post 400: not as cool as i'd like it to be

today i feel: coffeed
today i'm hearing: da putzing about the house
today i'm thinking: sometimes illegalities are a good thing

This is interesting to me. I've had this blog since...eighth grade? Right? And this is just now my four-hundredth post. And here I was thinking that I write in here a LOT. Life is funny.

I'm back in Normal for the week. Good good. Life's been relatively uneventful. Relatively. Had a bit of a freak-out last night after discovering that I was deleriously frustrated in more ways than one, but I hit up JPalm for some 'good times' and all is now right with the world. I'm really not dependent on substances. I promise. It's just that, sometimes, you really need a goddamned drink.

But I'll get to that later.

How I'm Spending My Spring Vacation
by Kiri; Mr T's fourth grade class
(I never steal from Jackson Publick ever)

Spring break has been pretty okay so far. Ups and downs, mostly. I got to leave Carbondale about an hour earlier than I thought I would because Clarky's mum left work about four hours before she was supposed to. Funny how that works, isn't it? We got dinner. A buffet was involved. You know how that goes. So Friday night was spent tuning with my parents a bit, making sure they were all-right and going to bed at a relatively decent hour.

Saturday was my Auntie Patti's birthenday. Which is great on the one hand because, birthenday=w00t and Da always buys her a dirty card (On your birthday: would you rather have a cake? Or lick the batter?) and that's wonderful and amusing. But birtenday also equals luncheon. With my grandparents. Highlights of this particular dinner include a discussion on Town o' BTown politics (our mayor is not the shiznit), an ongoing chapter in the debate over when my brother gets married (you'll have to find a wife that cooks pretty good), and very off-key renditions of old revival hymns. I kid you not. This shit is too good to fabricate. However, I am counting my blessings. At least we were at our house with good food and no cardboard Chinese food. THERE ARE SMALL FAVOURS IN LIFE! We finally got everyone out of the house around three and, after about a half hour of good-natured bitching (traditional in this sort of situation!), Mum got out a book and Da and I passed out in our chosen locations and we vegetated the afternoon away.

Saturday night started out really nice, actually. I flopped on the couch (Couch! We have a couch!) with my mum and Da made incredibly amazing popcorn and we watched RV (which was actually amusing) and Calendar Girls (which was brilliant) and had some wine and it was good. I stayed up about half the night on the phone with Liesl and then Tony and that was nice even though the topics weren't really things one likes talking about. It was good to talk to them, though. Miss them both.

Sunday I was a good child and a bad Jew and I went to get my Jesus on. Da and I made very inappropriate commentary in the choir loft, mocking Our Special Friend The Bishop's every word and only got in marginal trouble for it. Unfortunately, we then had to go to the home show. What the hell is a home show, anyway? I went into this experience thinking, home show? Houses can't fit inside other buildings! This is terrible! I came out knowing that home shows consist of a lot of things you don't really need but get anyway because this is America, damn it, and we have to improve what we all-ready have. So there.

Though I did get some delicious candy. I am easy to appease.

Mum thought it would be a really great idea to go to Farm and Fleet while we were over on that side of town. Now let me explain. For whatever reason (global warming? The whims of the cosmos? Crappy dorm food?), every pair of trousers that I actually wear in life decided to die on me around the exact same time. Now, normally when I have an ill-fated pair of jeans, they rip in the knee and the rip grows and grows until finally I've just got this oblong shaped hole that stretches across my entire leg and I think, all-right, let's go buy new pants. Great. I can deal with that. But these jeans are deviants and decide to rip in ridiculous and impossible to fix areas: the inner thigh, the crotch, the ass, etc. And I'll dutifully mend them, oh, isn't that nice, and then I'll put them through the wash and then there's a hole in the crotch again. Crap. So my mother decides that, while I'm home, she's going to fix this problem by buying me new jeans.

...From Farm and Fleet.

Now, I hate to sound at all bourgeois. I don't have any real brand loyalty in terms of clothing, though I feel a deep hole in my being without a pair of Chuck Taylor Converse (so awesome!). And I don't buy designer clothes, not really. I shop at Old Navy because I've had great success with their products. But then their products decided to commit suicide so I can't really go back to them, can I? But Farm and Fleet has always kind of scared the hell out of me. I got lost in there once when I was a kid. And they have some very strange ideas about what is 'in'. But mostly it's just a very imposing place to me and I try to avoid it when I can but I really, really, really need new pants and I really, really, really can't afford them on my onesies so, what the hell, we go to Farm and Fleet. Great. That's just great. I am a better person for this.

It didn't hurt that Da was still in witty commentary mode and my mother's been constantly gaining weight this year and he's been losing it and likes to mock her ever so slightly for it. My da is such a bastard. I love him so much.

So that was yesterday.

I've changed my mind. I don't really want to talk about last night. I was being dramatic and I was acting stupid. I was. I have to admit that there was almost a rageful blog post last night but I was, thankfully, wisked away for drunky and the world was a better place. And I'm really not feeling frustrated right now. So I'm not going to talk about frustrating things.

JPalm and I actually had a pretty good time last night. Again, it was one of those things where it was really great to talk but not things you want to actually talk about. He's having some pretty fucked up stuff going on right now (I mean, I know it's JPalm, but seriously), and I think he just needed to get it off his chest. I needed a drink. And got one. Two, in fact. The first one tasted like shit. That's not an jab; he agreed. He's still learning.

So now I'm at today. It's still morning, though not for very long. Da and I are waiting for the cable guy to show up which may or may not happen, then we're off to have some galliant and likely inappropriate adventure. I think it involves Meijer Mart. Tonight I'll be taking in a show with the charming and witty AKraft and will bask in the glory of his awesomeness. It's like a ray of sunshine, except with a drier sense of humour.

So that's my update on life so far in BTown. Terribly exciting, I know. Hopefully something absurd and dramatic will occur in the next couple of days and I'll be able to amuse all of you with hijinks. Mmm, hijinks. How delicious you are.