No thoughts just yet.

I'm about to go into work. I was a little hesitant about telling Kyle that I would cover for him, but yesterday I went into Borders to pick up my final paycheck and I realized that what I made in two 20+ hour weeks at Borders I made in one weekend serving at my new job and it was definitely less than 20 hours. So thanks Kyle for giving me your shift tonight.

It's been raining all day. It started out nice and then while I was in class it started to pour and I was completely unprepared and ended up getting soaked through for the rest of the morning. Poor planning on my part, Lace would have been so disappointed. The one great thing about this rain is that the leaves are starting to come out. The Park has a real musty and mossy look from my apartment in the rain, it reminds me of a deciduous version of what springtime on The Mountain is like. If only the stupid apartment building in the middle of my window would disappear.

More after work.

Okay, back from work. I'm about to go run down on the treadmill for a little while, even though tomorrow is a BOMF morning. Work was kind of lame. Not end of world lame and really if it hadn't been for the large party that wanted individual checks, the night would have been perfectly fine. I'm just going to work out the frustration so I can get to work on some homework. I have about three days worth of back-work that I need to get out of the way before I can start final projects. If I can have everything finished and out of the way by Friday before I go to work then I will be in really good shape.

I'm not going to write anymore after I run, but I really wish I had some good parting words for you. So instead you guys should come up with some parting words for me and leave a comment or send me a message. Cliches are always fun.

Sleepy, cranky, and something in between.

Have you ever been so exhausted and drained to the point where you can't keep your eyes open, but once you lay down and actually want to go to sleep you find that you can't? Because that's me right now. I just want to get a couple of hours of sleep so that I can wake up early and finish some work and get a run in before class. I just need to get a little bit of sleep first and it's not happening. I've turned everything off, tired reading, classical music, opening my window, closing my window, and drinking water. Nothing is working and if I knew I could get eight hours in I would go for the codeine, but since I only get four at the most I have to work through this on my own. I need to reread The Art of War so that I can get control over my mind and bend my body to my will while at the same time learning how to conquer Mongolia.

Oh sleep! Where art thou? 

When I was young and naive I would have said arson, but now I say voodoo! - Louise

I'm writing in my living room right now. I have the lights off, the window is open wide, and there is a warm breezing coming in. It feels amazing. It's so quiet and relaxing just sitting here going over the day and getting ready for tomorrow. That is until some asshole pulls up to the building with their windows down and the music at full volume.


Jewish Girl In Wasps Clothing has a new blog called Heaven Health Me! and it's awesome, especially for someone who is struggling with changing her lifestyle and becoming healthier. And while I've been able to lose ten pounds relatively easy, I still need motivation and to know that there are other women out there trying to do the same thing. She's started out by doing a week of no sugar and documenting everything that she eats and what she does for exercise. She's done well so far with only a few cheats, but she doesn't seem to exercise a lot or at least not tell us about it. That's the one thing I have to push myself to accomplish. I've started running. I'm trying to run everyday because I've found when I tell myself I'll only run a certain number of day and end up procrastinating and putting it off. If I force myself to run everyday I won't be able to put it off until tomorrow. Today I did a little less than 2.5 miles according to mapmyrun.com. That's definitely the longest I've run without stopping, EVER. I'm going to try and get something in before class tomorrow morning otherwise I have to run on the treadmill before work. Damn me for telling Kyle I would take his shift. Actually I don't mind covering for him. Kyle's great and since I don't do anything on Tuesday's I'm happy to make some money. Just no coupons tomorrow, please.

JGIWC also mentioned in her blog that Passover is coming up. I miss Passover. I'm not an incredibly religious person. I find the history and the culture of religion to be more interesting than religion itself, but I always had a connection with the Easter season. Not a big fan of Christmas, but I always liked Easter and for more than just the awesome baskets that Lance makes. Seriously the guy is pro at putting together an Easter basket. Anyways Easter season always began for me at Passover when the church community would preform a Sedar meal. It was always an intense process with a lot of steps that began to become second nature as I got older. Over time the meal became more complex as the community grew larger to the point where people tried their hand at poor Hebrew and reciting prayers from memory. The older I got the more I understood the importance of each step in the meal its significance. I was never a huge fan of Palm Sunday other than the fun palms and the fact that it marked the beginning of Holy Week. The church also started to get decorated for Easter during Palm Sunday, however by Holy Thursday and Good Friday everything would be taken out and covered up. I always liked being an altar server during Holy Thursday and Good Friday because it made mass more interactive during the longer hour. Also by Friday the Passion is repeated a third and much longer time and by then even I found it to be a little exhausting. The close of Thursday and Friday were also really intense. Everyone leaves in silence and in the dark. The sticky sweet incense lingers in everyones's clothes and hair you're not allowed to make a sound until after you reach your car. Good Friday also marks the last Friday that I had to eat fish to dinner. I didn't go to Easter Vigil until I was in eight or ninth grade. Vigil is a three hour mass late on Saturday night. It's about reawakening in the Church and new members are baptized and confirmed. The church has started to fill back up with candles and flowers and by the time mass is over it's Easter Sunday. Sunday everything is in bloom. Candles and Easter lilies are everywhere and people are dressed in color. The statues and pictures are uncovered and everything seems to have life again. Easter is the spring bloom after a long Lenten season. After Easter comes Pentecost which deals with the aftermath of Jesus ascending into Heaven and how the Church developed afterwards, but you don't get a basket for that.

This weekend minus just about everything that I've really done.

I need to wake up, right now! I went over to a friend's house last night after work and I stayed out way too late. I got home a little after 2am and just crashed the minute I sat down. I even woke up in the same position that I remember falling asleep in. I woke up around 7am because there were squirrels outside my window making their weird noises on the ledge. I forgot about the screen and thought that they could get in so I crawled under the blanket in fear of the squirrels and ended up falling back asleep until a little while ago. I should have just gotten up, because now my body is all messed up. I do not mind hanging out late with my friends. We all have different schedules so its usually only late at night that we can see each other. I think last night I just made the mistake of going out in my pajamas and ended up falling asleep on his couch a couple of times. I really did enjoy Love and Other Drugs though. It was a lot different than I thought it was going to be and I very much enjoyed a naked Jake Gyllenhaal I just should have had some caffein instead of water. Next time we can watch movies at my apartment and you can just sleep on the futon when you get tired and I can just go to bed. 

So now I'm trying decide if I can get away without having to redo the makeup on my face. One of my friends at work said something to me about how I never where makeup and so I've been practicing with some different stuff to see what I like and I've come to two conclusions: I desperately need to get contacts and I need to buy some new makeup. I just need to make a little more money. I have to pick up my check up from my old job tomorrow night and after that I should have rent for the month and I can start putting together my summer shopping fund. Yay! I may get My Hebrew Friend to go to the outlets with me and help me shop. He's not gay or a woman but he has a good eye for fashion and unlike my lady friends he won't try and sabotage me. That's the one thing I hate about women, they always seem to be in competition with each other even when there's no reason to be. I mean if you really want him then take him. There are a billion other guys in the world and I'm in no hurry to find anyone permanent anyways. Besides if I'm really serious about finding someone then I need to start listening to the things I tell other people who are serious about looking for a significant other. I need to find someone who like books, movies, exercise, being outside, sports, boats, will travel to warm and cold places and will let me give our children hardcore Old Testament middle names, which definitely means I need to get out of Philadelphia or hope that Mark Smith has a hot son. 

In May I'm going to Rio (don't ask) and I'll be getting fitted for contacts and hopefully at the rate I'm going I will be in the 130s, so I am pretty jazzed for the summer.

"I love haikus you should too." - TC

We're doing poetry in Creative Writing and I can definitely say that it is not my strongest genre, but I had a lot of fun putting together different types of poetry into small collections. I did a whole set of haikus on accidents that people make like spilling milk and breaking a window with a baseball. My friend has been doing a lot of flash fiction lately and I dabbled with that a little bit to make a collection about working at Borders. My teacher thought that that the whole topic was funny and impressed that I could come up with that much about working at a bookstore. My last piece that I submitted was a long poem with each stanza about a different guy. I've reworked it a little since its original submission. Somethings have been taken out and added in, but it still has a ways to go before it's ready for my final portfolio.

The Boys

I got the letter in the mail.

It was a surprise, something out of the blue.

My friends told me to answer it.

I didn’t want to because of her,

But I did it anyways.

I always loved your frizzy brown curls.

I called them your Jew curls

You said they were from the mystery genes that came from the Dark Continent.

I didn’t work, I was trapped.

I can’t stay on the farm.

He’s playing guitar by the gazebo.

No one interrupts him and a crowd gathers.

I stop to listen, he pulls me over.

Now it’s just him and me.

His long curly blonde hair tickles my cheek.

I bring him back and Merrie questions him.

One thing leads to another and we’re in bed, all three of us.

Laughing, whispering, watching the tiny television.

The phone rings and he answers.

We look on patiently, studying the emotions in his face.

He is gone and we are back to watching Roseanne.

It’s physics he says, no more simple than that.

I’m too distracted by the color of his ginger hair to listen.

The smell of Irish Spring lingers on his pale skin and I forget where I am.

I reach my hand out to brush the closely cut ginger bristles.

We stop.

Nothing is moving, I can’t even breathe.

I turn my head and Matt is there.

I take a step back and then I am gone.

We walk along the grounds, even in the rain.

After games we take hits and munch on left over snacks.

On nights when it is cold we scream at the TV screen,

Our favorite basketball teams running up and down the courts in front of us.

His wavy black hair bounces as he shakes his head and I smooth it away from his eyes.

I take his calls at all hours of the night until one night they stop.

I for a minute and then delete his number.

I tell my mom he’s Jewish, all the way from Israel.

You better not let anything serious happen with him she says,

I imagine the thin line of her mouth on other side of the phone.

We’re watching Hank and talking about writing.

It’s all we do now

My best friend,

My peer review.

No more late nights and sneaky mornings.

His dark beard against my face scratches my skin.

We must have fallen asleep while reading again.

I’ll call you tomorrow.

When I look out my window I see my friend's apartment building.

Soooo....I wasn't going to write and then I was going to write and then I wasn't and then the Captain said to Alfonso, "Alfonso tell me a story so Alfonso began: "It was a dark and stormy night and the Captain said to Alfonso, 'Alfonso tell me a story,' so Alfonso began," you get the point. So I decided just to write. I also have a boatload of energy because I'm eating way too late (I usually like to have my last big meal before 8pm but I got distracted) and I also took some old Robitussin that I found on top of my fridge and I'm not sure it its the AWAKE kind or the kind that makes you drowsy so I'm now trying to wear myself down and channel some of the energy.

Today started out bad and got exponentially worse in a very short time and other than a nice phone chat with Yonni (he passed his Praxis! Virtual high five bro!) and some potentially good news from my school boss, it wasn't until 5pm that things started to turn around. But hey we all have those days, hopefully yours don't include getting a boot on your car or locking your keys and your school books inside the car and then having to haul yourself across town to find keys to get yourself into your apartment and then into your locked car. Mine did! But thanks to Kat, Anna, and John who let me vent extensively to them, and to my advisor who gave me the number to AAA and didn't mind that I spent the entire class talking about registration instead of reading, and to Chris who was totally adorable to me for some reason. Boy you are going to be such a hottie in two years, it's a shame you're only nineteen now. And really once I got back into my apartment and chatted with my dad I really calmed down and didn't care about the day. In fact after I got de-booted, I went to Old Navy and picked up another work shirt (thank you small fat kids) and took a really long walk around Lower Merion. Thank god I walked because with this cold I came home with a giant trail of snot running down my face because I didn't have any tissues and I didn't want to wipe my nose on the sleeve of my good fleece. Gross, but I really like my clothes. My mom really pulled me through the day very unexpectedly when she sent me a text telling me to read the biography for Cathy Lamb on Amazon. Her books look lame and kind of like the stuff Samantha is into, but her bio is great. I swear I'm the East Coast version of this woman  minus twenty years. I've also become the Iron Chef of leftovers. Tonight it was just chicken, spinach, a leftover tomato, and leftover pasta. Totally tasty, but as I now look at the cooked spinach I am reminded of a friend who won't eat spinach because of a bad experience he had with it and the thought is making me vomit a little inside my mouth. Yuck.

OOOOoooo! New song of the day! I know I'm bad, but I swear I better about other things like boys and shoes, but maybe not majors since I did change that. But anyways here it is: The Naked and Famous - Young Blood.

I like Ike: The Canadian Orphan.

What a day or at least what a day to be on it! Or well actually what a day to check what time I have to register: 8am tomorrow morning. Thank God I looked because I was thinking that I was supposed to register sometime next week. I think this is going to be the second time that I will have been able register on time and I actually got an amazing registration time. Only priority is ahead of me so all of my classes are still open. In fact the biggest decision I've had to make is whether or not to take four or five English classes next semester. If I take four I can go after a Religious Studies minor, but if I take five, well then I'm taking five English courses. So I don't really know, but I have to reserve my place in at least four classes tomorrow morning.

Is that what five courses looks like?

I put my mirror on today. Yay! No more extensive head turning for Sidney. For those of you who don't know (my parents) I broke the driver's side mirror off of the side of my car a few weeks ago and have finally been able to put a new one back on. I'm a poor college student who can't afford to send her car to get fixed in a garage so I ordered a cheap mirror off of eBay and put it on myself. Unfortunately what was supposed to have been a ten minute job turned into an hour and a half ordeal that required my Uncle Pete to help me drill out a couple of rusted and stripped screws and take a hack saw to the old mirror. Is was quite the task, but I now know how to take inside panel off of my door, do some basic rewiring and how to replace a side view mirror. Screw college, I should just become an over priced mechanic.

On the ride home from Norristown while I was enjoying my new mirror I heard the new song from A Silent Film Driven By Their Beating Hearts. I am in love with this song. It's even better than their last single You Will Leave a Mark and it's on the radio a lot so I will soon be sick of it, but I am enjoying every minute of it until I am. MGMT is also making a radio comeback. Yay! I've been hearing Kids and Time to Pretend a lot lately and it's giving me freshman year throwbacks when Dan, Matt and I would watch youtube videos and pick the best music video. I always picked Kids and they always let me win! Though I think it that that had more to do with Dan wanting to get in my pants and Matt no wanting Dan to win. Either way. And if you haven't heard Arcade Fire's We Used to Wait you HAVE TO CHECK IT OUT. It is the greatest song of the season, I mean it.