Ambiguous indicators of a possible transition into adulthood:

• I just got a Linkedin account, though I am having trouble finding the motivation to actually fill out my profile--mostly because my work history feels like one giant, diffuse, aimless facepalm. (Also, come on Blogger, can't you autocorrect those two hyphens to an em-dash? I thought we lived in a civilized time.)


• I have almost $3000 in my savings account... but I still live with my parents. I have made two extra payments on my car loan... but I still live with my parents.


• I wore a classy dress to work on Thursday. But because it was from Target and very chintzy, the back seam split at some point during the day. I do not know when. I could have been walking around like that for hours.


• I am dating a guy who does not have a Facebook account. He used to have one, but he deleted it. Yeah, let that one sink in.


• I have a job involving project management. Is there any job description that sounds more grown up? I manage projects. But don't get too excited; they're small projects, so far, and I don't always 100% know what I'm doing. Indeed, sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing.


• I usually drive home from work with the windows down, no air conditioning, because my body has basically permafrosted during the workday.

Anyway, dear reader, how are you?

Things that have been going on lately:

Reading: Infinite Jest and Nate Silver's book, The Signal and the Noise. And I started Karen Russell's book of short stories, which fills me with outrage because she is so talented and wunderkind-y. But Infinite Jest is really amazing; I've read it before, but there is always more to see. Also it may be the only book I have ever read that has made me very sad, almost heartbroken, for reasons other than the death of a character.

Listening to: Spinto Band, Delgados, Les Miserables. Trying to get into Martha Wainwright's latest CD.

Writing: Stuff I'm actually getting paid for. It's weird; a Craigslist gig that has grown into a larger project. But it's kinda awesome.

Watching: Bunheads. Here is a list of things that Amy Sherman-Palladino loves, based on this show and Gilmore Girls: smarm, small towns, unfair mother-figures who jump to conclusions, wasted potential and/or subversion of expectations, lots of allusions, groups of teenage girls and their dramas, and a certain coterie of bit-part actors. Also it seems like she's more than ok with dancing. The central question of Bunheads is, Can Sutton Foster carry a TV show? I think she can, and she's definitely growing into it.

Oh, also I started watching Girls this morning. I'm sure I'll carefully rant about it later, after I finish the first season. Prepare yourselves.

Faxing: Went to fax something yesterday at Kinkos. It was SUPER EXPENSIVE. Why? WHY? It seems like all methods of digital communication are getting cheaper, but it cost me almost $20 to fax ten pages. Also the machine skipped one of the pages -- arguably the most important one -- so the whole thing became an even more monstrous hassle.

Hounding: Meryl is dreaming, making these little whuffly barking noises. Also I made her a coat, out of a fleece blanket. Coziness abounds.

Thinking: The last few months have been weird.

Songs I Listened to Like a Million Times (ie on repeat in my car) in 2012

• The following songs by Rhett Miller:
• "Long, Long, Long"
• "Marina"
• "Fireflies"
• "Chop Me Up" - Justin Timberlake
• "The Walk" - Mayer Hawthorne (Video included as my gift to you; this version is censored, but you get the idea.)

• "No Simple Machine" - Old 97's
• "Mesmerizing" - Liz Phair
• "Bedroom Eyes" - Dum Dum Girls
• "Pictures of Success" - Rilo Kiley. In all of the years I've been listening to Take Offs and Landings, I've never been able to listen to this song just once.

I think I've listened to Rhett Miller / Old 97s (specifically The Grand Theater vols 1 and 2) for cumulatively half the year. It's been a half-wistful alt-country/folk kind of year.

Lessons learned in 2012, interspersed with pictures I found on the Internet in 2012:

That it is possible to do the thing you are best at all day and yet hate your life. Writing is basically my strongest skill in life, but writing SEO content all day made me feel awful inside, and I was really slow at it, so I don't think I intentionally slept more than five hours at a time for like six months.

That I can find myself saying, "How dare she [my then-boyfriend's friend] come into my house and speak Spanish to my dog!" I neither speak nor understand Spanish; this fact is known. I remember thinking, This is a ridiculous thing to say, and it is time to stop being in situations where I feel the need to construct sentences like this.

(9gag.com)

That I am less adaptable than I thought, and I have changed less than I thought, for better or worse. I'm basically still the same person I was when I was a kid, when I was in high school, when I was in college. It's been weird to realize that I cannot magically alter the things I care about and/or the things that make me mad. But, in retrospect, I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out.

(arresteddecision2012.tumblr.com)

That you can develop an angry smile, a smile of fury, and other people will not notice it is an angry smile. That, in general, it is possible to be furious completely under the radar of those around you.

9gag.com

That, when I get used to feeling like no one is listening, I forget how to talk. Regardless of whether that feeling is grounded in fact. When I moved back to Mesa and hung out with people who were like really, intently listening to me, I had trouble making eye contact, and I kept trailing off at the ends of sentences, waiting to be cut off. I do not know quite how these habits developed.

That returning is not always the same as going backwards.

PS: Extra-fun trivia! Where, O readers, did I steal the format of this entry from? (ie: "That...")

(Harrison Ford and Sean Young 
on the set of Bladerunner; buzzfeed.com)

For the next few days, I think I will provide a summary of various aspects of 2012. Let's start small.

Things I Regret Purchasing in 2012

1. A purse with an abstract motif that I did not inspect carefully enough before buying. I thought it was flowers? Fish? Something? As my friend Joe helpfully pointed out several weeks later, it is skulls. SKULLS. I did not want a purse with skulls on it.

Oh, if anyone out there wants a purse with skulls on it, I'm happy to sell it to you for a nominal price! I can send you pictures so that you do not fall into a regrettable purchase as well.

2. Jeans one size too small. Intentionally, as motivation to lose weight. Self-fat-shaming, thy name is Greta. The jeans aren't even really that great; I dunno why I thought I would see them as a goal.

3. Three-inch, electric blue heels. The style was named Greta, and I am enough of a narcissist to love all things that share my name. When was I ever going to wear these things, I who avoid at all costs wearing shoes with heels even half that height? No idea. Meryl acted as a primeval force of reason when she chewed these shoes beyond recognition.

4. Two seven-packs of men's white t-shirts. No one needs 14 of those things, even if they are really comfy.

5. Tofu, three times, because I did not eat it. This is confusing and counter-intuitive, since I do actually like tofu, and it's not like it is hard to prepare. But I just forgot to eat it, somehow. And I felt really self-conscious making it for Cris, the same way I feel self-conscious listening to music I love in front of other people.

Things I Do Not Regret Purchasing

1. Men's white dress shirt. I truly maintain that, someday, I will make it into an amazing tunic thing. 

2. Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds CD. Gaaaah such a good album.

3. A ringholder shaped like a giraffe. I've worn the same two rings every day for at least five years, and every night, a giraffe wears my rings around its neck while I sleep, you guys. I hope it goes out and has adventures. Also, now I don't lose my rings in the detritus of earrings and receipts on top of my dresser.

4. Meryl's new memory foam dog bed. I did not think I would ever purchase anything made of memory foam for an animal, because, come on, animals don't care about memory foam. Fun fact: You know who cares about memory foam? Meryl the hound. She loves it. 

See also: dog sweaters, though that's more because I think it's funny to watch the dogs walking around wearing them.

5. Coffee. So, so much coffee. Actually, maybe this should go in a third category: "Things I Purchased With Which I Have a Love/Hate Relationship." I needed the coffee, and it was delicious, but my caffeine addiction has gotten out of control. 

Lately, I have been drinking a fair amount of coffee with other people, catching up on the past three years and actually developing friendships. It's been nice. I don't regret buying too many lattes and developing a crippling caffeine addiction, for that.

If you've suffered through this whole thing, here is your reward. Or maybe your punishment, depending on how you feel about puns.

As promised: the dogs in sweaters. It is really hard to get them to face the same way at any time and stop fidgeting, but you get the idea.

Here is another angle of Julie, so you can appreciate both her roundness and her sweater.

As a bonus: the dogs NOT in sweaters.

I've started like four blog entries in the past six days and left them as drafts. All of them were pretty modular, so I will combine parts of them here:


I.
I think the chia pet may be the embodiment of several things that are wrong.

1. WHO WANTS THIS AS A PART OF THEIR LIVES? Look at it. If I want a ridiculous decoration, I'll start collecting novelty nutcrackers or something.

2. Chia is incredibly nutritionally dense. Per anecdotes I have heard (trust them accordingly), Aztec soldiers used to eat a handful of chia seeds to keep themselves going for like 24 hours at a time. It has a ton of protein, omega fatty acids, and nutrients, and it makes (from what I hear) a delicious gelatin-like suspension that you can use as a base for smoothies, in addition to just eating the seeds as-is. This is a food that could probably do a lot for the world. Instead, it is the hair for head-shaped terracotta planters.

See also: Amaranth: not just a purty purple flower.

II.

I'd like to stress that I hope we can all agree that "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is creepy. INTERESTING FACT: the two vocal parts were not designated as "man" and "woman" or anything like that; instead, they are labeled "wolf" and "mouse."

III.
So my parents have been getting Christmas cards, with the requisite chatty Christmas letters, from a ton of family friends. Ok, maybe like four. But still. It's weird. I don't think my family has ever sent out a Christmas letter, because we're just not chatty people. I appreciate people who keep their letter to one page, preferably without margin adjustment, because I think it shows skill. Maybe the next step is to shorten it even further, by doing holiday limericks or something. Try this at home, readers!

IV.
Sewing gives me a profound sense of agency. Like, oh, you mean these pants used to be too long? BAM. Altered -- by me. I have changed the world to fit my needs.

V.
The days immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting were interesting, because you got to watch everyone construct completely one-sided explanations. Half the world was like, Mental illness made him do it! The other half was like, Guns made him do it! I think some of that has tempered and moderated a bit, but it was a weird time.

VI.
I'm like 90% sure that autism/Asperger's is not a mental illness and is in no way linked to violent behavior. So let's all get on the same page with that. And can we all finally admit that mental illness really truly does exist? Like, it's not just people not trying hard enough. I've spent years lobbying that fact and had a surprisingly hard time with it.