Saturday, March 24, 2007

warm gooshy thoughts

About a week ago at work, I walked across the street for lunch to the grocery store because I had a hankering for macaroni and cheese and I know they have a really tasty frozen mac and cheese there. I know, I know - I'm so gourmet. Anyway, they also had there huge bars of chocolate - huge bars of "Regal European Chocolate" on sale for only a dollar! How could any self respecting pregnant lady resist?

Anyway, I went back to work, ate my mac and cheese and opened the chocolate. It was perhaps the worst chocolate I have ever tasted. This really is saying something because I am definitely not a chocolate snob. I love me a Hershey bar - I eat Safeway brand peanut butter cups by the bag full ... so while I do love the rich, extra dark, uber gourmet chocolate, I am not especially picky. This chocolate was just ... really bad.

So anyway, Brandon and my best friend Mia was visiting, and I heard the story of what happened from her. I sent Brandon a text telling him that I had just had some of the worst chocolate ever, and that I was going to bring it home so the two of them could back me up on how bad it is (For the record - Mia agreed with me, I don't think Brandon ever tried it). Brandon paused the video game he and Mia were playing and told her that they had to take a break because they needed to get me something.

So I come home to a bag of My very favoritest chocolate ever (see - I told you I wasn't a chocolate snob!)!, all because my husband loves me! The best part about this chocolate is that you can only get it around Easter, so I don't get over exposed to it and it's always special.

Most of the bag ended up in the freezer, and today - after a half day of throwing up (Thursday) and two days of eating bland blandness (because I still felt really queasy up through dinner last night), I decided to treat myself to one of the eggs. And now I have warm gooshy "I love my sweet sweet husband" thoughts running through my head.

And with that I go to sleep (because as much as I love him, I'm not waiting up for him tonight. It's Saturday night - he's a waiter - he'll be home 'round 3ish - if I'm lucky).

(randomly - while trying to find a link to those great butterfinger eggs, I discovered this. Now I want to try that too! Looks fantastic!)

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

good morning

My dreams rarely have any bearing on reality and since becoming pregnant that tenuous grasp has completely broken. My dreams no longer have any bearing on the reality that they themselves create. I had a dream awhile ago - the craziest so far - that I had determined not to share here - probably out of embarrassment. I told my sister about it when she came up last week and she immediately told me I should blog that. Whether it's because she wanted to get me back into blogging or because the dream is really as hysterical as I think (and not as embarrassing as I think), here you go!

The dream begins with me in high school, doing high schooly things. I have a huge crush on a guy in the marching band so I ask him out on a date. His response is that instead of going out, how about we get engaged? For some reason, this seems like a brilliant idea to me. Suddenly the dream shifts and I am myself currently. I'm not pregnant, but I am decidedly married to Brandon and very much out of high school. The fiancee has morphed from generic guy in a high school marching band into my female second cousin - B.

This is a conundrum. I do not want to marry my cousin for many reasons. Chief among them is the fact that I am already married to a man I am desperately in love with. Let's not forget the fact that I am not into marrying cousins and the fact that I'm straight.

Everybody's reaction to B. and my engagement is very strange. Brandon is not upset at all - he just wants me to fix it. My family has no problem with my impending bigamy, incest, or discomfort, they just want me to be happy. For my part, I'm just trying to find a way to get out of the engagement without hurting B. The main problem lies in the fact that I love B. because she's my cousin, and I don't want this failed relationship to break our family apart.

Unfortunately I woke up before I could solve the problem because now I'm interested to see how it would have turned out.

...

After all that typing about and thinking about Lacan earlier, I find it harder and harder to return to my paper on disaster preparedness for libraries. Back in college my friends and I used to frequent this adorable tea room in Burlington, VT and we'd act all beatnik and discuss things like Foucault and Lacan and Derrida and pretend we were all sophisticated (or sometimes we'd play zombies [Dead Zombie!] or Chez Geek [justifiable homicide!] and know that we aren't sophisticated at all). I had a friend write a 50 page paper on the Lacanian imagery in the Lord of the Rings movies. That was fun. It's hard to go from thinking about super heady stuff to writing a paper on exactly why a library should have a plan in place for when disaster strikes. How weird is that? The work that has tons of practical applications vs the theoretical work that has little to no bearing on my world right now and which am I interested in? The one that is least helpful to my world right now.

...

We forgot to reset our TV clock for Daylight Savings time, so I haven't seen Lost yet. It will be up at ABC.com tonight, but I'm impatient! I want to know why Lock is in a wheelchair now! But don't tell me if you know ... I'll watch it after class ...

Strange and Wonderful

Do you ever read something so strange and wonderful that you have to share it with the world? I have huge papers to write so of course I am going through back posts of some of my favorite bloggers. I just read Mimi Smartypants revelation:

As I got off the train later some guy was handing out menus for some new Mexican restaurant. I took one because I love reading menus. Then it was like angels were singing and the heavens opened up and the Hand of God came down and started rubbing me in all my happiest private parts, because I realized that the entire Mexican restaurant menu, in order, could be sung to the tune of "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey! NO, SERIOUSLY. IT IS QUITE EERIE. It is like that Emily Dickinson/Gilligan's Island/Yellow Rose of Texas thing. For instance, take that "streetlight people, living just to find emotion" line and substitute "chicken flautas, beef and cheese chimichanga" and you will have just a tiny taste of the magic that I found.

I had to go find Don't Stop Believing on YouTube so I could get a proper idea of what she was saying, and it was brilliant! I now have Mexican food songs stuck in my head ... which reminds me: my husband made Mole (or is it molé?) a few days ago and I could be eating it right now (That boy makes the best mole ... ), so I am going to go take a break while I get myself some.

...

I have recently realized that laconic means (basically) terse. I had always assumed that people were referring to something as being reminiscent of Jacques Lacan's philosophies. I remember spending ages in multiple classes (both Critical Theory and Compromising Positions) in college discussing Lacanian Imagery, and I assumed that laconic was just people misspelling his name and misinterpreting his theory (because it isn't often that you can refer to something as both terse and as having a complex relationship between gender-related imagery and vocalization(1)). I realized my mistake just now when I was researching disaster preparedness plans for libraries and somehow got to reading a page where the raven from Poe's "The Raven" was described as laconic. Obviously the raven has not been silenced, and as I recall it is heavily implied that the raven is male (although I remember nothing specific and I definitely remember no phallic objects connecting themselves to "him"), but the word seeemed even more out of context than usual ... and it was being used by an author I tend to respect, so I looked it up and Voila! Instant vocabulary lesson. How had I missed this one?

1) Yes, I know that is the worst ever explanation of Lacanian Imagery ever. You try explaining it in half a sentence! The basics: phallic imagery, vaginal imagery, woman being silenced (and vaginal imagery implying that someone cannot speak for themselves), etc.

...

I have a doctor's appointment to go to. Have a fantastic day! And look: somewhat regular updates and LABELS! I'm workin' it!