the family bitch

The phone's ringing in the living room, dad's in the adjacent kitchen but his hands are full. Mom's in the sewing room adjacent to that doing goodness knows what.

Dad says, "Phone's ringing."

"What?"

"The phone."

"Scarlet will get it."

"Scarlet's not going to get it, she can't hear it."

Even more annoying than overhearing this exchange is the still-ringing phone, so in defeat I just run out to get it. I pick up and hear the sound of the other person hanging up.

Sigh.

superstitious

My grandma came over today and was chatting with my mom about how my cousin's family is looking for a new house. She mentioned that they found something reasonable close to where my cousin used to go to school, and my mom promptly said, "The most important thing is that the house is clean." By "clean," I knew she actually meant "not haunted."

My mom's solution: "Just have them take the baby inside to play and see if he likes it."

"The baby" is actually my 6-year-old cousin, but for all intents and purposes he is the baby in the family. I guess he's still young enough for the procedure. Apparently, kids and animals can see things that adults can't. Even if this were true, I can't help but feel like it should count as some kind of abuse. My mom tells me that my brother and I were her "cleanliness" meters before we moved into our current house. Fancy that! I'm so glad that my mother would so readily subject us to potentially traumatic experiences at the tender ages of 1 and 4, respectively.

bad taste

My mom and I were talking about my brother and I made a crack about how ugly he is, even though it constituted an inadvertent insult to myself since we look alike (but I don't actually think he's ugly :P). She, of course, came to his defense.

"Your brother's not ugly, he's quite handsome."

Facetiously, I responded, "You're just saying that because you're his mom. He's alriiight."

"No, he's good-looking," she insisted. "In fact, not one of your friends is handsomer than him."

This caught me off guard. I paused briefly, wondering whether she was implying what I thought she was implying with her word "friends." I decided to laugh and answered nonchalantly, "Yeeeah, they're all ugly too."

She chuckled and looked satisfied. I knew what she was going to say before she even said it. "Well no, that one boy you brought home was pretty handsome. He was pale and clean-cut." Oh no, there she goes with the paleness again. She always had a soft spot for The Woman. I wondered if she would feel the same way if she knew him the way I used to and momentarily considered tainting his perfect image in her mind with some careful words but pushed the thought away. I only grimaced at her comments.

"Eh, he was like a woman."

"What, you mean he was gay?"

"No, he just acted like a fussy old lady."

I couldn't tell what she was thinking after that, and I wasn't sure how much more to tell her without revealing the past 8 years of my secret life of dating so we abandoned the subject. I think that's the closest we've ever come to openly talking about my (non-existent up until now) boyfriends. But I don't know, we might still be in denial. I'll let you know.

So um...did she really call me out for having bad taste in men?

If my idea of hot is people like Takeshi Kaneshiro and Dennis O'Neil, I'm kind of hard-pressed to find that outside of the celebrity bubble. Sure, there are plenty of attractive guys that I could potentially meet in the world, but then there's also the issue of being on the same wavelength. It's not easy to find a good combination of physical and emotional chemistry. And I wouldn't be able to stand dating someone hotter than me, so that eliminates a fair chunk of the dating pool.

Sorry, Takeshi, you're too hot for me :(

Yeah, you too, Dennis. Ugh, :9

It doesn't matter anyway. I care more about having someone with whom I can hold a conversation. Besides, love makes everyone beautiful...if it's within reason. LOL.

what do you call this?

I really like the effortless look of this hairstyle, but I don't know how else to describe it except a slick-back without the slickness. Maybe back-swept hair? Google doesn't know what I'm talking about either.

They tell you how to DIY here.

From the If I Were A Boy video

Leigh laughed at me as I fumbled over my words trying to describe it to her. She's an evil one, I tell you.

vindictive

The Dork came up over dinner conversation last night and Elise told me his family doesn't like his girlfriend because she's mean and it would be unlucky to marry someone "with a big forehead." Inwardly, I felt a ripple of satisfaction and gloated a bit in spite of myself. It's irrelevant to my life now since it's been months since I've spoken to her and years since I was in contact with him, but I relished the information anyway. A saint I certainly am not.

The rundown: she was one of my best friends, he was my first love, and we weren't even broken up for two weeks before they were official. Frankly, the last half of that year traumatized me. What is it about high school that makes it such a virile breeding ground for drama and angst?

After all is said and done though, I manage to shove the vindictive bitch in me back into her golden cage because nothing should excuse my malice. The only circumstance under which one might be allowed to overindulge in bitterness is when it takes the form of dark chocolate. Or coffee, if that's your thing.

"3.5 oz of milk chocolate that promises never to lie to you, to be there in the morning*, to never ask your age and to really truly listen to everything you have to say."

*obviously it won't be there for you if you've eaten it all the night before.

i'm a drama queen

The BFF has gotten very friendly with The Asshole in the past three years. And by very friendly, I mean they used to hate each other and now they seek each other out expressly to party together. It shouldn't bother me, but it does.

My guilt-ridden subconscious is not helping matters any either, as my dreams last night transported me back to that period in time where we had just fallen out. It's awful, you just feel so helpless because the problem doesn't lie with you but with another person, and that person is content to just leave things the way they are. But that's all in the past and we're on talking terms now, which should be good enough given the circumstances.

And it's usually good enough, up until I go to post on the BFF's wall and find that they've been chatting about hanging out. I'm afraid that I'll be stuck in this mentality forever, where I can't put things completely behind me because I keep clinging to this idea of him when an idea is all it is anymore. Haha, this doesn't seem very healthy but I also don't have a reference point to which I can compare it, so...I'm not sure what to do about it except sweep it under the rug because it's not relevant to anything going on in my life right now.

the butterfly effect

My sadistic mother, entirely ignoring my 12pm rule, woke me up this morning and, a little more loudly than I would've liked, declared that we should visit the LA County Natural History Museum to see their Pavilion of Wings exhibit. Since I have an irrational fear of butterflies, walking into a small enclosed space with tons of them flying around did not sit well with me. Especially when my impulses were telling me to swat them away once they started hovering too close, but I restrained myself as best I could so as not to incite the wrath of all the butterfly-watchers there and get kicked out of the tent.

Actually, I think this one might be a moth.

I know, being afraid of butterflies is really lame. But I'm afraid of all bugs in general, particularly ones that can fly and/or buzz, almost to the point where it's crippling. Clusters of spheres also freak me out. I'm not saying any of it makes sense.