You are my sunshine

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.

Actually, I woke up to the stench of rotting food, and that's never a good thing. I woke up and realized that the pots and pans and all the dishes from the past month hadn't just magically washed themselves during the night. And my kitchen was far from spic and span.

My test is LOOMING on the horizon and I couldn't study, because I had to clean or go crazy just looking at my pigsty of an apartment. So I cleaned and washed and disinfected and silently screamed obscenities inside my head. Freaking dirty cup. Freaking bed that can't just stay made. Freaking missing socks. Freaking pile of laundry - why can't clothes just stay stain-free? Freaking rice that had to be wet and go get smashed into my carpet.

I never said my obscenities made sense.

The Boy came over to find me furiously scrubbing away, muttering like a crazy lady with a dark and stormy raincloud hanging over me, and staged an intervention. Slowly he made me back away from the 409, and leave the paper towels where they were. He sat me down, packed up my things, and we left my apartment. We headed to the corner Starbucks, and I got a Java Chip Frappuccino and we sat outside, studying and basking in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

And after a couple of minutes in that fabulous fall afternoon, I felt so much much better. I was smiling and singing and humming along (badly) to the coffeehouse's Frank Sinatra soundtrack.

Clearly, I had cabin fever, and I just needed to get OUT. I needed some Vitamin D and I needed to change out the pajamas I'd been wearing for forty-eight hours straight. I needed to change up my surroundings - because after three straight days of staring at the same genetic diseases, I was bound to snap.

I also clearly need a maid.

Hit me baby one more time

Holy cow, it's Britney, bitch! She's BACK!!! And she looks absolutely amazing.

Silver lining

I have buyer's remorse. Or buyer's bargaining. I'm not quite sure what the terminology is.

I do know I should be studying, or making my PBL presentation, or memorizing seemingly endless lists of drugs, but instead I'm shopping online. Shopping! Online! Where I don't even know if things will fit! And if there's one thing I know about my body, it's this: it's weird and not very proportional, and things look funny on it, so I gotta try things on first.

But I'm still shopping. At new websites where I have never bought anything from before. And now, I'm so taken with this coat. And the big over-sized buttons. And the cute collar.

I'm so enamored that even though I know I don't have any money in my bank account and thus, can't buy it - I keep checking my wish-list every two hours to make sure my size doesn't sell out. And then when my size does inevitably sell out, because remember, the coat and its vintage over-sized buttons and cute collar, is ridiculously cute, what do I do? I freak out, and I buy it.

Yes. I bought it. A size too large, but I still bought it. Because it is still cute. The way I see it, now I can wear bulky sweaters underneath it, right?

Oy, I should be studying.

Trainwreck

I will readily admit that during the days leading up to a big unit exam, I tend to dress a little bit more sloppily. I've said it once, and I'll say it again - it is far more important to me to get an extra fifteen minutes of sleep, than it is for me to curl my hair. Granted, that said, I do still brush my hair and take showers and am generally somewhat presentable.

Besides that, there are mirrors in my elevators for me to do a final quick once-over before I step out into the world.

So I'm coming down the elevator, on my way to class, and it stops once at Floor 34. A pretty and stylish young Asian woman gets on. She's wearing stilettos, a nice cashmere wrap, and a pound and a half of foundation on her face, but is otherwise unremarkable. Until she looks me over in the elevator and remarks:

"Well, aren't you just a hundred different fashion tragedies today?"

I think I stuttered or sputtered or said something incoherent, because I was so taken aback and also very instantly self-conscious.

The doors opened up to the lobby, and she flounced out. And I took the time to re-examine myself in the mirror.

Yes, I was wearing white socks with my ballet flats, but I was on my way to the library, and it is essentially the frozen tundra there. True, I wasn't wearing any makeup, the part in my hair was a little haphazard, and I might subscribe to the comfort over beauty way of thinking, but I was certainly not so terrible that Tim Gunn needed to stage an intervention right then and there.

So anyways. The point of all this is that I'm a little speechless that people can be so horrible.

A friend who shall remain unnamed (because he is actually a wonderful person, and people would be quite taken aback to know that he is capable of such vitriol) said that I should have replied, "Well, you're only one tragedy, and that's your mom's and dad's."

Zing!

My favorite things

Truth: I love the Sound of Music. I think I drove my parents insane with all my pretending to twirl around on a mountain (read: stairs; also read: unsafe) as I sang songs about "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string..."

Yup, those were my favorite things, along with Disney cartoons and Mr. Rodgers, and pink ponies. But as I've gotten older, I've realized, who needs that when you can have:

Deep dish pizza! (I love love love stuffed spinach. Seriously, it's so delicious, and I like to pretend it's not so bad for you since it's full of vegetables. Okay, kinda not really full of vegetables, but the key word here is pretend.)

Popcorn!

Jelly beans (preferably Jelly Belly since I like to mix them and make up sometimes delicious, sometimes disgusting, combinations).

Ciao Bella Green Tea with White Chocolate Chips (seriously, you have to try it; it is fantastic!)


Board games! Taboo! Jenga! Mafia! Whoonu!


Tiaras and clip-on plastic earrings, birthday ribbons, and pink and white streamers! (It's even better when the decorations probably constitute a fire hazard of some sort.)


Lots of cake! (If you look closely in the second picture, you'll notice that one of the candles fell over from the sheer amazingness that was Neil Biswas' operatic birthday song, but thankfully, nothing caught fire.)

And of course, my most favorite friends. :)

My list of favorite things totally beats Rodgers and Hammerstein's. Eat your heart out, Julie Andrews.

Thanks for a fantastic surprise birthday party that included ALL of my favorites. Twenty-four wouldn't be the same without all of you in it. Thanks for the emails, the e-cards, the voicemails, the texts, the poems, everything. I'm touched that so many of you remembered.


According to the boyfriend, I am now officially old.

...

I prefer to use the word "mature."

**Oh yes, I have a blue Spongebob Squarepants bandaid on my face. I'm just that cool, okay?

Get your head in the game

Apparently I'm not the only one who absolutely loves Mariokart. (I mean, you know it's bad when you dream about avoiding blue shells and giant goombas, and you can hum along better to the Mariokart music than you can to the most recent Britney Spears' single.)


Look at it! It is absolutely amazing!! The details! The mushrooms and bananas! The chained Clompers! Seriously, click on the picture so you can see everything. There's Luigi and Yoshi and Toad freaking out about something. Bowser and Donky Kong were probably too large to fit on the cake...but it doesn't matter! Because they included my favorite Rainbow Road! And the impossible to avoid penguins and snowmen on the snowy mountain tracks!!

Sorry, I'm totally geeking out right now.

But just one last thing? I totally love that Mario is standing on a question box so that he can kiss the princess. Seriously, too cute.

(For more pictures and different angles, visit CakeWrecks to see the original post.)

Learn you inside out

After a whole unit of being blissfully untainted and unaware, today it hit me like a ton of bricks. The poo finally hit the fan. The floor fell out from under me. You get the picture.

By it, I mean stress.

I was sitting there in class listening to my two professors talk and talk and talk about pharmacokinetics and drug dosing and clearance and steady state and infusion loads and half-lives and renal insufficiency and drug dosing in those situations and so on and so forth, and I realized, I was just sitting there. Not taking notes. Not understanding. Just sitting there, letting it all wash over me.

I was in shock. Because I couldn't believe that they were speaking English. For all that I was comprehending, they could have been speaking a different language. It was like being in third period French all over again. But worse, because there was math and calculus derivations thrown in too, and I couldn't fake my way out of this with some poor man's Franglais.

Needless to say, I'm a little stressed.

I actually came home and wanted to cry. Because the task ahead just seems so daunting.

But I'm hopped up on three Sunkists. And it's not even midnight yet. So I have faith that I'll figure it out and somehow start understanding all these equations before morning breaks.

No sleep for the weary. Or the worried, apparently.