04-28-05
And in the interim nothing changed.
Today I was walking and there was an old man walking on the sidewalk in front of me. I used to see this old man a lot while I was walking, and he always annoyed me by walking really slow until I was about to pass him, then he'd jog for a while, then he'd start walking and I'd catch up to him again and he'd jog and it'd just go on and on like that. (The fact that I'm annoyed about this makes me sound like kind of a jerk. I just don't like looking at people while I'm walking. Also, I am kind of a jerk.) I hadn't seen him for several months, but today as soon as I saw him off in the distance I knew exactly who it was and I immediately started grumbling to myself about how he was going to start jogging as soon as I got near him and that's exactly what he did. So he was jogging and I was thinking, "Stupid old man, just LET ME GET AROUND YOU. I am walking FASTER THAN YOU." And then he fell. Right flat out on the sidewalk. I felt horrible and stopped and asked him if he was all right. He said that he was, but I continued standing there, even though I know from personal experience that it is embarrassing to have people standing around and looking at you after you fall down. He said, "I'm all right," again, so I finally started walking again. But now I'm a little worried that he's still lying there on the sidewalk.
Unrelatedly, in the unlikely but true category, it apparently takes the mail 12 days to travel from Detroit to Ann Arbor, a trip that I have made in well under an hour numerous times:
Did this have something to do with the six cents I owe them?
04-20-05
The squirrel had no apparent injuries.
Yesterday I sat on my patio and befriended some squirrels by throwing cashews at them. The cashews were part of some trail mix that I bought several months ago, and I had finally decided that it was time to face up to the fact that I was never going to eat the rest of it because it was old, and it tasted old, and there's really no reason why I should force myself to eat stale trail mix. It took a lot of working up to. I have a lot of trouble throwing food away.
Anyway, just as I was about to drop the trail mix into the garbage, I saw two squirrels outside and decided to see if I could somehow manage to open all three sliding doors without scaring them away so that I could feed them the cashews from the mix (I was unsure of the squirrel attitude toward raisins, dates and flaked coconut (and the dried pineapple and banana chips were gone because I ate those right after I bought the stuff, probably in the car on the way home from the grocery store.), or I might also have thrown those. Now that I think about it, they're basically just rats so I don't think they would have refused them.). And I did open all of those doors! I started throwing cashews toward them, and they seemed really excited about them, but one squirrel kept taking all of them. I felt sorry for the second squirrel, so I tried to get its attention (it's hard to get a squirrel's attention) (also, I felt unbelievably stupid when someone walked by and heard me explaining to the second squirrel my plan of how we were going to outsmart that other jerk of a squirrel), and then I tossed the cashew right towards that one. And I hit that squirrel right on top of its head! It made this little hollow clunky sound that made me laugh hysterically. For a while. A good long while.
Soon after that, though, I had a close encounter with an extremely dead cat. That kind of put a damper on my day.
04-18-05
You can't do anything with six cents except mail a fraction of a CD to Philadelphia.
I had a CD that I had to mail to someone for a kind of complicated reason that caused me more anquish than it should have. I had some envelopes lying around (because I am a slob) from when people have sent CDs to me (because I ordered them) and the postage on one was $1.10 and on the other it was $1.08. I haven't had any cash since I used it all to buy a sundae a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't see myself withdrawing 10 whole dollars from an ATM for just over a dollar's worth of postage (and I wasn't sure about the post office's policy on debit cards), so I searched around through pockets (where I found nothing), purses (where I found $1.05 in dimes and quarters), and desk drawers (where I found 99 pennies and a 3 cent stamp left over from the last time postage rates were increased). I took the stamp, dimes, quarters and a handful of pennies and figured that would be enough.
It wasn't. After counting out my whole handful of pennies (it turns out I only had 15 of them), I was still 6 cents short of my required postage, which was $1.29. I felt kind of panicked because I had only once before been in a situation where I was all alone and without enough money to buy what I wanted (that was when I went to Meijer to buy (a lot of) groceries for the co-op I lived in and forgot my wallet). I said, "I don't have enough," in a voice that sounded a lot more pitiful than I meant it too. I meant to sound tough, as though I was ready to accept whatever consequences the United States Post Office might have for someone who couldn't pay her bill. But I guess my pathetic tone of voice along with my diy haircut and handful of pennies made the post office lady feel sorry for me and she let me go, freed from my six cent obligation.
Now, though, I kind of feel like I owe the post office one. Like maybe someday my mail lady is going to knock on my door and say, "Hey, look, I'm really tired. Would you mind delivering the mail for the rest of the block?" And I'll have to say yes.
04-12-05
Always end on the bowel line. Always.
A lot of things that don't seem very likely have been happening. I made a list!
Improbable:
- number of plain white t-shirts tried on during a single trip to Target: 5 (There are your 100% cottons and your cotton/lycra blends and your v-necks and your crew necks and your less fitted and your more fitted and ack! It is all so frustrating and overwhelming.)
- movie watched just because it was on following a movie I really like: Crocodile Dundee 2 (Usually I am good at not watching a bad tv show just because it is after something I like, but every once in a while laziness prevails. At least I've never watched Malcom in the Middle just because it's after King of the Hill.)
- tv shows watched with my Mennonite grandmother: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and House (The Fresh Prince wasn't too bad because I had some sort of idea about what was going to happen (although it was a little alarming to find out how much my grandma knew about the series (she doesn't even have a tv!)), but I'd never seen House before, and the whole time it was on I sat there worrying that something horrifyingly offensive was about to happen and that I was going to be mortified. But grandma picked the show, so I guess I should lighten up.)
- number of skirts that I didn't buy, even though I really liked them, because they cost $16.42, and prior to entering the store I had decided that my limit on a single piece of clothing was $15: 1 (Usually I am not so dedicated to these little goals I set for myself.)
- number of times I used every single piece of cash/change in my purse to buy a hot fudge sundae: 1 (I had exactly the right amount! And the fact that I am willing to spend every single bit of my money on hand to buy ice cream is the reason why I will one day be living on the street.)
- songs I happily and loudly sang along with in the car even though I only know one line of each: "Piano Man" and "Signs" (Tthe lines are: "when I wore a younger man's clothes" (which isn't even an entire line) and "And the sign said you've got to have a membership card to get inside HUH.")
- number of times I almost hit a live possum while riding my bike: 1 (I think it might have been deaf because I was yelling at it and whistling and generally trying to make it aware of my presence and of the fact that I was having a hard time maneuvering my bike around because it had been a long time since I last rode one.)
- things I used to hate but now sort of love: Beck, peanut butter, some of the McCartney authored/performed Beatles songs (but not "Yesterday.")
- number of times I returned to a group of people only to get the feeling that I was very recently the main topic of conversation: 1 (Doesn't seem like a lot until you consider the fact that I am very boring and people usually don't talk about me at all, and I have never before suspected that they do because I am fully aware of my boringness.)
- hilarious typo found on a wedding invitation: "Please bring a bowel of pasta salad."
04-02-05
A brief history of my association with the snickerdoodle.
Today I made snickerdoodles. I hadn't ever made snickerdoodles before, and actually, I don't think that I'd ever even eaten a snickerdoodle before, so why I made them is anyone's guess. But they are delicious! Although I have no idea what they are supposed to be like, so maybe they are not very snickerdoodley.
Prior to today, I think that the only time I ever heard the word snickerdoodle was at an MYF (that means Mennonite youth fellowship) meeting while I was in high school, when our ice breaker activity was to name what kind of cookie we would be if we were all cookies. The ice breakers always caused a lot of trauma for me so you'd think I'd remember my answer, but I don't. Someone else, though, said snickerdoodle.
There are two ways this entry could continue: one would involve how I went to see my old church while I was at my parents' house last weekend and how sad it made me to see it all broken down and abandoned. That church was where the MYF snickerdoodle meeting was, which probably has at least a little to do with why I decided to make them today.
The other would be about how it is unsettling that I only remember moments from my past, not entire events. Once in driver's training I remember that someone asked if it was legal to drive while barefoot, but I don't remember the answer or any other detail about driver's training, like where we were or who I was sitting with or if it took all day or a half day or what kinds of cars they gave us to drive around the parking lot. My dad can remember things like who milked which cows on which days, and his childhood was much longer ago than mine was.
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