Monday, December 27, 2010

Long Car Rides with the Family....

I have accidentally embarked on a voyage with a group of mad people that call themselves my family. We have barely packed up our bags and left my lovely Aunt’s house in Spokane (where we stayed for the holidays!) and already our car ride has been chop full of good times and family fun. What with my parents bickering for half an hour about the location of the freeway, the nationality of the nearby gas station’s owner, and everything else under the sun, our drive thus far has been jolly! Our international student is texting her boyfriend (as always) in the next seat, and I am just sitting here, playing the role of the perfect (and talented and good-looking) daughter, as is my duty. It is a demanding job, but I suppose somebody has to do it....


We are currently whizzing along the snowy countryside, my mom unconscious as always in the front and my dad zigzagging across lanes (without signaling, I might add) like he is crowned King of the Highway. Unfortunately, he is actually not, but when I pointed this out to him ever-so-politely, he only grunted and started lecturing me (as he so loves to do) about how he is wise and old and bearded and can do whatever he so desires. That’s what he likes to think.... I, however, believe he is secretly practicing his impersonation of a raving drunk to fulfill his lost childhood dreams of becoming a stunt driver. I suppose he can do what he pleases, though, as long as he doesn’t accidentally drive us off a cliff with all his fun and games.


Anyway, my dad has just turned around and suggested that I drive for awhile. I have told him in my politest voice that what he asks is impossible, as I have been paralyzed from scarlet fever since youth, but he is very mean and unsympathetic and is just rolling his eyes at me in exasperation. Honestly, some people can be so rude. We still have a good four hours of driving ahead of us, though, so odds are he will get his way sooner or later...


That is all I have to say for now. Driving long distances with the family is just so exciting, that I hardly know how to contain myself. If something monumental happens, I will surely post something new.


Cheers,


Brianna

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Night Crowd

Today is one of those days where I feel like I've been eaten by a bear and then spit back up in a dazed and delirious sort of haze, with nothing but a headache and about a million teeth marks to show for it.

It's kind of gross. I am just sitting here at 5:03PM in a Starbucks (where else?), puzzling about why I am having my morning coffee in the dark, and also why it is already dark at 5:03PM, and why everyone sitting here looks so haggard and drained of life, and a lot of other totally relevant questions that I won't get into for the sake of avoiding a long(er) run-on sentence than the 6-line one I have unwittingly just stumbled upon. Anyway (back to what I was saying), I have accidentally slept through the entire day due to a gingerbread party gone mad, and I am now just emerging from my cave of festive, Christmas slumber to greet the day! Unfortunately, it has now dawned on me that the day is already over, and I am stuck out here at Starbucks in the gloomy grey evening with all the vampires and other dwellers of the night that I usually forget about in my upbeat mornings.

There is certainly a different vibe here from my usual 8:30AM crowd. Everyone is wearing black and looking particularly surly and upset... No one is talking... The music is all slow and moody... A couple of werewolves have transfigured in the corner and are howling at the moon... and here I am sitting in a half-dazed sort of manner wondering why it is nighttime and how I have gotten here and if I will be eaten by wolves when I try to walk back to my car... It is a different world than the one you encounter when you actually wake before nightfall.

Anyway, I am feeling a little bit out of place here without my black trench coat or haggard under-eye circles or desire to suck human blood, so I think I am going to end this blog post now and sneak off to my car before I am abducted by creatures of the night. Today (or... um.. tonight, actually...) has been an excellent reminder as to why I generally rise with the sun like the go-getter and cheery optimist that I am. The nighttime vibe here is a tad discouraging.

Good grief. I am going to dash on home now. If I never write again, it is probably because I have been eaten by bats.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Ohh no...

Well, we have truly done it.

This is the first year my mom and I have ever been entrusted to go to the Christmas tree farm by ourselves, and we have accidentally brought home a tree with severe scoliosis of the trunk. Apparently, we were not ready for the grave responsibility of tree-choosing... We have unwittingly selected one that shares a striking resemblance to the Hunch Back of Notre Dame -- hunched over in a withered sort of way that only someone who has spent their life stalking gypsies from a clock tower can be.

My dad just put it up last night, and my mom and I stood by as he hoisted the tree into place, very excited to prove ourselves as tree-picking champs. The tree was secured upright, the netting around it was cut and the branches pulled down, but as we stood back to admire our handiwork, suddenly the room became very uncomfortable, as we all shifted about uneasily....

The darn thing was practically sideways.

My dad turned silently to stare at me and my mom, his eyebrows raised so high that if he wasn't bald (hahahahaha... I joke), I'm sure they would have disappeared into his hair.

My mom and I grappled desperately for excuses:

"It didn't look sideways at the farm... Maybe our house is just slanted..."
"If you squint, it kind of looks like a sea snake!"
"We were just trying to be charitable. We bought the gimpy tree to voice our support of scoliosis patients everywhere!"
"Yeah... We thought it would be nice to show our concern for the arthritic of our nation..."

... Unfortunately, my dad was not reassured. He just stared at us, then back at the haggard, hunched over little tree, then back again at us, all the while furrowing his eyebrows in a disbelieving sort of way and opening and closing his mouth like a fish (who has also just seen a shockingly ugly christmas tree and doesn't know how to react). Finally, he seemed to get ahold of himself, and after a few minutes he walked off mumbling about how women should never be trusted to pick out decent trees or some nonsense like that...

In our gravest defense, I do think the tree looked a bit less sideways at the tree farm. Or perhaps it was just surrounded by even uglier trees, so when we brought it out to examine, we didn't notice.... Either way though, my mother and I have shamefully failed, and I can say with great certainty that we will NEVER be entrusted with such an important task again.

To make matters worse, my dad is out with our Christmas tree right now, power tool in hand, drilling holes into our sad and pathetic, little tree to try to make it look less bent... He is still mumbling (very rudely, I might add) about my and my mother's ignominious shortcomings with all things Christmas-tree related. I will sneak coal into his stocking this year, I swear. Anyway, if he thinks any number of new branches is going to hide the fact that our tree is a crippled hunchback, he is quite mistaken.

Deformed spine or not, our tree will stand proud, a monument for arthritic patients and sicklings everywhere.

Ho hum, it's really not that bad... Especially if you squint your eyes and tilt your head a bit.... Who says Christmas trees are supposed to be straight, anyway?


Just Another Awkward Story to Add to the Collection....

Hahahaha and also HAH.

I just had one of those really awkward and embarrassing moments today that awakened me (if by some strange means I had forgotten) to how nerdy and pathetic my life truly is.

Which is very nerdy AND pathetic.... Just to be clear.

Anyway, I was just out and about, innocently driving my car and acting like the totally normal person that I am when this whole ordeal took place... I can wholeheartedly assure you that I was neither disco dancing nor practicing the robot as I listened to my music alone, and I also wasn't trying to count the number of double chins I can make myself have (4!) in my rear view mirror. I am far too sophisticated and suave for shenanigans like that, so obviously, I was completely focused on my driving, not doing anything that could potentially embarrass me.

And that is why what happened next was completely uncalled for. As I pulled up to the stoplight, minding my own business (and definitely NOT flailing around a mad fool or pretending to be a robot with 4 chins), I casually glanced over to the car next to me...

And they were all staring. The whole lot of them. At ME.

And that is when I remembered that I am actually not suave OR sophisticated, and I was, as a matter of fact, acting like a robot..... a robot with 4 chins and a fervent passion for disco dancing. Is that so wrong?!? A girl should not have to worry about what she does in the privacy of her own car. I should be able to practice my Robot in peace, gosh darn it. But apparently the rest of the world doesn't see things that way.

Anyway, as soon as I noticed that my robot impression and mad dancing had an audience of about 6, I instantly stopped flailing and gripped my steering wheel and stared with all my might at the red light until it changed, trying to regain myself and pick up my shattered pieces of pride and dignity.

Sometimes I think I should really just stop walking into these embarrassing situations.... Unfortunately, my freakish nature is often too hard to control, and several minutes after the Red-Light Incident, I was back in my own little world, singing improvised show tunes to help pass the time...

It's moments like these that desperately make me wish I had tinted windows.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Sorry for Writing... I Couldn't Stop Myself

Hi.

I know I'm not supposed to be writing (because of my whole official leave of absence and all), but I've gotten tired of pretending to study and now need something else to do.

So here I am!

Anyway... Below I have listed 5 reasons why I should probably drop out of college.

1. I am sitting here blogging right now instead of working on my finals: the mark of someone who is destined to fail at just about EVERYTHING.

2. I have the attention span of a hamster.

3. Last time I checked, hamsters are not allowed to enroll in Universities.

4. Due to the fact that I am very talented and charming, I could probably make a generous living entering (and winning) beauty pageants instead of wasting my time getting an education.

5. I just had to fix the word "pageants" in number 4 with Spellcheck, because I didn't know how to spell it, an obvious sign that I am not intelligent enough for college.

----

Well, there you have it. In all honesty, I find it a bit unfair that my Professors expect so much from a human/hamster/LOSER hybrid like myself. I should be spending my time doing proper things like running in my exercise ball and eating sunflower seeds. It is very insensitive of them to ask otherwise.


Thursday, December 2, 2010

I'm Taking a Vacation.

Well, finals are drawing near, and with this horrific fact in light, I have decided to take an official leave of absence from the blogging world. I am indeed fighting a losing battle in the Society of all Things School-Related, so with this in mind, I am casting off my duties for the next few weeks, as I have other very painful and dull matters to attend to.

I plan to be like one of those pregnant women who takes an official leave from her office job to rear her young, only instead of birthing a child, I will spend the next few weeks mercilessly flogging my brain with a spiked whip, as I attempt to force information into my already jammed cranium. It is a sad little life that I live, but I suppose somebody has to do it. Anyway, with that said and done, I would also like to offer an official apology for my truly abysmal blogging habits these last few weeks. Of course I would like to spend all of my time writing to my dearest friends on the internet, but unfortunately, I have had very important matters to attend to. What with being a gold medal Olympian, an astronaut, and an affectionate owner of 23,000 dogs, I have found myself a tad on the busy side.

What I mean to say is that I'm feeling like a vegetarian who has inadvertently wandered into a slaughter house: very OVERWHELMED (and also a bit nauseous). Now don't ask me why a respectable vegetarian would be traipsing around in the food-processing district, or why the factory doesn't seem to have any security guards on the job, but I think that this realistic comparison applies directly to my life.

For I am a little vegetarian surrounded by skinned cow carcasses....

Only in this situation, I am a vegetarian who also likes to eat meat, and there actually aren't skinned cow carcasses, because that would be gross.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I will be back and writing again as soon as my tormented last few weeks of school have concluded, but for now, I am afraid I must bid you all farewell. I am off to the darkened caves of hopelessness and despondency to attack my studies...

Goodbye, my friends. Stay strong.
Remember to eat your vegetables and shower on a daily basis.
I hope that none of you have unexpectedly died before my return.

Cheers,
Brianna.