The Frank Funny Farm

twas not a good weekend for my sports teams of choice. at least the steelers remembered how to play football. i'm actually thinking of cheering against them from here on out, so as not to curse them in any way. i don't want them to suddenly forget how to play football like the stupid titans did. then caronlina's basketball team had to look like a bunch of 17 year old kids who'd never seen each other before, nevermind a basketball or that nifty thing hanging from the ceiling with that crazy hoop with the net dangling from it. all this and i was sickly too! me was very woe.

the whole sickly thing ruined my weekend, the two days preceding it, and parts of this week as well. i was completely useless thursday and friday, which was truly unfornate as those days were scheduled for house-cleaning (it's so gross!), cavity-filling, bang trimming and even some french studying. so i had to push the dentist till this thursday, my long-overdue bang trim was rescheduled for this friday at 7:45. (i'm gonna have a raucous friday night, i can tell). at this point, i really should just wait until next week and get a haircut, but those is expensive and time-consuming. no houses were cleaned, no frenches were translated. saturday i was slightly less useless, but didn't do anything, including go over to keith & larry's to watch the titans debacle and then have game night. i missed game night! wah! ben went and reported that it was fun (stupid football aside) and that the new cranium games have new, um, tasks? challenges? activities? you know what i mean. apparently there's a puppet one, where one person is the puppet, and a person stands behind them and sort of forces them to charade something. the marionet doesn't even know the answer, so everyone's confused. wanna play! if ben ever remembered that this is his blog too and that he could sometimes post here, he might tell you about it. i wouldn't hold my breath it i were you. unless something smells bad in your particular vicinity, then it might be a good idea.

yesterday i determined to be better and we went to church and kept our monthly meal/bonding time with cara & dave (yay!). today i'm pretty ok except for the larger-and-stuffier-than-normal head and the occasional hacking sound. i'm trying to be a hands-off nanny today, we'll see how that works out.

in other news, it's freaking COLD and only getting colder this week. i'd like to move now. there was a really think layer of frost on everything this morning - my contactless eyeballs had me wondering if it wasn't snow. i even had to dig out the ice scraper for the car. horrors. and poor lil hayley dog outside all day. at least she has her nifty jacket and can get in her house.

hilarious side note: the wee one has the hiccups and is laughing whilst walking herself around the baby cage holding on to the sides to come n get me. laughing hiccups are awesome.

hmm. what else can i regale you with? ooh! we got our new bed thursday, in time for some nice sickly late sleeping. i can't really overstate the wonderfulnessosity of a really supportive comfy bed after you've been sleeping on one that was neither of those. also, our new bed is flat. flat! whoda thunk? the middle and the sides, all the same height! as much as i enjoy snuggling with the ben, i gotta say that whole sleeping in a pile at some weird angle was really unpleasant.  my 100-year-old spine didn't like it either.

i suppose i should get back to that french book for a bit. i'm taking the class, and so far it's been pretty easy, for two reasons. one, it starts with the assumption that one knows no french, and as it turns out, i actually know quite a bit (who knew?). two, it's designed for non-french majors to learn to READ french, so it's not as bogged down with those endless pesky articles. it just wants me to be able to read french and understand it, not translate english in to french, which is much more of a problem pour moi.

as for my english learnings, well, classes belmont-wide start on wednesday. when they start for me, i don't yet know, which i must admit is making me a lil nervous. hopefully i'll know something today, as all the professors are back, including dr. c, who will hopefully still be down with the idea and stuff. nothing was nailed down before the break because it took so bloody long for dr. dept chair to just meet with me. ug! anyway, i'm trying to maintian that whole, no worries, God's got it under control thing i am sometimes good at, but dagnabit i'm slightly worried. *breathing breathing breathing* zen face. k. so anyway, i am going to end my rambles and read some frenches before the hour of baby food arrives. i don't want her getting all giant and turning green on me. she's much too cute for that.

Tags: have patience!, man i'm whiny, school, sick is suck, stupid carolina, stupid titans, yay steelers!

mostly a genetic curse from my mommy i suppose. insomnia waits, and wakes and picks at my brain, seizing my stomach and tossing my soul as much as my body. it seems to do its best work when i'm more exhausted than usual, like tonight. i've been sick for at least a week now, achy, tired, feeling like shit on a stick and wanting nothing more (wellness notwithstanding) than to sleep. yet here i am at almost 3 in the morning, horribly awake. so contradictory, the physical and the mental exhaustion, the feeling that a collaose is - must be - imminent and yet, my eyes are stubbornly, painful open, the voices in my head unceasing in their taunts. so much stuff to do, too much stuff to do, it can't all be done, certainly not done well. why does it matter anyway since you clearly went to the wrong school and if you do actually graduate you certainly won't find a job, at least not one that might come close to justifying the colossal waste of money. why, dumbass, why, didn't you even think about waiting for vanderbilt's program, why not at least investigate it? what the f#%$? do you know how much better off you'd be right now? well, yes, of course i do, but what can i do about it now? after this semester i'm 6 hours shy of a degree, i certainly can't imagine anything transferring, i'm stuck. right where i stuck myself. no good lamenting the unchangeable, regrets aren't really my style, and stupid fretting like this is what ROBS ME OF PRECIOUS SLEEP!! so shut up. i still haven't heard from stupid kansas or wherever that online class, which distresses me a little. they need to hurry up. why i don't know, i don't exactly have time to play with french. and it won't matter if my 'advising' meeting with mr. stupid department head goes as i anticipate and i won't be graduating anyway. i'm sure as hell not taking the only two classes i can take next semester. only one writing class offered and the subject is similar to the class i'm taking now, and from reading the description it sure doesn't sound like a writing class. and it just sounds awful. and i have no reason to believe he'll actually care that i am not interested in wasting time, money or my last semester in two classes that are not only useless to me, but sound downright painful. in fact, i'm certain he won't as a friend met with him today with the same concerns and he told her to take and undergrad class, just flatly said no and barely acknowledged her question about us and another student wanting to arrange an independent (codependent?) study for the three of us. so i'm more than a little upset, stressed, pissed, sad and thoroughy rearranged about all that. and i'm afraid that when i meet with him, the tired and the sickly will make me much more unpleasant and irrational than i need to be.

and it bothers me that i let it bother me. i know god's got whatever worked out and it's cool and i'm pretty sure he made me go to this crappy school (again). but i don't know, could i have just self-sabotaged and rushed my way into it? doesn't matter now, so why worry, but still...

that's the problem right there: but still... there shouldn't be a 'but.' and usually there isn't much of one. i've actually reached a point where i don't really worry about things i can't control anyway, nor the things i can. god's got it, i'm ok. until i let fear and doubt and stress and worry pile up and overwhelm me, keep me always empty, never hungry, always churning, but paralyzed, completely scattered, but solidly aware, exhausted, sleepless. and apparently blogging into the void at 3 am. because i dont even get useful insomnia where i could actually accomplish something. i'm just... awake.

Tags: insomnia, school, what's wrong with me, worry

i should be writing a prospectus for my final paper in my 'life-writing' or whatever it is class. the paper is supposed to be autobiographical, 15-20 pages with a critical preface. great. swell. NO IDEA what to write about. i have a terrible memory it turns out, which is odd, cuz i am a steel trap when it comes to useless info, people i met once 6 years ago or anything else as irrelevent to life. i found this out last semester when one of my assignments was to do a 'memoir' piece, only 5-6 pages. i only remember past events in random scenes, all soft and hazy around the edges like cheezy movie flashbacks. so for that essay, i mined the one memory that i could collect enough wisps of to fill two, maybe two-and-a-half pages. then i sort of cheated and filled in the gaps with the knowledge gained since i was four about that moment.

so obviously this paper will have to be about something pretty current, which is fine because i'm more interested in now than the past anyway. the idea of some sort of daily-ish diary thing bores me to death and i know i wouldn't keep up with it anyway. never have. i just don't find my life that interesting, and certainly not interesting enough to write 15 pages. bleh. if only i could write a fictional autobiography. i mean, people have made millions doing that. sure you get yelled at by oprah, but i ain't scared. blah blah blah.

so anyway, i'm watching the "fresh water" episode of planet earth, which ben decided to watch without me for some reason. so far i've learned that not only are otters adorable, they are badasses. a herd of them chased a very large crocodile out of the water and far far away on the land. they were biting it and jumping at it, being all "yeah, we're cute and 1/15 of your size, four of us could fit in your mouth at once, but you better step off! we'll bite you! we'll point and laugh, don't make us call you alligator!" otters is cool. and then it cuts to another water hole where a croc just grabbed a water buffalo and spent an hour drowning it. water buffalo, sure. otters, no chance. some days i think i am a crocodile with nothing but otters in sight. sigh.

have i mentioned that i'm so over this being sick thing? this is ridiculous. and it sucks. and i don't have time for it right now. maybe it could come back between dec. 16 and early january if it must? but seriously it's been a week now, what the hell man. i feels like poo and i sleep entirely too much. i had a presentation in class last night and putting that thing together was just stupid. it probably took two days longer than it should have. reading with the giant stuffy, stupid achy cold head would probably be just as easy if it were in japanese. in the end though i feel like at least the info and brilliant thoughts i had compiled onto me lil handout were good, because the professor didn't take issue with anything or really add anything. i sounded like a babbling idiot i'm sure, but that's not that unusual anyway. yes, like now, smartass reader person.

just for that, the babble continues. i ventured to the chiropractorman this morning which was much needed since i hadn't been since last tuesday. i normally go on fridays as well, but he closes at noon and i was not yet awake at that hour, so no cracking for me. anyway, i was in the back laying on the table whilst waiting for him to finish up the lady he'd been working on before me. i'd heard her ask him if he could feel where it was broken and saying something about it grinding and crunching when someone rubbed her back. the words 'lacerated liver' come up, then 'crushed esophagus.' by this point they were up at the desk, where i could see them. this lady looks fine, is wearing boots with heels even. the only evidence i could see of any sort of injury were two broken fingers. i'm thinking "what in the world happened to this woman and why is she bouncing around in normal clothes and heels?" they leave, the doc comes over and says, "that lady was trampled by a bull. like trampled (he makes arm motions to indicate repeated stomping), like the bull was trying to kill her!" i said something to the effect of "holy crap! awesome!" and he says, "i know, it's really interesting, i can't wait till she brings in her scans!" that is why we like him.

ok. back to figuring out what to autobiograph. wonder if i could get away with writing hayley's autobiography? i don't even think i'm going to class, but i still have to turn something in. curse you, al gore for inventing the internets that led to the emails that lead to the having to turn things in whether you show up or not. plbt!

Tags: bull trampling, i'm still freaking sick, otters!, school

mini chocolate ones. they were sugar free though, so i kinda had a weird aftertaste in my mouth. not bad, just weird. not as good as last week's cookies, but i can't really complain about free baked goods.

and no, i have no idea why there's a nun at my recently-but-no-longer baptist school on a regular basis. i do know she probably wouldn't have been a couple of years ago.

nor do i know why she has baked goods and brings us what i assume to be the leftovers. the theory was floated that since we're in there always talking about modernist, bleak, 'God is dead' stuff that she's trying to save us. i'm okay with that.

Tags: baked goods, nun, school

many of you are familiar with my excellent skills of indecision. i must admit, i'm quite impressive with my ability to reason myself completely into one way, then saying, but... and reasoning totally into the other way. then that 'but' reoccurs and well, it can go on for days. i mean, seriously, i have trouble figuring out what to eat most of the time. that however, is usually resolved pretty quickly as hunger and other people factor heavily. and i suppose on the big things - the really really big things - i'm pretty quick (some people might say alarmingly quick) to decide what's right for me and i say 'that's it' and that is it. those, however, i attribute more to God saying, this way, dummy and me being smart enough to say ok instead of really? but why? i thought...  it's the smaller stuff i have trouble with.

at this moment, my most troublesome batch of waffles are french. part of the requirement for my degree is to have an intermediate level knowledge of a foreign language - french for me because that's what i took in high school. there are basically two ways to do this: study yourself and then go sit in dr. paine's office for two hours and translate some passages from french to english. i did this last week just to gage how far i have to go. i didn't expect it to be easy, dr. paine doesn't play around, which is awesome. so i wasn't expecting the little prince or anything, but man. simone de beauvoir. and like three sentence snippets, so context clues are basically impossible. anyway, back to the waffling. the other way of fulfilling the requirement is to take a class:  either an undergrad 202 class or there are some classes focused exactly on french for graduate english humanities majors. there was an online class that several people used, that the head of the dept. had told me about last year. it's an at-your-own pace sort of thing, you have a year to complete it and it was around $300-400. when i went hunting for this class this summer to check it out, i couldn't find it. fine, i had my little book and was planning to resurrect what i knew and add to it over the summer and theoretically knock the translation out before the fall semester started or at least by fall break (last week). except i worked all summer and i took a class that was sometimes a good bit of work and then there was the great gallbladder revolt of '08 and then i just needed a break for a minute man. and then fall classes started and i have an internship and i'm still working two days a week and i freak out about my parents with some frequency. so as we all know, i cannot read french yet.

so here's the thing: dr. paine located another online reading french class that will work. the class would be a little less stressful i think, because of the structure. do this lesson, send it in. continue till all lessons are done. then there's a final translation which has to be done while someone babysits me. i looked at the overview thing, the first half is grammar and all that, then it goes to "writing lessons." i'm not sure what those are, but for almost all of what's listed for the first half, i'm at least familiar with if not confident in it. that might not be so bad, let me coast a bit and refresh and perhaps better synthesize some things. but (you've been waiting for that, i know) this class costs $1000. yeah. and while they send me way more in student loans than i actually need, so this money would get paid back off our credit card, it's still more debt. and that's a lot of money.

so do i just keep plugging with my book and probably another one i'll buy to augment it and get a different take on things? hope i find enough time when i remember / have the mental energy and capacity and hope i can produce a reasonable translation? but then there's the what if i can't by the end of this semester and then it's hanging over my head next semester which should be my last semester but won't be if i haven't fulfilled that blasted language requirement? ack, i say. ack.

yes, i know i'm ridiculous, but i can't hear you because i'm trying to decide if i should shower before i go to the chiropractor or just throw a hat on because it the outside remains inviting then i'll be reading out there this afternoon which will render me all stinky again.

Tags: french, i'm an idiot, school