Reasons Why I'm Crying

It's Meg Ryan's birthday. Can we all just take a moment to thank this woman for bringing Kathleen Kelly to life? I can't be the only person who crawls under the covers and watches You've Got Mail whenever my painstaking attempts to micromanage the next 10 years of my life explode in my face. Part of me wants to throw everything out the window and move to Manhattan and work at a doomed bookstore just so some online stranger can tell me, "Don't cry, Shopgirl." /bawling

Ryan Cabrera used to be relevant. Remember his YuGiOh hair? His sentimental-without-actually-saying-anything songs? I sure hadn't. Like, for a good six years, I'd forgotten that this guy had ever existed. So hearing "On The Way Down" and "True" brought back a whole lot of memories.. mostly of stressing out over what a boutonniere was and avoiding my biology leaf project. And of failing to realize that Laguna Beach was a TV show, not a retail offshoot of Abercrombie and Fitch until my hopes of being remotely cool vanished into thin air. Thanks for the memoriez, Ryan.

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Obvi.

This Stephen King book isn't getting any better. In the spirit of JFK Day, which is this city's bizarrely laid-back name for the 50th anniversary of the president's assassination, I thought it would be appropriate to read Stevie K's novel about going back in time to save Kennedy. Shockingly enough, the first half of the book was about fun times in Derry (fun times in Derry today! Derry!). After 350 pages of thoroughly enjoyable "It" references , it felt like some passionless editor reminded Stevie K, "Hey, this book is supposed to take place in Dallas. And it should probably include Lee Harvey Oswald. Maybe throw in a generic love interest for good measure. Have people say 'Hun,' a lot." Don't listen to them, Stevie! Listen to your heart, and if your heart tells you to ditch the historically appropriate premise and bring us back to Derry for the billionth time, just do it. I WANNA SEE YOU BE BRAVE.

Tears of joy: there are two flavors of ice cream in my freezer. Not one, but two flavors. Few other things in life bring such tidings of comfort and joy. In this case, "comfort" is spelled "Spiced Apple Pie" (or what I refer to as apple pice cream) and "joy" is spelled "Mint Chocolate Cookie Crumble," and both go extremely well with chocolate syrup. I kid you not, these two tubs of ice cream are currently the highlight of my existence. If there's more to life than this, I'm not interested.

Nature is breathtaking, too, I guess. After a hellish two weeks that drained pretty much all of my will to live, Ernesto and I went camping in Oklahoma. This inferior blog gives a pretty decent recap of our adventure, though none of the pictures do a great job of capturing the number of alcohol swabs from our first aid kit Ernesto used to start our fire. Our outdoorsy incompetencies aside, the trip was a welcome reminder that the earth is a gem.

Things that are happenin'

Hey! I've been meaning to write about spring break because it was the best week I've had in years and I want all of you to know how unpathetic my life can be from time to time, but there are all of these pictures I'm too lazy to upload so you're just going to get a run-down of this week's events instead.

-      Soren is not dead yet! For those of you who haven't heard about the newest addition to the family, Ernesto and I have a plant now. Like.. a living, actual plant that is not made of plastic and depends on us to live. Sneer all you want, but I am 100% serious when I say that I consider it a major life accomplishment for Soren to have survived living with us for the past month.
        There have been a lot of ups and downs with him (mostly downs.. he looks like a mini weeping willow but he's supposed to look something like this ), and when Ernesto and I decided to leave him home alone during spring break, we were pretty sure the little guy wouldn't make it through the week without us. To our surprise, we came home to find Soren looking healthier than the day I brought him home! Is it a little concerning that he is better at not dying when Ernesto and I are hundreds of miles away from him? Only a lot. Further updates to follow.


-     In other news, this kid is going to grad school! Not sure if I should laugh or cry, but I've been doing plenty of both just to cover all the bases.

Q: What am I most excited about?

a) Spending the summer with education research
b) A whole new collection of school memes on Facebook
c) Impulse-purchasing SMU gear at Wal-Mart
d) No longer feeling like a dork for being subscribed to r/gradschool


A: llɐʍ ƃuıqɯılɔ ǝǝɹɟ ǝɥʇ s,ʇı ǝʌoqɐ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝuou

-       I am extremely pleased and incredibly excited to tell you that a few days ago,  I started a new Stephen King audiobook. It'd been MONTHS since my last one and everything in my life was starting to lose its meaning and if that sounds a little bit like I'm addicted to listening to Stevie-K fiction it's because I am absolutely addicted to listening to Stevie-K fiction. Not even trying to be cute.
        Despite my body's desperate need to fill up with yet another bizarre horror story set somewhere in Maine, I was hesitant about that story being Cujo. Every time I see Cujo on a half-priced paperbacks shelf or wherever, I assume that it's just the grown-up version of Bunnicula and I move on to some other SK book that seems like less of an Air Bud antithesis. This time, there were no other options on the shelf, and I got my weekly dose of Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover. It turns out that this story has just as many Red Sox references and typical Woe-Is-Me Writer characters as any other SK novel, so all systems are (Cu)GO and my world has officially been restored back to its proper balance.

-     While listening to the aforementioned audiobook, I was grating a bunch of zucchini (the world's most versatile vegetable) when I got caught up in the excitement of a scene and accidentally grated off part of my thumb. No worries, it's just a flesh wound.

(It's not actually a flesh wound, I've just always wanted to say that quote in the right context.)

(If I'm going to be very honest, I've actually said that quote many, many times before, I just never realized that it was from Monty Python until sometime in high school. Some of my friends really liked that movie and they said that quote a lot, and I assumed it was just a cool thing to say that was funny for reasons I didn't understand, so I'd say it, too. This is just the first time I'm saying the quote in the right context AND having actually seen Monty Python.)

(#Imthelamestpersoniknow)

-     Josh Ritter is going to be in Minneapolis on my birthday and every time I think about it I just want to shout at the stars for aligning in the most beautiful way when I am LITERALLY 1000 miles away. THE COMEDY OF DISTANCE THE TRAGEDY OF SEPARATION.