages. or go camping.

and as much as my sorority sisters love me, i doubt any of them would be willing to go camping and talk baseball with me anytime soon. 

i couldn't go with them anyway. who would kill the bugs that sneak into our tent?

my sister's chemistry teacher's family friend from church has a pet snake.

scratch that. it's not a pet snake. it's a pet BOA CONSTRICTOR.

why they have a boa constrictor as a family pet or why that is even legal is COMPLETELY BEYOND ME, but they do.

every night the pet boa (i wish i knew it's name) would curl up and sleep at the foot of the youngest daughter's bed. 

it seemed to be a good family pet.  they fed it mice daily.  they didn't cage it, it would just roam the house.  and of course at night curled up into a spiral and slept soundly on the 15 year old daughter's bed.

one day they started to notice that the boa had stopped eating.  at first they thought nothing of it, but when the days kept passing and he still wasn't eating, they began to get worried.

one morning the daughter woke up to find the boa laying next to her, all stretched out.  this odd position combined with the fact that the boa hadn't eaten in nearly 2 weeks was cause enough to warrant a visit to the vet.

once they explained what was happening, the vet asked them, "how much research have you done on boa constrictors?"

"not a ton", the family replied, "why?"

well ignorant and insane family, a boa constrictor will stretch out next to it's prey to see if it can fit in their mouths whole.

...

sick.

our heros at firehouse No. 7

here at the tri delt house, it's nothing out of the ordinary to be interrupted mid-studying, reading, sleeping, showering, etc. by our very loud and incredibly sensitive fire alarm.  once, the steam from a shower set it off.  i got distracted making toast once and that set it off. everyone who has ever made popcorn in the tri delta house has set off the dang fire alarm.  it's like a rite of passage.

so protocol goes like this; if you're naked you cover yo self, and then you try not to go deaf while making your way to stand embarrassingly in the front yard and wait for our friends from firehouse no. 7 to show up.

actually, engine no. 7 doesn't even show up anymore.  our love of popcorn, showers and toast has cried wolf enough times that campus security has rigged our alarm to call them instead of the fire department.  heaven help us if there is a real fire. we'd be tri delta charbroiled.

i'm not sure if it was the lightening storm we had this weekend or mere overuse (i'm leaning toward overuse) but our fire alarm is now broken.  yesterday in chapter meeting an announcement was made that it's state law when a fire alarm is out of service in a building as large as ours, a fireman must be on call in the house and do a walk through every hour until the alarm is fixed.

i have to admit- the reaction upon hearing the news was not disappointment.  a fireman, the rescue fantasy of many a girl, on watch in our sorority house? 24/7? until we're safe once again? sounds good, no?  we were kind of excited about it.

until we walked into the living room and saw the fireman taking the first shift.  let me just say, he was not the man we were envisioning in our rescue fantasies.

like, at all.

although he wasn't going to be mr. july anytime soon, he was plenty nice. and so was the one who came to take over the later shift after that.  and the one here today was very nice too, but still not young/attractive/single.  not any of those, actually.

until tonight.

that being said, i must be off.  Mike is in the front of the house watching the playoffs, and i just happen to love baseball.  he's a Boston fan, but i can get over it. as long as he's not a cubs fan!

but after today it would probably be okay if he was.