I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. I can't assume that something doesn't make sense just because I don't understand it. (Or that something doesn't exist just because I can't see it. Or that something is broken just because I can't make it work.)

I also think it's important to remember that not everything is of monumental significance.

Think about how many things are happening right this second. I'm taking up probably too much space at this table in the library, partly writing this and partly helping my friend with his paper and partly trying to convince him to switch into my math class next semester and flirting over state lines with a handsome santa (SIDE NOTE: I love texting only because you can filter out people who can't construct a sentence) and drinking coffee and taking my shoes off and then putting them back on and then taking them off again, on repeat. All around campus people are taking finals and studying and hanging out and eating and laughing and trying to park. You're doing whatever it is you're doing. People all over the world are catching buses and riding trains and hailing cabs and boarding airplanes and sailing boats. People are pouring concrete and planting trees and standing in line for movie tickets and changing lightbulbs and fixing shingles and painting pictures. There's a lawyer briefing someone, there's a mommy changing a diaper, there's an addict scoring. A little girl is learning how to play the ukelele. A middle-aged man is grading papers at his wife's side in intensive care. People are singing songs and honking horns and sitting quietly in parks. They're sweeping floors and feeding elephants and lifting weights. They're climbing mountains and taking pictures and turning pages and plowing fields. And mountains are crumbling and plates are shifting and continents are sinking and plants are growing and glaciers are doing whatever it is that glaciers do. And things have been happening for, like, a bajillion years. Thereabouts.

Think about how when someone asks you what you're doing and you say "Nothing" you're lying, because you're always doing something. Then times that by how many people are on the planet. Then times THAT by how many living things period are on the planet. Then take that ginormous number and multiply it by the number of things that go through a brain at any given moment, by all the steps in every process for everything ever. Plus all the stuff happening on the cellular level, the atomic level, you know what I mean, you guys are all scientists. Then. Then you have to add all the stuff in the air and in the sky and in space and beyond space and a little after that even. (I took the last part of my math final today, by the way. That's why this math is so accurate. I've been practicing.)

Obviously besides Home Alone 2 en Espanol, and well okay, possibly the "Puberty and You! [And Your Whole Class! Including That One Boy Who Will Sigh Wearily, Sit Back in His Chair and Say 'Man, it Must Be Hard Being a Girl!']," this is the best thing I ever had to watch in school:





So I don't really believe in coincidence? But not because I think everything that happens is meaningful and important. I just think there's so much going on all very close together that there's no way we're not all connected to everything else. Some things happen for little teeny tiny reasons. And sometimes big things happen for a whole mess of little teeny tiny reasons all together. Which brings me, I think?, to the point I wasn't sure I was making, which is:

The reason she looks so irritated is that right as I took this picture I informed her that she was not, in fact, a book. Also I asked her if she wouldn't like to sit somewhere more comfortable, maybe in a place where her tummy would fit? Also it is because that is what she always looks like.

broken hearts hurt but they make us strong

My blood is probably 105% sugar right now.
Because that's what Christmas is about.
(Gaining several pounds of cookie weight so that when you go back to eating normally after the New Year you automatically lose it and fulfill a resolution. Achieving goals is really important, you guys. Remember that.)

So around this time last year my brother came to visit me and my friend and I took him out in Manhattan for his birthday. (Ostensibly. The real reason I made him come was to force him to pay for half my mom's Christmas present and to use his employee discount to get this jacket I really wanted. You wish I was your sister.) There were Santas EVERYWHERE. And none of us had any idea what was going on. Because we are uncultured and unworldly and had never heard of Santacon. We weren't near the real action but Santas and elves and some Grinches filtered in and out of the bars we perched at and my brother groped a man dressed as the Pope. And that made me happy, because for once I wasn't the one making inappropriate advances at a man of the cloth.

Anyway this year I was super excited to participate! No, just kidding. I mean I did participate and it was fun, but I did it less out of excitement and more because this is the kind of shit you get roped into when you chill with sorority girls from South Carolina. They LOVE a good crazy outfit and some dranks. The dranks would be the reason I don't have any pictures. NOT BECAUSE OF TOO MANY, or anything. But because of, you know, holding them. Also holding hands with Santas. And you really need a hand free to put your fake phone number into the Santas' phones under the name "Mrs. Claws" because, cat joke, get it. The whole thing seems kind of fratty and dumb to me and I imagine a lot of people get irritated with drunken Santas stumbling through the streets and trains BUT. I got to wear a Santa hat with a giant green glittery bow sewed on, so. Also three of us ironed "HO" on big red man sweatsuits (on top of like 3 other layers, DECEMBER IS COLD GIRLS) and some Asian tourists asked to take a picture with us. So I'm famous now. So see you losers never. I feel bad about not being able to show you guys how seriously cute I was as 1/3 of Santa's weather-appropriately-dressed hos so here is a picture of What I Wore to Take My History Final Today, featuring my lucky tie-dye that I slept in last night and yesterday's flattened curls and my legs looking really fucking weird:

I feel like that makes up for it. We STILL have no Christmas decorations up, which is especially sad when even my Jewish friends have Christmas tree pictures on their walls:

See it? Oh what? Did the really awesome birthday present I hand-crafted for her take up most of the picture? Whoops.

Hmm. What else. On Friday I spent all morning and most of the afternoon Christmas shopping and stalking the Union Square Holiday Market for free fudge while other people, like, I don't know. Went to their jobs or something stupid. It was really nice to spend a day alone because I feel like I don't get many opportunities to take myself out on special dates lately. Later we "baked cookies" to bring to a holiday party/cookie exchange right after Santacon, which somehow turned out to mean making best friends with 900,000 of Astoria's local dollar store merchants in search of a gingerbread man cookie cutter and then driving around Flushing in the middle of the night. In New Haven on Sunday night something sort of scary happened which will probably have its own post later. Monday class was cancelled which would have been nicer had it not been for kind of a sad reason so I spent all day studying, yesterday I crushed the first part of my math final and got my speech grade (100 obviously) and had the nicest friend date ever, and today I took another final and am at this very moment writing an extremely long and rambling blog instead of studying more math for tomorrow.

I have to wonder about the folks whose immediate reaction to such heartbreak, to such senseless tragedy is to get right online and plaster social media with political memes.

How terribly, terribly sad. All around. I can't even really wrap my head around it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who just wants to do something, but what do you do, right? If you didn't know, the PTAs are having a snowflake drive for the Sandy Hook kiddos so that their new school can be decorated like a Winter Wonderland, and so they'll hopefully know how loved and supported they are by everyone around the country. A bunch of information will come up on google, but here's the address to mail snowflakes to:

Connecticut PTSA
60 Connolly Parkway
Building 12, Suite 103
Hamden, CT 06514

It's a small thing, but think about how magical it will be for those babies to walk into a winter wonderland filled with all different kinds of snowflakes from people who are thinking of them. I can personally attest to how excited kids get about just a gym filled with paper snowflakes, so.
All you need to contribute is some paper and a stamp.
And LOTS of glitter, if you are anything like me.



Edit:  I just need to say how sad I am. And how sick. And how helpless I feel. Even though it's absolutely not about me, I need to say it. And I feel so dumb and selfish because I just had the most fun weekend and have so many wonderful things to look forward to, but none of it seems to matter at all right now and I keep bursting into random tears over my finals. And I know that terrible things happen to innocent people every day, obviously. But forty-five minutes from my house? In my state? In my country? What am I doing wrong that this is allowed to happen? Why doesn't everything bad in the world make me feel this sad? Why am I thinking so selfishly when there are grieving families and devastated little lives?

I wrote this like two years ago: "The thing I like least about tragedy is the way the people in its peripherals tend to act out, drawing attention to themselves. The way they siphon what they can't get enough of otherwise. What I like least of all are the people who make the sidelines their homes, never contributing, always feeding."

And I still feel the same. But while climbing up on top of other people's tragedies like they're your personal soapboxes is inappropriate and insensitive and just wrong, when something like this happens to innocents and their families are left to grieve, it should become personal for us too. We should feel deeply for them, and it's okay to feel for ourselves too. Because, and I just keep thinking this over and over, there but for the grace of God go us.

I just want to crawl into these people's hearts and light them up. And I just had to say this.

Today feels like Friday and I like it a lot. There's no class on real Friday and I just now decided I'm skipping tomorrow, because the thought of coming all the way here just to listen to a bunch of painfully terrible speeches that are going to get better grades than mine because the "controversial" topics they chose include "plastic bags are bad for the environment" and "seriously, plastic bags are bad for the environment" and I, you know, did what the professor asked and picked a topic that people actually disagree on but made the mistake of having an opinion that doesn't involve keeping poor people poor and capitalizing on their exploitation, an opinion she quite obviously does not share. What a terrible sentence. Where was I going? Oh yes. Truancy. Plus that means I can get into the city earlier this weekend, Merry Christmas to me.

So, I have two friends right? Ugh, shut up, I have more than two friends. Cats = friends, right? Right. Right, so in this story there are two friends. Three if you include me. So. In this story there are three friends and two of them are mine, unless I count myself as a friend. Which I do, because obviously. One of the friends is a little older, and she's trying to have a baby. As in, like, she's trying to get pregnant, not she's been trying to give birth for an indeterminate amount of time before the start of the story. Actually you know what, this isn't really a story. It's more just a bunch of different situations next to each other. I don't know what this is. I don't know what anything is. The friend who is older and wants to grow a human in her ladypieces has been my friend for longer than the third friend (second friend? other friend? friend who hasn't been introduced into the story yet? except at the beginning when I introduced the friends?) and so she confides more things in me than the third friend. Since, as you know, I am a person with a face that people instinctively trust and love and admire and want to rub their own faces against. So I know about the baby-growing trials and tribulations but no one else really does. Okay okay, this is where third friend comes in. Third friend is eighteen (3f=18, math you guys, it's a thing) and to protect third friend's privacy I will not reveal third friend's hair color or middle name or gender. Well, so: third friend is pregnant. And just found out. And has told first friend, but not me. (Confusing, I know, considering my aforementioned trustworthy face, but you know. Mysteries of the universe and all.) So first friend wants to be pregnant, second friend I guess is me although I'm not sure when that happened, wouldn't I be third friend? What happened here?, and third friend is going to have a baby and is not sure it's something she wants. (Damn. Gave away third friend's gender.) Sounds like the plot to one of those pink-or-otherwise-brightly-colored novels written for beach consumption, no? Only it's not really much of a plot, because I have almost nothing to do with any of this and each friend has almost nothing to do with the other's situation. Unless first friend knocked up third friend, and that would be a different-colored novel I think. It's just an interesting thing to be underlying this triangle, I think. And what is more scary than interesting is that I keep wanting to blurt out "Why doesn't third friend just give her baby to first friend? SOLUTIONS." Except I know that would be inappropriate. Also, not a real solution. So. Anyway this is what my hair looks like today:

Hairspray is bad for the environment, jerks.
Also plastic bags. WHO KNEW.

Please to be doing this survey. It's not that I care what you think, but I am kind of curious.
And Amerifriends can keep their smart comments about survey fever rubbing off on me to THEMSELVES. I mean it.

you can be henry miller and i'll be anais nin

I love mornings. I like the word "morning."
Just one letter away from loss and a reminder of the room for growth because of it.
Christmas morning is only a few weeks away and the only things I've blogged about are less-than-perfect grades and sex slaves. I mean really Lindsay. Obviously Christmas is not a suspension of everything unfortunate in the world but it is a good time to take all the little pieces of love in your life in both hands and smoosh it up against your heart. We should do this all the time, really, but it is a lot nicer with twinkly lights everywhere.

We haven't put any Christmas decorations up at my house yet but luckily my neighbors are with the program and I can see their lights from my bedroom window at night. (There are these strategically placed bushes in front of my window which allow me to see out and no one to see in. Which would be more awesome if there were something for me to spy on besides coyotes. You guys. One time a deer walked right up onto my deck while I was sitting out there. WHAT am I talking about.)

Misty mornings.

(SO FOGGY. I wasn't driving, so relax. 

I'm not that reckless you guys, have a little faith.)

Mornings when it's Thanksgiving and your pumpkins come out 

looking a little bit more like actual pumpkins.

(I'm obsessed with these oreo truffles. 

Coming soon: Christmas/New Year/Birthday versions. 

YOU'RE EXCITED.)

Mornings when you make your brother come over 

and assist you on Top Secret Missions.

Mornings when the sky is as purple as the grass that grows in a place you used to love.

Mornings when you just don't feel like washing your hair.

So you don't. And it's fine. Also economical.

Mornings that lead to nights filled with fairy lights.

And some little pieces of love in between:

"I have a secret

which I have learned how to read inside myself;

if I told it to you,

it would make you laugh.

My two eyes

are maps of the planet—

I see everything

and nothing upsets me.

I will be around

when you aren’t thinking about me,

without hair or a neck,   

without a nose and cheeks   

no reputation—

there won’t be anything.

My heart is naked

and no one can put clothes on it,   

and nothing can be put on

that will not immediately fall off.

But if I go away

without giving you a name to remember me with,

how will I find

the right dream to return to?

Je suis un oiseau   

Enchanté:

Amour que Dieu

A inventé."

(I am a bird 

which God made.)

Thomas Merton

Who remembers that episode of Gilmore Girls where Rory gets in trouble at Yale for using the same material for two separate assignments in two separate classes? Poor, overworked Rory. I've never personally done that, mostly out of fear of getting in trouble but partly also because I am extremely ethical. Also hardworking. Also, you know, not a student at Yale. Actually no mostly it's just the getting in trouble thing. I'm the worst. Anyway I have another speech coming up and had a research paper due today so I figured I'd just do them both on the same topic. (I'm sure people do this all the time, but it really is kind of a big deal to me. I even feel like I shouldn't write about it here. It just seems so slimy! Make me feel better about this immediately.) Don't worry though, karma punished me for cheating (kind of! it's really only kind of cheating) by making this research as monstrous as possible. The sex industry is not pretty, folks. If you were unsure. I'm not hating on women (or men) who are prostituting themselves or even those that make porn or pose for smutty photos or anything like that. What I have a problem with is the violence in the sex industry, the ill-treatment of women, sex trafficking, and the social constructs that - for the women for whom it is in their minds a choice to partake in this industry - allow selling your body for sex to be a choice in the first place. Anyway. I handed the paper in this morning and honestly I'm glad to be rid of it. Here is what I wish I could have handed in:


"Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world."
1) Not a real argument, because 2) That's like observing that "The heater has been broken since we moved in." Just because it's been broken for a long time doesn't mean we shouldn't fix it. IT'S COLD, BRO. 3) Doing something for a long time makes it okay? You're totally right. By the way can you get your slave to run me over a cup of sugar later? You're the best. 4) Not a real argument. Next.

"Prostitution is going to happen anyway. We should tax it."
omfg. "The planet is going to explode anyway. We might as well pollute it." "I'm going to die eventually anyway. I might as well drink Drano."

"We should put a 'sin tax' on drugs, gambling and prostitution."
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong.

"Blah blah blah tax it blah."
Aside from the fact that that would mean assigning a monetary value to sex acts/rights to a human body, how can you possibly know that the taxes brought in would make up for the cost of regulation?

"But it would make the prostitutes safer!"
Oh hi, person born yesterday! How are you enjoying your first day on Earth? When you've updated yourself on civilization, run right back and let me know how much faith you have that legalization would wrap a warm, protective blanket of policy around prostituted women.

And my personal favorite:  
"You can't tell people what to do with their own body. It's unconstitutional."
Dear sir, turn that noise right the fuck down. And do not turn it back up again until you have educated yourself enough to know what you're talking about.

I just realized how dirty his feet are. I promise I don't live in squalor.

one step closer to that pulitzer

I was going to attempt to do a week of "What I Wore" but after a few days I realized that perhaps pictures of me in my bedroom at five in the morning aren't terribly interesting. And also I am not particularly fashionable, but rather a classic, timeless beauty-having type. As you know. But exactly TWO persons suggested I might like doing outfit posts and really, any excuse to take pictures of and admire myself.  Maybe definitely should fix this camera situation and make effort to take pictures in places slightly more exciting than my bedroom. [I have left this space for you to insert your own pun about my bedroom being a VERY exciting place. You see, I am always thinking of you.]

  Paint, sweat, black mold, soil, plaster dust/drywall dust/canyon dust/sawdust, clay, kid boogers, mud - lots of substances memories in the fibers of that sweatshirt. But as the memories are many years old all germy properties are neutralized. SCIENCE. Also sweatshirts are a conveniently transcendent pajama/daytime clothing item.

sweatshirt - courtesy of nccc. get things done, plus get a sweatshirt. 

t shirt - don't remember

jeans - don't remember

shoes - chanel slingbacks (not pictured)

 dress - target/goodwill

cardigan - not sure, possibly stolen from roommate

shoes - diamonds in the soles of (not pictured)

 

 dress - goodwill/target

cardigan - same one. still probably stolen. although i can hardly be blamed for theft when things are all mixed in together. also because i black out when i steal things.

shoes - glass slippers, cinderella-style (not pictured)

sweater - knitted by angels in forever 21 factory

earrings - "let's move in together" present from ex boyfriend. cute despite questionable karma of having hurt feelings of giver. 

shoes - channeling socrates, not wearing any

 shirt? dress? - goodwill/h&m

other shirt - old navy

shoes - ruby, like dorothy's (not pictured)

Hm. Not exactly sure how successful this experiment was. Let me know in the comments below - oh, nope.

[I'm about to complain for a minute, skip this if you want.]

You guys. I feel so annoying about this, but one of my professors gave me a completely unfair grade on an assignment I recently did. The reason I feel annoying about it is because I got a 98. I know I know, wah wah wah. But I earned a 100, I know I definitely did. And in the comments on the grading sheet she wrote how wonderful (exact words: vivid, interesting, relevant, engaging, excellent) it was, nothing about why she'd taken points off, and at the end of my speech (the assignment) I got a standing ovation from the class INCLUDING the people of the stoned/disinterested/asleep variety. Listen, I give BOMB speeches. For real. It's the universe making up for me being completely inept in every other social arena. If this class weren't a requirement I wouldn't need it, which is why it is burning. my. ass even more that the professor is so... whatever she is. I like her fine, she's just outrageously unorganized (ie, losing people's work, insisting that people never turned things in even though they are holding in their hands the exact work that she has already graded and handed back) and I am beginning to think she must not like me so much because it's not like she's grading me harder than everyone else, which might be equally unfair but at least would be something I could understand. Actually I'd appreciate that because then I'd be forced to improve and might actually get something out of the course. But she's not, and as I've looked back over other assignments I'm realizing that any point I have ever lost has been either arbitrarily taken off or has been the result of her being unclear about what she wanted. Oh oh! AND on this particular assignment she had originally written "10/10" next to what she'd taken points off off and then gone back and changed it. UM. And the icing on her poor communication cake is that she's legally deaf, which doesn't necessarily impair a person's ability to effectively communicate or teach but in her case means that any and every conversation you have with her involves repeating yourself nine hundred times because first it's that she actually can't hear you and then that she's just a hot mess. Anyway I have to meet with her to talk about my grade and the fact that she's lost another one of my take-home tests and hopefully this scheduled conversation goes better than our other ones, because I hate turning things into "situations" but I absolutely fucking will if someone's just not doing their job. And I like her as a lady. I really do. Sigh. Awkward.

Ultimately of course this doesn't actually matter, and I know that and have had to deal with far more difficult people in far more serious situations and don't worry, yes I am feeling as guilty as ever about complaining about my first world problems because at least I have a toilet (which, let me take a minute to complain about that too: LADIES. WTH. Wipe the seat. God.) but still. Boo hoo, 98.

/complaining

Also I feel I must share this with you, as it is an age-old question that I myself have been faced with THREE TIMES so far in my twenties: How do you know if you're on a date with a lesbian or if you're just two pretty girls hanging out? It makes me feel enormously better that it's not just me this happens to, although full disclosure requires me to admit that I have definitely encouraged said Sapphic sisters in these "Are we girlfriends or are we, you know, girlfriends?" situations. I have to keep reminding myself that there's a difference between being "open-minded" about, hrrrm, "engaging in certain activities" and being gay and that I need to get a grip because let's be real, I'm marrying a boy. Anyway Samantha Irby is my favorite and I'd definitely go on an on-purpose date with her. SO OH HEY, SAM!

"awkward adolescence" link-up with delirious rhapsody!

Gather round, friends – and be merry! for today I share with you the story of my journey from this:

To this:

(@ delirious-rhapsody)

Although I feel a bit fraudulent participating in this sharing of awkward adolescence, since mine doesn’t appear to have ended yet. My skin is still shit, and when feelings happen I am still mystified to the point of tears or sulking or yelling or a snack coma. And I never did get used to my changing body. Huh. In any case, feast your eyes on the photographs of my rise to power. Er, adulthood. Errr, quasi-adulthood.

It's important to note that I dressed mySELF like an old lady. I think I was going for "angst-y poet."

Clearly my brother takes me very, very seriously. 

I'm on the far right, obviously. First girlfriends. Awes.

CLOGS. BAND.

Nailing it, as always, the summer before eighth grade. And those are fake teeth.

Because I felt my real ones weren't tragic enough.

On the way to the eighth grade formal, where I spent the whole night sitting with a boy I liked spilling things onto his Stain Dockers and giggling. He had asked me to be his date to the dance? And I really, really liked him so that was awesome. Then almost immediately stopped liking him and told him I just wanted to go to the dance with my friends. And then liked him again and spent the whole night with him anyway. And then we went to different high schools and I think he's a doctor now. There's a lesson in there, I think. And that lesson is that Stain Dockers are neat and fun.

Freshman year I mostly hung around this girl, who was awesome plus in college so was made even more awesome in my ninth-grade mind. (She lived upstairs from me and ours moms were friends, so wasn't like college-student-creepily-hangs-around-high-schoolers scenario. Calm down.) She taught me all about good music and used to let me come to work with her at a bookstore and do the register and that it was okay to be awkward because it made you more awesome.

Wore a lot of band t shirts? Even though hated going to the concerts. 

Also thought school was boring. The fact that I graduated is a testament to my black magic skills. Which is why I am now taking elementary algebra at twenty-three. THANKS A LOT, ADOLESCENT LINDSAY.

Also wore my brother's t shirts a lot. And spent probably too much time wandering around downtown, which at the time I felt was very glamorous. 

Went to Kansas City a bunch of times? Yeah, I don't know. LOOK HOW LITTLE MY EYEBROWS ARE. WHY. (PS: Valerie, sorry I dragged your awkward adolescence into this. Also thank you because most of these pictures are ones you took.)

Why?

OH. Suddenly remember why.

 "Riding in Vans with Mr. Bestor." 

Being extraordinarily helpful at a food pantry.

Awkwardly had too many dates to junior prom. Showed up with two boys and a girl, both boys thought they were my date when one of them was actually supposed to be for her? Unclear in memory. Anyway was very effective way to make recent ex-boyfriend jealous. He threw up on a fake horse in a stable at the castle where prom was. True story.

Awkwardly dated awkward boys.

Not him though, I think he was gay. Also don't remember who he was. BUT CHECK MY STATE OFFICER PIN. You're impressed, it's fine.

That's enough I think. In other news I scheduled an outfit post for tomorrow (I KNOW EXCITING RIGHT) that I was going to do today but! I thought this sounded like more fun. And so I scheduled it for you all, because while I love you very much I am very busy and important and not the owner of a smartphone. Happy weekend!