i know. i'm blushing.

Mmm, cereal. My go-to breakfast or mid-day snack (or dinner, I won’t lie). Earlier this week, I got home from school, poured myself a giant bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and sat down in front of the TV to relax for a few. As I polished off the last sugar-coated square, I noticed something kind of weird. A tiny dark clump floating in the now sugar-saturated milk. I thought, “It’s probably just a clump of cinnamon or maybe a little broken off chunk of cereal.” But it looked odd enough that I scooped it up into my spoon and went to examine it under better light.

I don’t know if I’m glad or regretful that I did that.

Dead bug. Chilling on my spoon. In a little puddle of milk. It was a creepy, brown, segmented bug with about a million legs packed on to it’s tiny body. Who cares if it was probably only about 1/16 of an inch and you needed a magnifying glass to really see it, it still completely grossed me out. I sat there looking at my bowl of sugary milk, freshly eaten, and I wondered how many of those critters made it down the hatch into my stomach.

Gross. After inspecting the bag and finding a tiny hole in the bottom, I threw it out, sprayed down the shelves in the cupboard, and kind of swore off cereal for a while.

And now I sit here, days later, stomach rumbling, so hungry for breakfast, craving some cereal, but too afraid to try. I wish I could think of it as camping, where you don’t really care if a bug or two joins you for your meal. But that mental game isn’t helping. I just really prefer it if there aren’t any bugs in my cereal. Or at least that I’m unaware of their presence.

PS. Don’t google “bug in cereal” unless you want an adventure. Apparently, my 1/16″ bug is nothing.

Everyone who told me that I wouldn’t need air conditioning in Washington, except for maybe three days a year, was flat out lying.

Just putting that out there.

Also, even if I did only need it for three days a year, those would be the three happiest days of my life, sitting in the comfort of my cold, air-conditioned home while the rest of the world boiled away outside.

It’s 5 o’clock at night, 93 degrees outside, and probably 193 degrees here in my top-floor apartment.

.. .. ..

Alright. I’m done whining. For now. Thanks for listening. Back to FNL.

We had some house guests a couple weeks ago who introduced us to Friday Night Lights, and now we can’t stop watching. We burned through the first two seasons in two weeks and started on season three tonight. (So far, season one wins.) My point in telling you all that is this: These past two weeks of total Texas immersion has begun messing with our brains. I swear we’ve both started talking with a Southern drawl. It may be slight, but it’s there, and it’s kinda freaking me out. Guess I’m doing my mama proud.

I just found this:

I happened upon some of my old journal entries from many years back, during some of my darker days when just being alive was hard work, and this was one of the things I found.

It’s so strange and funny, and sometimes shocking, to read things written in the past. Because I don’t think I always realized what I was saying… how true and real the things I hoped for could be. How now, years later, I’d still be me, but be so different. That I’d have such a new view. That Me Now would be reading these words from a place that Me Then would have wanted to be. That it’s possible to grow. That those growing pains back then were just a part of the whole, long, messy process. They were a part of my “failing and continuing on anyway.” They were—in some terribly inconvenient and uncomfortable way—a part of my dream.

Hey! My sidebar music player is back! And what’s amazing is that Bryant wasn’t even home to help me figure out how to get the music pumping. I actually did it BY MYSELF. ~Whoa~ Although, he was the one who helped me download it and connect it up and do basically all the confusing stuff I find so intimidating. That was over a month ago. And it’s taken me this long to put it in the sidebar. But still. I feel proud.

And I love the song I’ve got playing there now, in case you couldn’t tell.

I’m really excited about my recent addition. I’ve had kind of mixed luck with my plants lately, though. I’m hoping that since a succulent can survive the desert, it will also be able to survive me.

. . .

Bryant and I were stopped at a red light when a car pulled up next to us. The passengers caught my eye. A mother and her son were having a very animated conversation. When my gaze met with theirs, they looked suddenly surprised and erupted into a huge fit of laughter. The son, with arms flailing, very clearly shouted the words “I TOLD YOU!” The mother quickly averted her gaze from mine and, looking down, tried unsuccessfully to hold back her amusement.

. . .

I stood in the aisle of the grocery store debating “to buy, or not to buy” when a couple with their two teenage kids rolled by me and started to laugh. As the mother passed in front of me she said to her husband under her breath, “I guess I was wrong!” It was hard to make out his response through his laughter. It was something like “it’s a girl!” Or maybe “good girl!” I don’t really know. But “girl” definitely was in there.

. . .

Stuff like this happens around me all the time—maybe it does to everyone—but for some reason when it happens to me, my hyperactive paranoia gland kicks into gear. I become convinced that people are laughing because they couldn’t tell if I was a guy or a girl. I become super self-conscious about my short hair.

Then anger pours into me, and I try to make these laughing strangers feel as uncomfortable as possible. I stare them down (in the case of the car at the stop light) or I walk right up to them and try to give them as much eye contact as possible while I peruse items on the shelf where they’re standing (in the case of the grocery store). The laugher always stops and they awkwardly avoid my gaze.

They were probably laughing about something totally unrelated and didn’t even notice me. That is, they didn’t notice me until I became the freak in the grocery store who stares strangers down for no apparent reason. No wonder their laughter stops and they try to avoid my gaze.

It’s ridiculous. It’s disgustingly egocentric of me to think that the whole world is having a laugh at my expense. There are millions of other more plausible reasons they could be laughing. But I have a really hard time controlling my reaction. I become convinced that me and my short hair have just become the butt of their joke. Call me crazy, but I react this way every time. And I have a really hard time recovering from it. The grocery store thing just happened less than an hour ago and I’m only barely emerging from my cloud of embarrassment and anger.

They probably weren’t laughing at me. But maybe they were. Weren’t you ever a teenager hanging out with your friends when someone spots a stranger who seems a bit gender ambiguous? Everyone gets a real kick trying to figure out what “it” is. I’ve been with that group before, I’m sorry to say. More than once. It’s something people find hilariously awkward. It’s possible that I could be on the receiving end of that joke, considering that I’ve been on the giving end of it before.

However, whether I’m the object of their jokes or not isn’t really the issue for me (despite the fact that it does hurt my feelings). This is something that irritated me even when I had hair long enough to ensure that everyone felt confident about my gender. I know that there are times that people laugh at the expense of others, and whether it’s at my expense or not, it infuriates me. What makes me so angry is the sense of superiority the laughers have… their total lack of respect for another human being. They laugh when someone looks different, when someone has a birth defect, when someone has a deformity, when someone’s hair is too short. Really? Is it really that hilarious to discover that people different from you exist in this world? And what I find totally intolerable is the idea that parents would be laughing along with their children. What amazing examples these adults are to their budding bigots.

Wow, the rage. …Talk about a sense of superiority… Sorry, I’ll come down now. But can you see? This is what happens to me. Total anger. Not healthy, especially considering it stems from paranoia. I have got to figure out a way to get over this, especially because I actually like my hair and don’t plan on growing it out any time soon. Why am I so self-conscious of it?

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Alice Cooper – “School’s Out”

School’s out. Finished the quarter. Happy with the work I did. Amazed at how much I learned. Thrilled to be done.

I always get “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper stuck in my head at this time of year. Cooper was once asked what the greatest three minutes of his life were. His response:

There’s two times during the year. One is Christmas morning, when you’re just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you’re sitting there and it’s like a slow fuse burning. I said, “If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it’s going to be so big.” *

What’s funny is even after all these years, that feeling doesn’t change. Those last seconds, when you gather your bag, walk to the front, hand your exam to the professor, and then float as you push open the door of the lecture hall and walk into the sunlight… the release is unbelievable. And now, two days after my last exam, I keep getting that feeling of guilt for not using my time to catch up on reading, coupled with the surreal realization that there is no more reading to do.

Suddenly the things that were at the very bottom of the to-do list get promoted to the top. You never had time to do them before, and now they’re the most important things in front of you.

I like it a lot.

*I read that story here, which is the most reliable source in the world, I know. But it’s still a good story.

One of the nice things about this new apartment is all of the electrical outlets. There’s like one on every wall. Seriously. It’s a huge upgrade from our last apartment, which had about three outlets in the whole place—none of which were grounded.

So I’ve taken this opportunity to get something I’ve never had the luxury of using before: plug-in air fresheners. (Totally classy, I know. What can I say, we’re moving up in the world.)

This month’s flavor?

Vanilla. …Sweet, sugary, delicious vanilla.

And it’s killing me. Every time I walk into the living room, I’m hit with this amazing smell of sugar cookies and frosting. Bryant’s dying too. Every now and then you can hear one of us shout, “I want frosting!” I swear, this air freshener is going to make us each gain 20 pounds. We might have to get rid of it if we don’t get used to the smell soon.

Driving home yesterday, I was wishing I was better at remembering. Remembering everything. Foreign languages, cranial nerves, the names of my friends’ siblings, and just the regular details of living.

I was thinking about the stories old couples tell. I love hearing them recount how they met fifty years ago, the hard times they went through together, the funny thing that happened that random day so long ago. I wish I could remember all the details of my life like that. I know they don’t remember everything, and their retellings likely change with time, but I am still amazed at the minutia they can conjure up. I was thinking as I drove, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to remember everything? To be able to tell those stories to your grandkids, so they could learn how you “knew it was right,” how you got where you are, and all that other good stuff. But I already feel like I’ve forgotten so much. So many of my memories are already hazy. I’ve never been terribly confident in my memory.

Really, we are our memories. All we are is what we remember. If every day, we forgot everything we knew from the day before, we’d never survive. I mean literally. We wouldn’t be able to do anything—walk, eat, talk. What we remember makes us who we are.

There in my car, wishing I could remember everything better, this quote from my favorite book came to mind: “Student of memory. I remember some things and have forgotten others.” I’ve always loved that. Something about it just feels right. It’s calming. And sitting there at a stoplight, I realized it’s ok to forget some things. If we are what we remember, I’m glad I’ve forgotten some things. I thought of this woman I saw on a show a while back (coincidentally, I can’t remember what show) who remembered everything she ever saw. It wasn’t just a photographic memory. She actually remembered everything. She said it was a curse. To never have traumatizing memories fade? To never be able to quiet your mind? I hadn’t ever considered it before then, but it seems being able to forget is a blessing.

I am a student of memory. I forget some things and remember others. I learn from the things I keep. I just hope the things I remember and the things I forget are the right ones. And I hope the things I remember stay in tact in my mind for a long, long time to come. (And I hope the material from my anatomy class stays in tact at least one more week… long enough to pass my last two exams.)