06-27-05
A broken shirt, the beach and stomping on cats for fun and profit.
Saturday I wore a sleeveless shirt! For the first time since I've been picking out my own clothes! It was surprisingly untraumatic until my shirt broke. It was a wraparound deal with a single button on the inside and a tie on the outside, and when I was getting dressed the tie pulled right off. I wandered around the store looking for the roommate and clutching my shirt. She said, "You're in a store. Just buy a new shirt." I said, "But I like this one. And it's sleeveless. And it's the first day. . ." and then I bought a cheap new shirt. And also the bathing suit I tried on (because it was clearanced, since it is June and time for stores to start displaying winter wear. and also because I actually like it, which is an unprecedented feeling for me regarding a bathing suit.).
I decided that if I was going to own a bathing suit I had to make it count. So yesterday the roommate and I headed to Lake Erie, the least great but closest of the great lakes. I made the questionable decision to actually immerse myself in Lake Erie and emerged covered in dirt but slightly less hot. But there was so much dirt in my brand new bathing suit. It's been 24 hours and I've taken two showers since we left, and I still feel filthy.
Later, we went to get ice cream and then played in the park (it is best to go after 10 when there aren't any kids there). A cat was climbing around on the playground equipment and accidentally slid down the twisty slide, and then when we were leaving he suddenly appeared under my feet and I stepped on him and tripped and then stepped on him again. I think he might be spreading rumors that I stomp on cats for fun, because today two cats ran away from me with looks of terror on their faces.
06-22-05
oldlady.diaryland.com
I spent Sunday sitting on a hard chair in a hot living room listening to a bunch of old ladies talk about their health problems (the best was my great aunt Ruth telling us about how she accidentally slammed her ear in a car door, although I am still unsure of how she managed to do that). And you know what? It is fun! I mean, talking about your health problems is fun!
Like for example, I have a huge, disgusting wound on my ankle right now! I don't know what it is, but it looks like some kind of insect bite with a nice little circle of bruise around it. And instead of looking better every day, the bite part of it looks redder and the bruise gets darker every day.
And speaking of bruises, I have a million of them! They're everywhere! Where are they coming from? When will they go away? It is anyone's guess. The internet says that I should see a doctor if I have a lot of unexplained bruises, but then on the very same page it says that I probably got the bruises in some unremarkable event that I didn't bother to remember.
Also, after I gave blood on Monday, I was immediately surrounded by a group of elderly Red Cross volunteers who thought I was going to pass out. "You look pale," they said. "I am pale," I answered. I made them feel better by eating four cookies, and drinking a whole glass of something they were generously referring to as juice.
And right now my stomach is growling loudly and reverberating throughout the library. I think it thinks that Wednesday nights are special because last Wednesday I ate half a pizza at midnight (only a few days after lamenting the flabbiness of my arms. it is a mysterious world). Tonight the most it is getting is a spinach and mushroom quesadilla, if I can summon up the energy to make one. Otherwise, it's applesauce straight out of the jar for you, stomach!
06-14-05
Sunshine on my shoulders might make me happy.
I've decided that this summer is going to be the one in which I start wearing tank tops. I have previously not worn anything sleeveless because of my flabby arms, but they are now slightly less flabby than they were before. Plus, I have stared at the arms of hundreds of women and I don't think that my arms are really as outstandingly flabby as I believe them to be (but I am sure that they are as outstandingly pale as I believe them to be). The roommate (who has voiced approval of the plan to wear tank tops although she herself will not wear them, which makes me wonder if her opinion is valid) has told me that I just need to be brave. And that is probably true. After I expose my upper arms to the elements once, it will probably be easier to do it a second time.
In an attempt to not be one of those people who complain about something that it is within their power to fix while not doing a single thing to fix it, I've also decided to do flab-reducing arm exercises. Buying those little multicolored one or two pound dumbbells seemed a little extreme (I don't want the cashier to think that I'm some sort of health nut), so for a while I was lifting a gigantic jar of applesauce. Then I ate the applesauce (unsweetened applesauce+strawberries or mango=the perfect meal for when it is 95 degrees inside your apartment), and lifting the empty jar seemed ineffective and stupid (whereas lifting a full jar of applesauce seemed not ridiculous at all), so I started lifting soup cans. Soup cans are not very heavy. I think I am either going to have to actually buy dumbbells or steal some from my parents' house when I am there this weekend for father's day/monitoring the recovery of my mom.
Much earlier this summer, I decided that I'm finally going to start wearing high heels. I've always liked the idea of high heels but since sometimes I fall down on perfectly even surfaces while wearing sneakers, it has always seemed smarter to avoid them. Those smarter days are done! I will wear heels! I will be marginally taller! I am wearing heels and at work right now, and every time someone approaches my desk I am terrified that I will have to walk somewhere to find something for them, even though I have already survived a walk to the copy machine and a trip to the sci-fi section.
In summary, this summer is going to be the summer I have sunburned shoulders and broken/fractured/sprained ankles, but I will have tried something new.
06-11-05
Midweek road trip!
Wednesday my mom had surgery on her neck. I hadn't thought about going to see her (it didn't occur to me that I could go to my parents' house when it wasn't a weekend or a holiday), but I had two days off and my only plans for them involved laying around the apartment and sweating, and hey! there is air-conditioning in my car. So off I went.
I got to the hospital and parked in a free parking ramp that was hooked on to it, but once I got inside the hospital from the parking ramp I had no idea where I was or how to get to somewhere where someone could tell my where my mom was. I finally discovered some signs that hinted at the existence of a lobby, but there weren't quite enough signs to tell me where the alleged lobby was. I eventually found a desk that wasn't in the lobby, but the woman there could look up my mom's room number, so that was ok. She said, "She's in 4E. So you have to go down this way and make a left at the second hallway. Those are the east elevators. Then go up to the fourth floor, make a left out of the elevator, then a right at the first hallway. Once you get to the end of the hallway take another right, and that's 4E!." I stood there and looked dubious, when just half and hour earlier I'd felt like a navigating genius because I'd found a hospital in a part of Grand Rapids that I notoriously have a lot of trouble getting around in. She said, "Left, left, right, right!" and I said, "OK, thanks!" when what I really meant to say was, "I can ask for more directions when I get to the fourth floor, right?"
There was a brief delay while I tried to use the staff elevator instead of the east elevators (I turned left at the first hallway instead of the second one, but I had been walking for so long that I thought that I had to have already passed at least one hallway), I arrived at the fourth floor and left the elevator, not really paying attention to which way I was going since I'd forgotten all of the directions already anyway. I found a nurses's station and found out I was headed in the right direction, and a little while later I could hear my dad's voice echoing out of one of the rooms. I walked in and my dad (who was on the phone) said, "Hey, KIMBERLY'S HERE!" and I said, "I'm glad I found you, because I'm pretty sure I won't be able to find my car again." (I did find my car, but only because there was a window in the hospital overlooking the parking ramp and I could see it from there.) My mom was still basically unconscious (which did not stop me from taking pictures if her in her very fashionable neck brace that she has to wear for the next six weeks), so we went out for dinner even though it was only about 4:30. Then we went back to the hospital and mom was a little more awake, but still extremely tired and she told us to leave her alone. So we went to the beach, where we saw baby ducks and ate ice cream (my dad asked me if I wanted ice cream, and I said, "But we had pie with dinner!" And he said, "So?" I guess it is a little pathetic of me to think that pie and ice cream on the same night, with five hours and a four mile walk in between them, is a huge extravagance. I usually don't get pie or ice cream. It is a sad life. ).
The next day we got up early to go out for breakfast because my dad thought that mom would be able to leave the hospital in the morning, but she didn't leave until around three. That gave me ample time to eat the whipped cream off of the pudding she got for lunch, play on her hospital bed while she was getting dressed and discover that the hospital vending machines had pina colada Almond Joys in them (my aunt told me about them a while ago, and I thought that she had just imagined them until I found them at a dollar store while I was in Colorado in March.). Then we all went home, where I made dinner and strawberry shortcake and ran the dishwasher and did laundry and hung it on the line to dry so that my pajamas could be cow-country fresh (there is a laundry detergent scent that you will never, ever see). I felt kind of bad that I had to leave because it was nice to be useful for a change. Usually I just feel like I am using up resources that someone else could be putting to better use.
06-06-05
From now on I will just call it "Tengliforage."
I keep getting coupons for free
In terms of usefulness I guess the free maxi pads were better, but in terms of enjoyment it is O'soy all the way! The only thing that bothers me about it is that it is not called soygurt. Perhaps there is another product called soygurt that I am unaware of. In any case, I am easily won over by a portmanteau. I would gladly try tofurkey if someone would offer some to me. The other day I contempated buying some grapples even though they were a dollar apiece. Sometimes I eat my brunch with a spork while watching infomercials (that sentence is almost completely untrue, as I hardly ever eat brunch and can't remember the last time I used a spork. I do occasionally watch infomercials, though. A true version of that sentence would read "Sometimes I eat my cereal with a spoon while watching infomercials, but usually while watching Arrested Development dvds or Gilmore Girls." But that hardly makes my point about the portmanteaux.)
Unrelatedly, sometimes I'm sure that I've heard other people say things out loud (a timely example would be TOEFL (pronounced toeful)), but then as soon as I say them I'm worried that I only ever thought those pronounciations, and then I have to stumble through "Test of English as a Foreign Language" a while before I slip up and say toeful again.
06-05-05
At the last minute I changed all of the parentheses to footnotes. It was probably not the best decision that I've ever made.
Yesterday the roommate and I remembered how much fun it had been to try on prom dresses we had no intentions of buying, so we headed off to the store to try on sassy t-shirts. They said things like, "Red white and boys" and "Fireworks after 9:00,"1 but the best one there, no, the crowning achievement of sassy clothing everywhere, was the flourescent green tube top that read, "First dibs on the hottie" in sparkly pink letters. Until you see it, it is impossible to truly appreciate its amazingness.
Lest you think that we spent the whole day annoying fitting room attendants, I also got something in my eye while trying to eat a fortune cookie2, and bought an umbrella and lotion that promises to make me shimmer3.
Much later, we went to Denny's to get veggie burgers, because we didn't know where else to get a veggie burger after midnight. The woman that seated us asked what we wanted to drink, but then she never brought us our water 4. I watched as she seated some people at the table next to us and took their drink orders. She delivered their drinks to them and stared at me the whole time she was doing it 5. After our veggie burgers were gone, the roommate and I discussed sharing one dessert, but I claimed that in the end we would just perceive the other person as having gotten more of it and would end up hating each other. The roommate ordered a dessert and I drank three more glasses of water and voiced my skepticism about French's claim to be America's Favorite Mustard6. Also, I ate some of her dessert and now I kind of hate her because I think that she got more ice cream than I did.
1Although this shirt was outdone on sassiness by the tube top, it was the shirt that was the biggest topic of conversation after we left the store. Why 9:00? It seems awfully early. "Fireworks after midnight" would've made more sense, but it probably would have been best to go with the more vague "Fireworks after dark." The roommate speculated that that might be too racy for the juniors' department.
2It said, "Don't let statistics do a number on you." When did fortune cookies start trying to be clever?
3I always buy skin care products that promise me radiance and then get discouraged when they don't do anything. Then I see a new product that says it will make me glow and I buy that. Sometimes I am not a very smart person.
4me: "Why did she ask us what we wanted to drink if she wasn't going to bring us anything?"
roommate: "Maybe she just wanted to be polite."
5In retrospect, she might have been staring at me because I was staring at her. But that would spoil my "Everyone hates me" theory. Or it would confirm it and explain why everyone hates me.
6Plochman's claims to be the mustard lover's mustard, so does that mean that America is devoid of true mustard lovers?
06-01-05
Cryptic because you never know who everyone is on the internet.
Today I went to see a movie with my mom, and before it we saw a preview for some movie with Tom Arnold in it. My mom said, "Ewww, is that Tom Arnold? They still let him be in stuff?" I think that she has a point.
Yesterday my grandma delivered some Shocking Family News that I can't go into in any detail, but said Shocking Family News prompted my mom to ask, "Well, Kimberly, how many people have asked you to marry them?" I replied, "It's not a contest!" And it isn't. But if it was a contest, I would be losing.
Today I made a joke about the Shocking Family News that was possibly in bad taste, and then my mom repeated it to my grandma on the phone, which made me feel bad even though I'm sure that we all know I was kidding. The fact that I feel bad about making a very obvious joke means that I should probably refrain from discussing the Shocking Family News at all in the future.
My joke about the you-know-what involved scrapers/spatulas (I know I've gone through the scraper or spatula linguistic controversy in this diary before, but I'm much too lazy to find it right now.), as my family is very passionate about them (at least, I'm pretty sure that they're more passionate about them than other people are). Today my mom bought 13 of them at the dollar store. The people in front of us in line were concerned.
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