You look more than pretty underneath all the stars
D'you know what livejournal feels like these days? A ghost mall. Specifically, the ghost mall that I grew up near. Forget abandoned insane asylums or prisons and all that shit, the new creepy location of choice for future horror movies (beyond zombies!) should totally be ghost malls.
Tomorrow is the annual awards ceremony at my college where they give out the scholarships and academic prizes; I've mentioned it before. This year, Louise;s mother has to attend a wedding, so she asked if I could go and get a program, and presumably make sure they actually give the award out. I agreed, of course, because there's no way you can turn down an ask like that.
It's a nice drive back to my college, at any rate, so it shouldn't be too bad. I can stop on the way to leave flowers for her. My mother has decided to go with me, because I expect she thinks I am emotionally compromised, and also she cared for Louise as well, so we'll probably make a whole day of it. Part of me would rather be alone, but more of me realizes that's probably not a great idea, and I'll have a better time with company. It's a bit weird, because I can see this stretching forward in the future-- every year, going to the damn ceremony, then having dinner with Louise's parents afterwards at the same restaurant we always do. I don't really mind it. But it's getting a sense of ritual to it that I wonder if I'll feel the same way, five, ten, whatever years down the line.
Anyway. I'm being press-ganged into organizing a baby shower for another friend and I am super resentful about it, because it reminds me that I am both kind of a jerk-- (I don't even really like this friend, which is a depressing thing to say. We're holdovers from high school with very different lives, and every time I see her it feels like her life is going wonderfully and it's kind of painful. She's very nice but goddamn does she get on my nerves) --and also a pushover because I should just tell her no, I have no time to organize a brief event to celebrate the first time you're bringing life into the world. I have not managed to think of a way to say, "Seriously, don't you have any other friends who could do this for you?" that doesn't come off as seriously dickish.
I don't think she does have other friends willing to do it! Or they are better about getting out of it. When it comes down to it, I just have to weigh the two things against each other: my desire not to do it versus feeling like an asshole telling her I don't want to do it, and decide which will leave me with the least amount of stress.
I would probably not be this resentful about it except it feels like everyone I know and am related to is extremely fertile and/or nubile right now, whereas I am... not. It feels like it's being rubbed in my face, even though I know it isn't. Meanwhile, here I stand, staring down a milestone birthday in less than a month, and feeling like my life is going nowhere and I have nothing to offer anyone. Intellectually, I know it's not true; I have shit to be proud of, and people who love me, and that I love. This might just be the remnant of seasonal disorder, though; I am going through wildly penduluming spates of "I don't feel anything" to "YEERGH I FEEL WAY, WAY TOO MUCH" and it throws me off.
So! I did do something that I'm kinda proud of, though, in that I knocked another item off my bucket list. I've always wanted to hold a baby chick or duck. AND NOW I HAVE DONE SO. I realize this sounds ridiculous, but whatever. There's a local farm in the area that rents pairs of baby chicks (and ducks!) in April and June, where you get to keep them for a week when they're at their peak adorable fluffiness and then bring them back so they can grow up into, you know, actual chickens and ducks.
It's a helluva racket when you think about it; they charge thirty bucks for the whole thing, and I imagine their overhead doesn't cost more than-- like, ten dollars, tops, and probably more like five. (They provide you with a large cardboard box, a week of feed, a week of pine shavings for bedding, food/water containers, and the two chicks. You have to provide your own desk lamp to keep them warm.) And then they get the chickens back! And the place is also a winery, so you factor in the number of frazzled parents drinking on both the pick up and drop off dates, and I imagine they're making some decent bank on the whole thing.
So, I did the rental program ostensibly as an indulgent auntie excuse for my nephew and niece, but let's be real, it was for me. I got to cuddle and care for two little fluffballs for a week, which was fun, but also not my smartest move because I STARTED TO LOVE THEM AND GOT ALL ATTACHED. I am a fool. I took so many pictures though. You can see some of them in a tumblr post here.
The story has a bit of a brutal ending though; I had entertained fond notions of somehow... not bringing them back, or paying off the dude on the downlow to let me keep them, and had done all this research on backyard chickens, before reluctantly concluding my HOA would probably string me up. And as it turned out, they were meat poultry birds (hence why they grow so fast, even inside a week) and destined for the market place a little over two months from now.
...GUYS, I WAS DEVASTATED.
But I gave them a pretty good week, and bought them a shit ton of mealworms, so... hopefully we both enriched each other's lives in our short but beautiful time together.
So! Life keeps going on.
Tomorrow is the annual awards ceremony at my college where they give out the scholarships and academic prizes; I've mentioned it before. This year, Louise;s mother has to attend a wedding, so she asked if I could go and get a program, and presumably make sure they actually give the award out. I agreed, of course, because there's no way you can turn down an ask like that.
It's a nice drive back to my college, at any rate, so it shouldn't be too bad. I can stop on the way to leave flowers for her. My mother has decided to go with me, because I expect she thinks I am emotionally compromised, and also she cared for Louise as well, so we'll probably make a whole day of it. Part of me would rather be alone, but more of me realizes that's probably not a great idea, and I'll have a better time with company. It's a bit weird, because I can see this stretching forward in the future-- every year, going to the damn ceremony, then having dinner with Louise's parents afterwards at the same restaurant we always do. I don't really mind it. But it's getting a sense of ritual to it that I wonder if I'll feel the same way, five, ten, whatever years down the line.
Anyway. I'm being press-ganged into organizing a baby shower for another friend and I am super resentful about it, because it reminds me that I am both kind of a jerk-- (I don't even really like this friend, which is a depressing thing to say. We're holdovers from high school with very different lives, and every time I see her it feels like her life is going wonderfully and it's kind of painful. She's very nice but goddamn does she get on my nerves) --and also a pushover because I should just tell her no, I have no time to organize a brief event to celebrate the first time you're bringing life into the world. I have not managed to think of a way to say, "Seriously, don't you have any other friends who could do this for you?" that doesn't come off as seriously dickish.
I don't think she does have other friends willing to do it! Or they are better about getting out of it. When it comes down to it, I just have to weigh the two things against each other: my desire not to do it versus feeling like an asshole telling her I don't want to do it, and decide which will leave me with the least amount of stress.
I would probably not be this resentful about it except it feels like everyone I know and am related to is extremely fertile and/or nubile right now, whereas I am... not. It feels like it's being rubbed in my face, even though I know it isn't. Meanwhile, here I stand, staring down a milestone birthday in less than a month, and feeling like my life is going nowhere and I have nothing to offer anyone. Intellectually, I know it's not true; I have shit to be proud of, and people who love me, and that I love. This might just be the remnant of seasonal disorder, though; I am going through wildly penduluming spates of "I don't feel anything" to "YEERGH I FEEL WAY, WAY TOO MUCH" and it throws me off.
So! I did do something that I'm kinda proud of, though, in that I knocked another item off my bucket list. I've always wanted to hold a baby chick or duck. AND NOW I HAVE DONE SO. I realize this sounds ridiculous, but whatever. There's a local farm in the area that rents pairs of baby chicks (and ducks!) in April and June, where you get to keep them for a week when they're at their peak adorable fluffiness and then bring them back so they can grow up into, you know, actual chickens and ducks.
It's a helluva racket when you think about it; they charge thirty bucks for the whole thing, and I imagine their overhead doesn't cost more than-- like, ten dollars, tops, and probably more like five. (They provide you with a large cardboard box, a week of feed, a week of pine shavings for bedding, food/water containers, and the two chicks. You have to provide your own desk lamp to keep them warm.) And then they get the chickens back! And the place is also a winery, so you factor in the number of frazzled parents drinking on both the pick up and drop off dates, and I imagine they're making some decent bank on the whole thing.
So, I did the rental program ostensibly as an indulgent auntie excuse for my nephew and niece, but let's be real, it was for me. I got to cuddle and care for two little fluffballs for a week, which was fun, but also not my smartest move because I STARTED TO LOVE THEM AND GOT ALL ATTACHED. I am a fool. I took so many pictures though. You can see some of them in a tumblr post here.
The story has a bit of a brutal ending though; I had entertained fond notions of somehow... not bringing them back, or paying off the dude on the downlow to let me keep them, and had done all this research on backyard chickens, before reluctantly concluding my HOA would probably string me up. And as it turned out, they were meat poultry birds (hence why they grow so fast, even inside a week) and destined for the market place a little over two months from now.
...GUYS, I WAS DEVASTATED.
But I gave them a pretty good week, and bought them a shit ton of mealworms, so... hopefully we both enriched each other's lives in our short but beautiful time together.
So! Life keeps going on.