Ten Things I've Been Up To
Aug. 23rd, 2009 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
exhilaration1. Well, it is now official - my boyfriend is only 16 credits away from an associates degree. I do not know where he got the idea that he isn't smart enough for school - he took three classes this summer and everything went totally fine. On one hand, this doesn't seem the best time, economy-wise, to be going to school, seeing how people who dropped a hundred thousand dollars on prestigious degrees are unable to find jobs, but, on the other hand... why not? If you feel like you've spent your whole life doing nothing and going nowhere - I guess a degree can do a lot to counter that. I WOULDN'T KNOW, I HAVEN'T GOT ONE MYSELF.
2. The best name for a taco shop is TACOLANDIA. When I saw it I just knew I had to have tacos from there. It's on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing NY. BEST NAME EVER. Oh, and, in the spirit of good sportsmanship and on behalf of Phillies fans everywhere... YES, WE KNOW THAT WAS A BAD CALL! (This is, of course, in reference to the Friday night game)
3. I just spent a bunch of money on clothes. In my defense... I don't really have a lot of clothes that fit and aren't coming apart. This has been an issue for quite some time... I mean, I have stuff I wore when I went to community, and that was like... seven years ago now. Of course it's starting to come apart. And grown-up bodies are nothing like teenage bodies, and... I mean, I wear a uniform to work, and I wear pjs around the house most of the time. I'd sooner wear one of my boyfriend's Tshirts than one of mine, and... yeah. I have a few very cute things that I wear if I go out, but other than that... I don't have many practical regular everyday clothes. LIKE THE THINGS I'D WANT TO PACK IF GOING ON A TRIP. I went to Target. They've got a pretty decent variety of practical clothing, I seemed to recall. Most things they have there seem to be made of really thin material, so good for packing and layering. I bought a lot of clothes. A great big bag full. Feeling kinda guilty about this, really terrible actually, but... it was stuff I needed! So it's okay... right?
4. Because I bought clothes, I threw away clothes, which I also feel terrible about. I'm just going to go ahead and blame my mother for this, which I understand is not a universal all-around excuse for anything and everything, but in this case, I think it fits. Between my mom refusing to spend any money on anything, ever, and constantly throwing away my things, with me actually having to dig things out of the garbage and hide them if I wanted to keep them - it's like I can't get away from her voice. "You don't need this, you don't need all that, this is too much, put half of that back, we're giving half of that away, you don't need these things" and so on. She had this idea that our house was full of trash and needed to be "gone through" and "gotten rid of" all the time. My mother never worked - she was a full-time housewife and was always under so much stress because the house was just out of control - please trust me when I say it was not. I compare how I live now, as an adult, to how she kept house when I was a kid - the house was like a magazine. No clutter. Nothing on the floors. Clear surfaces, all the time, no exceptions. Organized, labeled everything. Perfection. Complete perfection. And yet - it was full of trash, and we needed to "go through all this and get rid of it."
I'm trying to "go through and get rid of" my own stuff, which really does need it, because I think I hang on to stuff way too long, and long after it's any good, like keeping clothes I wore when I was seventeen. But everywhere I turn it's like I've got another hang up. I don't want to throw my stuff out, because then I'm being like my mom, throwing away perfectly good things for no reason other than it's "too much stuff," even if in reality, they're not perfectly good and I do have too much stuff.
I bought a whole bag of clothes. Not a regular sized bag, I'm talking the giant Target bags that like a lampshade can fit in. Hundreds of dollars spent. And no, I didn't pick the cheapest stuff. I picked the best stuff, stuff I thought would be the most versatile, and last the longest, and looked the cutest. And all I can hear is "you don't need all this, put half of this back, this is too much, you don't need all this, just choose one thing, you can keep one thing and everything else has to go." Never mind that I do need these things. I need clothes that are suitable for travel, easy to layer, easy to pack, and look presentable. I have... maybe three outfits that fit that criteria. I'll be gone for sixty days. I assume I'll wash my clothes while I'm there but three outfits is not enough. That's a fact, there's no way around it. And they have to fit correctly - I dunno, I've lost a lot of weight, so a lot of the clothes I do have don't fit right.
And yes, I did buy a lot of clothes from the children's department. I'm short, okay, and barely a hundred pounds. Obviously I've always been short, but I wasn't always this tiny and a lot of my older clothes are, you know, adult sizes. I understand that this isn't healthy and I am gaining weight slowly - but the key is slowly. I need things that fit now, for my current weight.
5. I saw the movie "District 9" without knowing anything about it other than it was an alien flick. Pretty much B was like, Lara, it has a spaceship, you'll like it. Two seconds into the movie I was like 0.o they're in South Africa? Is District 9 some kind of reference to District Six?
After seeing the movie (which was very, very interesting) yes, it definitely was. Even though district six was in Cape Town, not Joburg :)
And it's weird how little things in a movie can make you feel homesick for a place that was never home...
EDIT: Ok, fine. FIVE things I've been up to :P
2. The best name for a taco shop is TACOLANDIA. When I saw it I just knew I had to have tacos from there. It's on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing NY. BEST NAME EVER. Oh, and, in the spirit of good sportsmanship and on behalf of Phillies fans everywhere... YES, WE KNOW THAT WAS A BAD CALL! (This is, of course, in reference to the Friday night game)
3. I just spent a bunch of money on clothes. In my defense... I don't really have a lot of clothes that fit and aren't coming apart. This has been an issue for quite some time... I mean, I have stuff I wore when I went to community, and that was like... seven years ago now. Of course it's starting to come apart. And grown-up bodies are nothing like teenage bodies, and... I mean, I wear a uniform to work, and I wear pjs around the house most of the time. I'd sooner wear one of my boyfriend's Tshirts than one of mine, and... yeah. I have a few very cute things that I wear if I go out, but other than that... I don't have many practical regular everyday clothes. LIKE THE THINGS I'D WANT TO PACK IF GOING ON A TRIP. I went to Target. They've got a pretty decent variety of practical clothing, I seemed to recall. Most things they have there seem to be made of really thin material, so good for packing and layering. I bought a lot of clothes. A great big bag full. Feeling kinda guilty about this, really terrible actually, but... it was stuff I needed! So it's okay... right?
4. Because I bought clothes, I threw away clothes, which I also feel terrible about. I'm just going to go ahead and blame my mother for this, which I understand is not a universal all-around excuse for anything and everything, but in this case, I think it fits. Between my mom refusing to spend any money on anything, ever, and constantly throwing away my things, with me actually having to dig things out of the garbage and hide them if I wanted to keep them - it's like I can't get away from her voice. "You don't need this, you don't need all that, this is too much, put half of that back, we're giving half of that away, you don't need these things" and so on. She had this idea that our house was full of trash and needed to be "gone through" and "gotten rid of" all the time. My mother never worked - she was a full-time housewife and was always under so much stress because the house was just out of control - please trust me when I say it was not. I compare how I live now, as an adult, to how she kept house when I was a kid - the house was like a magazine. No clutter. Nothing on the floors. Clear surfaces, all the time, no exceptions. Organized, labeled everything. Perfection. Complete perfection. And yet - it was full of trash, and we needed to "go through all this and get rid of it."
I'm trying to "go through and get rid of" my own stuff, which really does need it, because I think I hang on to stuff way too long, and long after it's any good, like keeping clothes I wore when I was seventeen. But everywhere I turn it's like I've got another hang up. I don't want to throw my stuff out, because then I'm being like my mom, throwing away perfectly good things for no reason other than it's "too much stuff," even if in reality, they're not perfectly good and I do have too much stuff.
I bought a whole bag of clothes. Not a regular sized bag, I'm talking the giant Target bags that like a lampshade can fit in. Hundreds of dollars spent. And no, I didn't pick the cheapest stuff. I picked the best stuff, stuff I thought would be the most versatile, and last the longest, and looked the cutest. And all I can hear is "you don't need all this, put half of this back, this is too much, you don't need all this, just choose one thing, you can keep one thing and everything else has to go." Never mind that I do need these things. I need clothes that are suitable for travel, easy to layer, easy to pack, and look presentable. I have... maybe three outfits that fit that criteria. I'll be gone for sixty days. I assume I'll wash my clothes while I'm there but three outfits is not enough. That's a fact, there's no way around it. And they have to fit correctly - I dunno, I've lost a lot of weight, so a lot of the clothes I do have don't fit right.
And yes, I did buy a lot of clothes from the children's department. I'm short, okay, and barely a hundred pounds. Obviously I've always been short, but I wasn't always this tiny and a lot of my older clothes are, you know, adult sizes. I understand that this isn't healthy and I am gaining weight slowly - but the key is slowly. I need things that fit now, for my current weight.
5. I saw the movie "District 9" without knowing anything about it other than it was an alien flick. Pretty much B was like, Lara, it has a spaceship, you'll like it. Two seconds into the movie I was like 0.o they're in South Africa? Is District 9 some kind of reference to District Six?
After seeing the movie (which was very, very interesting) yes, it definitely was. Even though district six was in Cape Town, not Joburg :)
And it's weird how little things in a movie can make you feel homesick for a place that was never home...
EDIT: Ok, fine. FIVE things I've been up to :P
