Author: Jess

Today I get home sort of anticipating a lecture/fight about my financial situation with my mom. Instead, I am delighted by some of the most hilarious conversations of my week.

First, I walk through the door and mom’s watching the news. They’re talking about this Virginia Tech shooting which is of course captivating the country because it’s so sad. And it’s just weird. It’s weirding me out because I’m so desensitized to these sorts of things. Probably because lots of people die every day and we always hear it on the news. Either that or all that Zoo Tycoon DS that I play has me unconcerned with humans. Anyway. I walk in and talk to mom about that for a little while. Her remark is “that’s why you have to be careful about who you date.” What could that possibly mean? I try to inquire about what it is that she’s suggesting and she doesn’t really have much of an answer. I think she just thinks it’s likely that I’ll pick the kind of guy to shoot up my dorm and the engineering building if I break his heart. Tsk tsk. I’m just going to try not to break any hearts. What a strange, strange woman.

I’ll warn you that the next conversation is not for the faint of heart or the remotely prude.

Second, my dog destroyed my vibrator while I was in Canada. This isn’t that surprising because she destroys all of my nice things when she’s mad at me and when I leave the country she gets mad at me. She has a tendency to go for things she knows I’ll be more upset about… IE expensive panties… et cetera. But this week I apparently had that within her range when she goes through my closet. I have a suspicion that she goes through my closet and sorts things so they’re easily destroyable whenever I sleep somewhere other than home. What a bitch. So i have some forewarning of this because I come home and find the battery pack/speed adjuster back on the floor. Sammie is in my room at this point probably delighting in her realization that she can sleep instead of staying up all night slaying Francesca and I look at her and go “you are such a bitch. why did you do that?” she just grins. and i say “i can’t believe you.” and then she starts growling because she doesn’t like getting attention without affection. I was kind of hoping that would be the end of it. Of course… with my family… it’s not.

It was a really nice day out. Like 74 degrees on my way into work which means probably about 80 at the day’s peak. I go into the dining room after eating my delicious dinner of tofu and udon because muffin is being all dancy. Combined with the look of fresh cut grass outside, Muffin convinces me to go out and play with him. Plus, Samarama has refused to come inside most of the day because she loves the weather. So I go outside and toss a stuffed animal that Sam has destroyed around with Muffin. Sammie refuses to play at first because she’s trying to dissect a different toy but eventually knowing that Muffin is winning gets to her and she joins us. We play for about 15 or 20 minutes and then I head in and talk to my parents about how they’ve gotten lazy.

This is where things go terribly awry. So my parents start talking about how Sammie destroys everything. And how she missed me a whole lot. Then mom asks if she usually runs all over the room all night. I say that I don’t know because I just sleep through it, but that I wouldn’t be surprised. Mom and Dad remark that they didn’t sleep at all when they slept in my room to keep the dogs quiet because the dogs kept running all over and Sammie kept destroying my things. This is where I start to get awkward because I know because I can’t find anything but the battery pack cap of Francesca that they surely have to have found it and thrown it away. Then Mom just brings it up… “She also destroyed something else of yours.” Me: “Yeah, I figured as much.” Mom: “…which I threw away.” Me: “That’s cool.” Mom:”because i figure that makes it unsanitary.”

At that point. I decided the conversation would be over. So I went back to my room. Giggled. And called Kyle to tell him the story. His response was something along the lines of “Well… I mean… They had to know that you… That’s weird.”

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Again, the good news is. I love awkward. Love, love, love, love, love awkward.

Oh, Canada. What joy of joys. calgary, in all reality, was a little bit boring. the problem with it being that everything closes down at like 6 p.m. because we were downtown. and there’s just no convincing us that we’re going to spend 2 dollars canadian to get in the cab plus 20 canadian cents per every 150 m. We don’t even know what a meter is. We are from America!

Luckily, Bearman and Cara and I are about the perfect travellers because we don’t know what stress means. So we just get there and we do things like take naps and go on walks to random places and eat based on my bizarre demands. and i show up without any money by accident and we get that all worked out. it was awesome. i have some really good stories from the trip though, of course.

first, our plane was super delayed. we got there at 8 and our plane didn’t even leave till 12:10. What assholes. So we end up there really early, after my not getting to bed until four+ because I spent the night with Kyle (not what you think, mostly, it was just a long conversation about our pasts. that’s really a different story, but i’d just like to say that it’s amazing to have a boyfriend who has such a smiliar past as you. it’s nice to not feel like someone is able to hold anything over your head, even if they don’t understand it. so i’m really happy about that). Anyway. I’m exhausted when we get to the airport. Kyle, being such a great guy, sticks around and talks to the three of us for about an hour or two before he has to get his dad his car back. We fly to Chicago and that’s where we meet our first story: The Chinese People.

The Chinese People followed us everywhere we went once we got to Chicago. They followed us onto our plane to Calgary. Then, they followed us to the hotel. Then, they went to the same conference. Then, they followed us back to the airport. The best thing about these people was that the woman one wore really traditional chinese clothes made in american styles. so she had the shirt with the silk embroidery stuff and the silk closures and they were all put on weird quilt fabric that was very american. this didn’t change throughout the conference, either. everytime you saw them, they were in these strangely concocted chinese-american clothes. sheer brilliance.

Next, we went to the conference where we met Tim. Tim is a friend of Bearman’s. He was our moderator and the chair of the History section of the WSSA. He was awesome, but took his work so seriously. He was constantly micromanaging everything in the best of ways. Like, I know that just because he was there we could basically wander around aimlessly and know that if we were supposed to be doing something else, then we’d do it.

My favorite part of the trip was probably the dinner with the history section of the WSSA… in part because it meant being around historians. Dinner started a little bit slow but I got bored of just talking to Bearman and discussion moved to alcohol and travel on the other side of the table so we quickly opened it a whole group discussion. It was mostly awesome. I drank Canadian beer (Alexander Keith’s which was alright) and we took turns telling stories about our travels around the world. I like how comfortably i fit in among historians. it was also really awesome that the whole conference was really open to Cara and I even though we were undergraduates. They treated us no different than someone would treat a colleague or something. I had a great time.

I need to update the world about my trip to Calgary.
Let’s put it this way:
Conferences rock.
Being poor doesn’t.
Sandwiching a conference with seeing Kyle, amazing.

I listened to the decemberists on my way into work today while operating both chopsticks and a moving vehicle. do my subtleties ever cease to amaze? i think not.

i’ve had lots of funny conversation with tyler tonight:
On seeing Kyle wednesday…
[19:49] Tyler: why wed?
[19:56] tasteslikeveg: well i leave town thursday. and he doesn’t really have any obligations thursday and will have to miss his friday classes anyway for that parli tournament in KCMo so he’s coming in early to spend a night with me in Blue Springs
[19:56] Tyler: awww
[19:56] Tyler: thats precious
[19:56] Tyler: it reminds me of a momma black widow eating her mate
[19:56] tasteslikeveg:
[19:57] tasteslikeveg: Black Widow references shouldn’t actually bring a smile to my face. But they do.
[19:57] Tyler: lol
[19:59] tasteslikeveg: What does that say about me?
[19:59] tasteslikeveg: Other than I hate patriarchy?
[20:00] Tyler: you envy hitler
[20:02] tasteslikeveg: hahaha. I wrote a short story once that claimed he was assassinated by Eva Braun
[20:02] tasteslikeveg: instead of killing himself.
[20:03] Tyler: hmm
[20:04] Tyler: you need to get an evaluation

He drives an interesting point. Maybe I’ll tell my therapsychiatrist about this fascination with the black widow. i’m sure he wouldn’t think anything of it. i also thought about how black widows have really pretty red hourglasses and that would be a fun tattoo to have. then i realized that people might find it odd. and i also realized that it’s kind of odd to be so into an animal it isn’t even safe for me to touch. it’s liking thinking raccoons are cute, accurate but dangerous.

Rachel shared the picture on the left with me. I laughed for a very long time. No one gets knitting jokes, though, so I haven’t had the joy of sharing it with anyone who really gets the joke. Instead, I shared it with Tyler to rub it in that he’s not getting the hat I was making him.

I read more of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene tonight at Lola’s while drinking my single cup of tea because they didn’t have enough for my free refill. Delicious. I’m not even kidding. It was so good. And the book is awesome. It makes me think a lot about how relative everything really is. We read this article in the NY Times science section for my science class and it was pretty boring but it talked about how time is really different on earth compared to other planets, which makes it difficult for the author of the article to imagine life on these other planets. The book kept making me think about that. It turns out Orson Scott Card is right: If Ender travels at the speed of light, he would not age but his sister would. Brilliant. In a very beautiful, lonely, romantic way it makes me think that it’s both possible that we live completely absent the interpretations of other people. Making us wholly individual, unique. While, at the same time, our perception of distance from others is really just that–perception. It turns out that everything is just a matter of how we experience it. Isn’t that beautiful?

Last week I called several members of the Washburn faculty ignorant to their faces at a committee meeting. I’m quite proud of myself about this. Bearman’s taking credit for teaching me everything I know… but I am fairly certain that I’ve always been a badass. Some things are just innate. And I don’t think any of them understood that I was calling them ignorant. Because they’re ignorant, probably. Saying insults that people understand at faculty meetings to the face of people with doctorates = something to work toward. Let the record show that I had plenty of good reason to call them ignorant. They were treating GPAs like some be-all-end-all standard of merit at university. All a GPA measures is yr ability to pick classes/professors well. Either way, Bearman and I lost the meeting. It seems. What assholes.

I also hung out with the debate squad over the weekend. it went better than some might have predicted. all-in-all, i don’t think a return to the squad next year would be the end of my life. so we’ll see how things go with the coaches and get that all sorted out. i also went to dinner with shanna which was very enjoyable. we had kiku’s. then i rented more 24. awesome. it turns out i really miss a lot of those friendships. i’m happy to start trying to restore them.

In 48 hours, I will be with Kyle so he can take me to the airport early Thursday morning. In 72 hours, I will be in Canada. My week is not shaping up too terribly.

Today, my mom and I went to Rossville to spend Easter Saturday with our relatives there. We got to see Aunt Cindy, Tyler, Justin, Brandon and Stancy plus Jack and Nate. We brought Brandon’s grandma, Mary, in from Topeka with us and then Stancy’s mom and dad and sister or something were there and her step-sister’s son, Tyler. All the little kids were so cute to have around. Tyler seems to be about one, though no one confirmed his age for me. Jack and Nate are 2 and 5 months, respectively. I don’t think I’ve had so much fun with three little boys ever. Tyler and I played with this thing from the movie Cars that is like a racetrack for these little cars. You set them up at the top and then press a paddle and it makes noise and the cars go down the spirally track. Tyler was really shy all day (he spent the first hour or so riding around on this little fake john deere and keeping to himself) so I sort of had to just play with him and assume that he would run off if he didn’t like me. He was just very quiet. But after I used the paddle to make the cars go down the ramp instead of just setting them on it and letting gravity do the trick like he’d been doing, he got really interested in my ability to use the toy properly and then we became pretty good friends. We played with that thing for a really long time and then we both lost interest in it because we have the same attention span, apparently. Then we played with this little plastic workbench that has these pegs that are different shapes. and if you fit the shapes correctly in the spots for them then hammer them it makes a sound. The sounds were fun. And i had a good time asking Tyler if the circle peg fit in the triangular spot and then going over how it didn’t and how it was a circle. And then doing the same thing with the triangle and celebrating when we got it right and he got to pound-pound-pound and make lots of noise which everyone likes.

Jack played with us some too, mostly because he was jealous and he’s going through his “Mine! Mine! Mine!” phase. He’s a good kid though. Whenever you ask him to share something he just does it even after he’s ripped it from your hands. It’s like he thinks he’s got a shot not sharing it if only no one uses that special word. I made sure to say “Your toys are fun Jack! Thanks for sharing them with us!” when he came over so that he wouldn’t take things from Tyler because the poor little irish kid was so damn confused by things being taken away. Jack even sat on my lap for a little while and watched me explain how shapes fit. Then he took the square and put it in the square hole and seemed accomplished as Tyler pounded away at the square that now made noise. Then he held his gross, sticky jelly bean out to me and i was like “where does that fit jack?” and he put it in his mouth. So cute. Just absolutely adorable.

Eventually, I got control of the baby, Nate. He’s fantatic. He mostly just likes to watch things happen and be held. He’s not that demanding about what happens when he’s held as long as there is something exciting going on. Exciting, to him, is watching Justin eat and watching the Masters on TV. While we were all talking, he decided that he wanted to add to the conversation so he’d chatter sometimes for a few minutes and then just stop. And I’d ask him about his feelings about the conversation. We were talking about American Idol and how that one guy with an S name is maybe going to win despite sucking… Nate and I agreed that after Doughtry lost, it was all over. And that Nate thinks that the one-legged dancer on Dancing with the Stars should win the show because she’s so good with one leg and she’d probably be outstanding if she had both (for similar reasoning, FDR deserved the presidency). And he didn’t even cry when he got wet. He just squirmed around and started chattering until Aunt Cindy came by and changed him. He was pretty fascinated by my hair, cos it’s so curly and fun to pull. He’s got a grip like a bear trap too. And his major interest in holding onto hands and fingers is so that he can use them to ease his teething. He slobbered all over my hand for most of the afternoon.

So it turns out my maternal instrincts have gotten much stronger. I’m not nearly as afraid of Nate at his age as I was even of Jack at his a little over a year ago. And I think babies could maybe be sorta fun. Though I still want to be able to spend time with mine which means waiting like 8+ years before i have one. I texted kyle and said “awh. i love babies. my maternal instinct is so strong.. it’s scary.” and i think that scared him a bunch. he made sure to emphasize that i shouldn’t have a kid for a very long time in his reply. and my response made it clear that i in no way was meaning to test the waters on that question. eek. it’s weird though that i am at the age where some people start families. aggh. TERRIFYING.