everything and this shopping cart needs realignment
I ordered a laptop today and now I feel like a big fat(-tening) leech so after my parents and their exhausted bank account went to bed, I had to do the dishes in silent communion with the rampant texas roaches and then eat lite ice cream in the dark while surfing through music channels and staring at tattoos and fruit-shaped butts and many other shameful things I do not as yet possess. I can't tell whether this is guilt or meta-guilt, the guilt for not feeling more guilty. I should never have admitted to my dad that I thought I was becoming spoiled, because now he feels bad for spoiling me and yet I'm still just as spoiled, bringing the whole thing to this new meta level, you see. sometimes I enjoy stepping back and thinking hey, when I was growing up I had to make my own birthday party favors out of blocks of wood, blew out the candles on the homemade carrot cake with my sister even though I hated carrot cake, always got the pink version of my sister's matching blue outfits when I really wanted the blue, was forced to return a dress my dad bought for me, rode the most embarrassing bicycle in the world and drove the shittiest car in the world, etc etc as if I deserve to be pampered now but of course that's just more childish. what's weird is that as I've gotten more spoiled, I've also gotten more cheap about the expensive things I buy with my parents' money. I deliberate and research my lavish purchases with a fanatic devotion to wise, spendthrift consumerism. my parents get impatient with me in the grocery store as I painstakingly compare the price per unit of organic imported vegetables. I'm really hoping this isn't just me, that it's part of some greater phenomenon. I've been trying to show my gratitude over the past week in lots of small ways and just end up offending my dad, who thinks I'm doing all this stuff for him because I think he's old and feeble. I don't really want to get into that subject because it's so hopelessly depressing. suffice to say that it makes me feel twice as meta-guilty. my dad's the same as he always has been, I've just been forgetting and idealizing things, or so I keep thinking, but during the family car trip through syracuse, niagara and toronto my sister and I kept noticing little things and we would try to make ourselves feel better by pointing them out to each other when we were alone, hoping that we would sound ridiculous, but instead just standing there hopelessly with nothing more to say or do. little things.
plus, my dad keeps on referring to things as 'your inheritance' with this added note of sadness in his voice. and my mom told me not to put artificial flowers on her grave today. we had a pretty funny conversation after that, which I like to think wasn't awkward at all because she hasn't aged much at all, I joked about how she should be able to appreciate the irony of fake flowers on her grave and that I would attach a note to them saying "now that you're gone, nothing seems real anymore" and she got a pretty good kick out of that, but still I felt that tension in my chest that always says I'm not really thinking about what matters. shit. everything's slightly out of wack since I came back from kyoto. I even saw alanis morrisette having an intelligent conversation on PBS. okay, well she did keep referring to sex as a "life force," but other than that she was actually pretty cool. it made me want to bang my head against the wall. nothing's as it should be, but I'm totally over it already. maybe I'll be calling things "life forces" in a few years, too.
I redecorated my room at home a little, the "jennifer memorial" as my dad calls it, and that may have something to do with it because now it looks kind of like my dorm room and my room in middle school mushed into an awkward whole (hear the angels blowing their horns for the metaphor). there's also the fact that I have two more weeks left as the kid in the house until I go fetch my cousin. I really want to give her some intelligent-sounding english name that's easy for people to say but she'll probably find something generic with unsuitable nuances herself like "rebecca" or "christine" because I have no right to force her to introduce herself as "ramona" or "harriet" or any other awesome characters from the preteen novel canon. still, that would be cool. I have to stop thinking of her as a pet but I really know too little about her to do otherwise.
I saw shrek 2 today. they couldn't have used the hair swishing gag enough for me. I wanted it to continue for hours, days, months, years. that moment was so good. the rest of it was also good but not as memorable. john cleese, stop doing voice work and cameos and play a major role, for god's sake. same goes for judy dench. she could play any major role that wasn't an evil space queen and I would be happy. and maybe even more spoiled. I watched Brazil again too and it's officially one of my favorite movies ever. gah.
watching movies, running errands, sitting around staring at the walls and wondering what to hopelessly decorate next. I've got a bunch of loose ends niggling at me. like I didn't visit felicia or say goodbye to jenly and help her dispose of the murals or call kunal back or say bye properly to anyone, really, but what 'properly' means I have no idea, which probably has something to do with why I didn't do it. I definitely had the feeling that when my family was there, I turned into someone else in front of my friends. I left college feeling more relieved than I thought I would, considering it was the best four years of my life. I feel like I left some useless organ there, like my appendix is lying in that drawer next to the batch of dirty clothes I forgot, and even though I don't miss it at all I'd still feel somehow fuller if I had it with me. trite but true and meta-trite, too. damn.
still, all in all, it's good to be home.
plus, my dad keeps on referring to things as 'your inheritance' with this added note of sadness in his voice. and my mom told me not to put artificial flowers on her grave today. we had a pretty funny conversation after that, which I like to think wasn't awkward at all because she hasn't aged much at all, I joked about how she should be able to appreciate the irony of fake flowers on her grave and that I would attach a note to them saying "now that you're gone, nothing seems real anymore" and she got a pretty good kick out of that, but still I felt that tension in my chest that always says I'm not really thinking about what matters. shit. everything's slightly out of wack since I came back from kyoto. I even saw alanis morrisette having an intelligent conversation on PBS. okay, well she did keep referring to sex as a "life force," but other than that she was actually pretty cool. it made me want to bang my head against the wall. nothing's as it should be, but I'm totally over it already. maybe I'll be calling things "life forces" in a few years, too.
I redecorated my room at home a little, the "jennifer memorial" as my dad calls it, and that may have something to do with it because now it looks kind of like my dorm room and my room in middle school mushed into an awkward whole (hear the angels blowing their horns for the metaphor). there's also the fact that I have two more weeks left as the kid in the house until I go fetch my cousin. I really want to give her some intelligent-sounding english name that's easy for people to say but she'll probably find something generic with unsuitable nuances herself like "rebecca" or "christine" because I have no right to force her to introduce herself as "ramona" or "harriet" or any other awesome characters from the preteen novel canon. still, that would be cool. I have to stop thinking of her as a pet but I really know too little about her to do otherwise.
I saw shrek 2 today. they couldn't have used the hair swishing gag enough for me. I wanted it to continue for hours, days, months, years. that moment was so good. the rest of it was also good but not as memorable. john cleese, stop doing voice work and cameos and play a major role, for god's sake. same goes for judy dench. she could play any major role that wasn't an evil space queen and I would be happy. and maybe even more spoiled. I watched Brazil again too and it's officially one of my favorite movies ever. gah.
watching movies, running errands, sitting around staring at the walls and wondering what to hopelessly decorate next. I've got a bunch of loose ends niggling at me. like I didn't visit felicia or say goodbye to jenly and help her dispose of the murals or call kunal back or say bye properly to anyone, really, but what 'properly' means I have no idea, which probably has something to do with why I didn't do it. I definitely had the feeling that when my family was there, I turned into someone else in front of my friends. I left college feeling more relieved than I thought I would, considering it was the best four years of my life. I feel like I left some useless organ there, like my appendix is lying in that drawer next to the batch of dirty clothes I forgot, and even though I don't miss it at all I'd still feel somehow fuller if I had it with me. trite but true and meta-trite, too. damn.
still, all in all, it's good to be home.