Unacceptable

I turned on the radio today to 93.7 and heard "Walkin in a Winter Wonderland." I at first thought this was a joke, because it was 92 degrees outside today. Haha, snow jokes in the abnormal heat. Look out for global warming! But then, White Christmas, Blue Christmas, Jingle Bells and other Christmas songs came on during my drive home from Shadyside.

I almost rear ended an old man as I stared at my radio dial, convinced I had dipped into a time warp. It is October 5. October! This proves to me at long last that our society has become inextricably immersed in consumerism. There is no escape. The only hope is to send our children to Waldorf Schools or move to hippie communes at the Rainbow Gathering.

When I worked at K-mart, back in the day, they didn't get out the Christmas stuff until the day after Thanksgiving. As I was telling some teammates last night during our rugby carpool (see? Some people like to reduce their resource use!), on Black Friday, K-mart switched from the regular K-mart Radio Network music to the Christmas loop, about 18 songs heard again and again through New Year's. Shelbie and I used to stand before our registers and sing along to Bing three, four times per shift.

Because I was young and didn't have children yet at sixteen, they often scheduled me to work on holidays. I worked one Christmas Eve until closing at 8pm. Desperate shoppers flooded the store until the last seconds, screaming at us for being sold out of almost all items. "Wal-Mart would never treat me this way!" they would yell, and Beth the register supervisor would scream back, "Wal-Mart closed at 5!!!"

Teenagers just shouldn't have to work until 8pm on Christmas Eve and radio stations just shouldn't play Christmas music on October 5. I think my sister and brother-in-law have the right idea. They go away every year to a yoga retreat over Christmas. They have a magical spiritual experience with their family unit while the rest of us feed the corporate machine.

Why Do People Like Me?

It is flipping hot today. Over 85 degrees. In October! So I was riding my bike to work and sweating profusely. All of a sudden, my back started to feel really wet. I thought perhaps I had just finished a tough interval. It was, after all, very hot.

As it turns out, the soup (chicken corn chowder) in my backpack had come open and spilled all over everything. My copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma. My planner. My shirt. The other food in my lunch parcel. When I got to work, I had three students waiting at the computers already, so I had barely any time to blot. I just sort of stood between their large legs, like a Liliputian, scraping creamy gook from my shirt and possessions.

My boss came in and saw my pathetic state. She sent me off to clean up and mopped out my bookbag for me. I was able to save the apple and plum and trail mix and convinced some lady in the bathroom to help me scrub the back of my shirt. I am that girl who somehow gets soup on her back. Who spills soup on her back?

As I walked back into work, a man near me said, "Tired, huh?"

I thought, how can he know that??? but said nothing. He said, "Cause you made that little sigh. You know."

"Oh!" I said. "That."

As it turns out, he had caught me not amidst a sigh but trying to conceal a very large burp. You see, I got excited after I rinsed off the trail mix and ate it along my walk. It had raspberries AND chocolate in there!

So I'm the tutor with the 6'7", 310 pound students who has soup on her back and burps up almonds in the hallways. What a fine example I set for them.

Cat Fight

Every morning, a ginger cat walks up my driveway and looks at me through the dining room window. He seems to say, "I hate that you moved here." I think he spits on the driveway and then leaps up into my garden, where he shoves the soil around and then climbs into a sunny space to lay and stare at me for a few hours.

Right now, he is out there howling. Loud, obnoxious human baby sounding howls. What the hell is wrong with him? Is he angry at my pine bark mulch (a 4-inch layer over thick newspaper covering that is a failed attempt to halt weed growth)? Does this cat know that I have squirted Round Up on the neighboring leaves?

I kind of want to shoot it with a pellet gun, but we do not have such things at our house. It's standing right now with it's back arched like a Halloween cat howling its brains out. I just want it to go away.

Shoo! Get out of here! I think now we need a dog for certain.

Crunch Time

The thesis is due in 12 days. I am actually writing a bit today, which is good because I still have like 30 pages to go. I realized, when I almost opened the door to get the paper, that my writing habits are kind of disgusting.

I wake up at 7 and sit on the sofa with my laptop and a bowl of cereal. I don't put on clothes, so I'm usually wearing what I went to sleep in the night before. I don't brush my teeth or wash my face, either. You can imagine my horror when I looked down at myself and paused with a hand on the door knob. I was about to enter my front porch with bed head, moldy mouth, wearing just a tank top.

I'll be honest, on writing days I don't shower or do any hygiene things until about a half hour before I have to leave for work. Which leads me to fear the professional life I am choosing. When grad school is over, every day will be a writing day. I'll be a writer. Does this mean I'll stop showering and wearing clothes? I don't want it to be a big day when I put on socks.

Sometimes, I'll be doing a phone interview for my thesis or another project and giggle to myself, wondering if the person on the phone could possibly imagine the writer, me, at home with Cheerios stuck to my face grease. Why am I so disgusting? Maybe I should get an office somewhere just so I have motivation to put on pants in the morning.

Round Up

Upon visiting our house, my dad took one look at the wilderness in the backyard and declared I needed Round Up. "You got locust trees back there! You don't want anything to do with locust trees, Katy, " he said.

I have tried hacking and sawing away at the wilderness with an axe and a hoe and a rake. I got the low lying stuff. But the big weeds that have grown trunks and become trees? Those have to go.

I felt hesitant at the thought of using a chemical back there. A weed killer sounded to scary next to a plot of land I intended to plant full of food for my family. But I did a bit of research (not an exhaustive amount, but some) and felt as my dad did that Round Up would be ok.

So I bought some and squirted my wilderness on Sunday during the Steelers game. I was supposed to notice results within hours. Now, two days later, I sit in the dining room and stare at the back yard waiting for the weeds to fall. I think they have become a dim brown, but this might be my hopeful imagination. When will they turn yellow and crumple? What will I do with their carcasses? Is Soylent Green People????

I just can't bear the suspense.