Monthly Archives: March 2011

On Getting Old

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Today is Boo’s 20th birthday. Remember that, cause I’ll come back to it.

Because I have completed the bulk of the writing and editing of The Project of Doom, I took tonight off. I haven’t jacked with paper crap or shackled myself to the computer desk, pouring over a 35-page document that is still somehow missing SO MUCH information that I had wanted to infuse into it. I didn’t do that. I put it away.

Navy Bryan, his new fiance, Joanne, Zack and I went go eat Indian food. We sat at the table for hours and chatted over Chicken Tikka Marsala, Vindaloo and a carafe of wine. When we got back to the house, Zack and I crash landed on the couch. I started watching episodes of My So-Called Life–a show that has been patiently waiting for me in my Netflicks instant queue for quite some time.

While watching some quality TV, I flipped by twitter and had the following conversation with my friend Spring:

springmore: I was such a goody two-shoes in high school that I thought Angela Chase (My So-Called Life) was a bad girl.
sarahthe: @springmore I am watching that right now for the first time ever
springmore: @sarahthe I watched it tonight too! Thank God for Netflix. Most depressing thing ever: I sympathized with all the grown-ups.
sarahthe: @springmore haha. That’s how I know I’m really old. When I watch shows like this and I’m like, “Gawd, they’re getting audited!? That blows!”

The twitter conversation reminded me of a real life conversation I had with Dad a few years ago about my little brother Boo. (It’s only fair to mention a Dad story on Boo’s birthday. Don’t want the Dad vs. Boo count to get lopsided.)

A few years ago, in the midst of a stretch of dreary weather, Dad and I were talking on the phone about how the rain was ruining all our fun. Dad noted that the rain wasn’t slowing Boo down at all. He was going through a phase where playing sand volleyball in the middle of the night was the coolest thing in the world. Apparently Boo and his friends didn’t bother to stop playing volleyball just because it was raining and the courts were muddy. They just played anyway.

I was a little bit disgusted when Dad told me that. I was like, ugh. That would be so, so dirty. Gross. Dad laughed and said that it didn’t matter, because he hadn’t had to deal with the mess. In order to hose themselves off, Boo and his friends had driven to the local public pool, launched themselves over the fence, and jumped in.

Dad was laughing when he told me that story. The kind of laugh that a parent laughs when his grown-up child does something wrong, and maybe a teeny bit illegal, but also kind of funny. I laughed at the situation, too, but the first comment I made was something like, “Oh my God. I feel so sorry for whoever has to clean out the pool’s filters. There has to be a ton of sand in there now.”

Then Dad started to laugh even harder. He said that his reaction had been the very same one. He said he hadn’t realize how old I was, but that my statement had proven to him that I’d officially crossed over into adulthood. If I was more concerned about the pool filter than I was amused by the irreverence of youth, I was old. There was no two ways about it.

I was convinced at that moment that I was a real grown-up. But if I hadn’t been, I would have become convinced tonight. While watching a show about teenage angst, I was most emotionally moved by the fact that the show’s heroine’s parents were being audited by the IRS.

The first time I came to grips with my adulthood, it was because of Boo’s outrageous adventures. The second time was on Boo’s 20th birthday. This can’t be a coincidence.

So, Boo, happy 20th birthday. I hope that someday soon I will have the privilege of making you feel like an old person, as you have so consistently done for me. I love you. Welcome to your 20′s.

Scenes From Life: Project Planning

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Navy Bryan, Jennifer, and I have to give a presentation about gangs in our pediatrics class next week. Because we’ve been so wrapped up in this crazy public health project, we haven’t done a single thing for it. I would be concerned about our lack of effort, but this crazy public health project has left me with a sense of confidence and a “YOU CAN TRY TO BREAK ME, BUT I CAN TAKE WHATEVER YOU’VE GOT” kind of an attitude.

Jennifer, however, is a little more nervous about having done zero preparation. In an effort to get the ball rolling, she has started emailing us information about the project. She keeps sending out these massive word-vomit emails, and I keep ignoring them. Writing them makes her feel better, so she’s okay with that. And ignoring them makes me feel better, so we’re all getting what we need out of the situation.

During one of this morning’s classes, Navy Bryan got sucked into the emails. We (okay, they) were trying to find good resources to gather data for our presentation.

Navy Bryan: this seems like a good resource. it’s from the FBI’s website. Link to boring gang information that actually will be a good resource for us.

Jennifer: this seems like a good resource. it’s from youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFK6H_CcuX8 Sarah, where you at?

Sarah: are you asking where I’m at because I’m mentally absent from this class or because I haven’t dug out any material for this thing yet? that clarification is critical for me to be able to give you an accurate answer. :)

Jennifer: Um, both. But, if you noticed (which you did not – which means you are absent in general, not just from this class), I attached a clip to the music video ganster’s paradise.

That’s when I realized that Jennifer had awesomely suggested that we use this video for our gang presentation’s resource:

We are now seriously considering doing the entire presentation in rap form. I read a survey in Cosmo Magazine when I was about 15 years old that told me I have Michelle Pfeiffer’s bone structure. I’m pretty sure that means I’m particularly well suited to bring it.

On Night Terrors

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When I was younger, I used to have dreams where my dad would die. It was never particularly gruesome or anything, but he was dead nevertheless. This bothered me. I would wake up and not be able to tell my dreams from reality. I would remain terrified until I got out of bed, walked to my parents room, and saw my dad sleeping in his bed. A dad sleeping in bed is not a dead dad. And then I could go back to sleep.

Soon after I got married, I began to have death dreams again, but this time it was Zack who was dying. I have woken Zack up many a night with the tormented wales of a prematurely widowed spouse.

Because he is such a light sleeper, Zack always wakes up as soon as he hears me crying. He holds me as I cry for a until I calm down, waiting for the adrenaline to wear off enough to let me fall back to sleep. It take him very long to learn that the best way to soothe my frazzled nerves after a night terror is to hold me tight and tell me, over and over again, “It’s okay, I’m right here, I’m not dead. I’m right here.” And he always does just that.

Trick is, lately my night terrors have been not quite so terrifying. From Zack’s perspective, they are exactly the same. Out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, I wake him up after I’ve started some Oscar Nomination quality, gives-Job-a-run-for-his-money weeping in my sleep. He still holds me and tells me that he’s right there and everything will be okay, which I appreciate.

But inside the night terror, things have changed. Zack is no longer dying in my dreams. Not only that, but, from what I can remember after I wake up, the situations leading up to the weeping outburst are in no way equal to my reaction. For instance, these are the dream plots that preceded my last two sleep-weep sessions:

1.) My mom stepped on my head, and wouldn’t move her foot. She wasn’t hurting me, it was just, you know, weird.

2.) My friends threw me a surprise birthday party, but I had been mean to everyone all day. When I finally walked in, they all weakly mumbled ‘surprise’ in a sarcastic tone. Their hands were limply waving happy birthday flags; their lips were pursed.

Don’t get me wrong, both of these things are sad and weird. It’s just that neither one of them warrants the “I just found out my husband was killed on a special mission in WWII while I’m pregnant with our first child” kind of reactions they are eliciting.

Poor Zack. He had his wife-comforting routine perfected. He could practically counsel me through a death-dream without interrupting his REM cycle. But now when he wakes me up saying, “It’s okay, I’m right here!” I have to explain that IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE MY MOM HAD HER FOOT ON MY HEAD AND SHE WOULDN’T TAKE IT OFF AND SHE KEPT SAYING, ‘GO AHEAD! MESS WITH SARAH! SHE CAN TAKE IT!’ And then he looks at me like I’m crazy, furrows up his brow, and a visible question mark forms in the air right above his head.

But most of the time, he doesn’t ask questions. He just shakes his head, shirks off the crazy and holds me while I cry it out. He still says, “I’m right here. It’s okay. I’m right here.” Because whether or not I’m being stepped on my by a parental figure or humiliated by my own short-comings, it still makes it better when he’s right there with me.

My Life Has A Serious Lack of Dance In It.

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If I watch this video about 1,000 times, it might tide me over until SYTYCD starts another season.

If you got to pick a song for the choreographers to use, which one(s) would you pick? Let’s get our jam on. Leave me a link.

*****

On another note: Y’all. I am real tired of this project. I must finish it. Must. But the other things*, they are so fun. I want to do them.

*’Other things’ includes, but is not limited to, hanging out with friends, sleeping in, watching dance videos on youtube, cooking meals, eating meals, drinking wine**, organizing closets, cleaning house. Basically, EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS MORE AWESOME THAN THIS PAPER.

**Okay, fine. I’ve still been drinking wine. So, I’ll change it to “drinking wine without crushing guilt.”

Long Silly Lesson Learned

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If you painted your toe nails and they look awesome, what you should not do is this: don’t paint over the awesome paint job with a coat of shimmery white nail polish to see if the two colors combine to make a dazzling and unique toe color creation. Because, I promise you, it will not. It will only look like you tried to cover up your awesome paint job with a crappy one.

And after you decide that your toe nail polish looks terrible and that you’ll have to remove it, don’t scratch at it, peeling off long, vertical strips with your finger nails.

Especially don’t do that if you are out of toe nail polish remover.

Then, if you decide to go get some nail polish remover from Walgreens, don’t, whatever you do, wear flip flops.

But if you do happen to paint over your pretty nails with terrible nail polish, and then you hate it, so you scrape vertical stripes in it, and then you discover that you’re out of remover and you go to Walgreen’s go get some and you wear flip flops to get it despite knowing very well that the flats would have been a better choice — when your friend calls and invites you to lunch, you should go home and put on flats on before you go to lunch.

But if you don’t go to home to get flats first, and you wear your flip-flops and your awesomely bad nails bravely out into the public, don’t be surprised when the waitress gawks at them. And that’s really the lesson to be learned here.

That, or always keep nail polish remover at your house. One or the other.

Tiny Wings

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If you don’t have this game, you should.

Zack and I are both beyond addicted. It might be a problem. It might be interfering with my school work. I might not care about anything but flying.

Disconnected Thoughts on a Thursday Night

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Today I experienced the great challenge of trying to explain to Zack why people still watch One Tree Hill. It’s not easy to do. In the end, it came down to the pretty faces. There’s a lot of pretty faces on that show.
*****
I moved all the plants back out to the porch for the spring and summer. This almost guarantees that it will freeze within the next week. Just a weather forewarning. I put the plants on a long bench I scavanged from a neighbor’s trash pile. I was excited about it. I was like, “ZACK! LOOK!” He goes, “Where’d you get that?” I said, “A neighbor was throwing it away.” He said, “Yeah, looks like it.” Zack didn’t see the vision. He had to admit today that the bench did, in fact, look pretty cute with all the plants on and around it. I even added the “mi casa es su casa” plaque to the mix that my adopted Mexican Mom (a.k.a The Officemate) gave to me last year.

*****
My friend/massage therapist worked on me for almost two hours tonight. I drove to her house after she put her kids to bed because in the last 24 hours the tension in my neck and shoulders became so severe that I had limited functionality in my left arm. Bad news bears, right? After she kneaded on me for about an hour, she asked if I had a headache. I said no, that everything hurt, but no headache. She said I should have been on day 15 of the worst migraine of my life. I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t. She continued to work on me and work on me and work on me and I’m going back to see her on Saturday because, apparently, my shit is JACKED. Here’s the good news, though: my neck just popped (crunched, really, but I’ll take it) for the first time in weeks. Houston, we have progress.
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Y’all know those delicious little cheese wedges that are all the rage these days? The Laughing Cow Spreadable Cheese Wedges is what they’re called, I think. I love those things. I’m just having trouble figuring out the optimum delivery device. So far, I’ve not proven to be a successful cracker-picker-outer. Help?

Lowering My Wish Standards

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I wish I was one of those people who can cry and talk at the same time without their voice getting all squeaky and weird.

I used to wish that I could just not cry every damn time I talk about anything that’s halfway important to me. I’m beyond wishing for that impossible dream. Now I just wish I could cry in a functional and not aesthetically un-pleasing way.