feelings are weird

i consider myself, and have been told by professionals that i am, a pretty keen observer of what goes on in my own head. what i've come to learn, though, is that just because you are aware of something doesn't mean you get to control it. an issue i struggle with pretty consistently is how much people should be blamed for their feelings, or beliefs based on those feelings. if i feel selfish when someone borrows something of mine and it looks better on them, is that something i can be blamed for? is it a wrong thing? what if i feel happy when something bad happens to someone i don't particularly care for? i'm pretty sure that is a wrong thing. do feelings like these make me morally culpable in some way, or is it just the unfair actions that might result from these beliefs that would get me in trouble? i guess the answer probably depends on whether or not you believe in god, but i genuinely believe that people can't really be blamed for things that are out of their control and i think feelings are probably one of those things. you just can't help them! they happen! what about beliefs, though? are those something you can help? let's say someone believes a racist thing, and you spend some time trying to explain to that person why the racist thing is wrong. he or she is not convinced. do you get mad? do you spend more time arguing? do you call them a name? what happens? for the record, these are all hypothetical situations. everything i own looks best on me, there is no one in the world that i don't like, and i'm pretty sure none of my friends believes a racist thing.

this all came from a tiny thing that happened today. i mean, it's on the back burner pretty constantly, because let's face it, everyone is confronted with feelings almost all the time, but the reason i felt like blogging about it is not that big a deal. well, maybe it is. it depends on how much you like birds. i guess i like birds a lot, so maybe it is a big deal.

i was in a pretty killer mood this morning, despite the looming late night paper writing sesh. i'm halfway done and the delicate parts are already written, but it's still haunting me a little. however, today is an incredible day. look at the brighton forecast, if you want to. it's beautiful and sunny and i walked to school in a sweatshirt. i could have done it in a tshirt if i really wanted to (i didn't, i probably would have gotten a sunburn). i ran into two friends, one of whom was wearing this incredible green jacket that matched the leash of the dog that she was walking, whom she let me pet extensively. i looked at some budding plants. i whistled a little. all in all, everything was going my way. then when i got closer to school, i went down the walk with the really tall trees that i always walk down and lying in the snow next to one of these trees was a fallen birds' nest. i should tell you i have grown pretty attached to these nests - there are a couple of them way up in the tops of these trees, and sometimes when i'm at school during a storm i'll walk out there to see them get tossed around up there. i don't think there are actually any birds in there right now - there's really no camouflage or coverage at all since the leaves fell - but i like to think of them sitting in there all warm and brave. so seeing that this nest had fallen on maybe the nicest day this month was a little disheartening. there weren't any birds in there, fortunately, but what if they came back and looked for it? i picked it up from the snow and put it on the bench. i doubt birds will want to live on a bench, but it's better than the ground. the point is, this happened and now i'm not completely jazzed on the day anymore, which seems kind of silly because no birds were hurt and it is still completely beautiful outside.

the unpredictability of everyday life is unbearable for noelle.

that was a sentence in one of the papers i read during tutoring today. i thought it sounded profound, maybe a little literary. it was a paper about a schizophrenic girl with post traumatic stress syndrome she's been counseling. the girl grew up with an alcoholic, sexually abusive father and a mother who got stoned on valium to pretend it wasn't happening. sometimes i can't believe the things people do. i mean, i guess i can believe that her parents did that. i've seen enough law and order to believe that. what i can't believe is that this girl talks to her every day without completely losing it. she did admit to some "secondary traumatization," but implied that it was nothing compared to what noelle experiences.

so maybe this is a romantic idea i have because i am from california, but snow is pretty magical. grownups act completely differently when it snows. sure, when they're inside they complain - wacky traffic patterns, the inevitable slush, one million tiny inconveniences - but when they're outside, they talk to people they probably wouldn't otherwise, fall and laugh about it and catch snowflakes on their tongues.

where my snacks at

some reasons why i have been updating irregularly and exclusively in list form:
numerous online scrab games
hungry a lot, therefore eating pretty often
a pile of one million books
zeppelin has been especially cute lately
spring (just a little bit and just these last couple of days and i technically know that it won't last the week or probably even the day but every time i go outside everything begins to rule almost immediately and today the bushes were full of birds and i saw the fattest sparrow i've ever seen)
more important things to write than my blog
i love lists

in conclusion, everything is okay. i mean, things have got to be okay if i have a bunch of other stuff to do besides blog, right?

also i'm reinvigorating an earlier practice. yesterday i saved an ant. it took forever.

things i did at the dean's office today

handed out valentines to the delight of all the ladies and the one male dean (fun)
stuffed envelopes (not fun)
copied a bunch of things (pretty fun)
snuck into the office supply closet to smell the smell of office supplies (really fun)
ran some of the dean's errands in the sun (awesome)
sent a bunch of ecards (a great invention for me because i never get it together to mail anything in time)
ate a lollipop in student services (delicious)
ate a couple cookies (pretty great)
made coffee (kind of fun although it tasted terrible)
complimented all the ladies on the roses they received (felt good)
did not receive any roses (felt great because i am terrible at caring for plants even ones that go in a vase, also i don't believe in valentines)
started feeling like myself again after a couple days of being mildly cantankerous (priceless)

i'm not sure if formal events turn out this way for everyone or just for me

last night was the winter ball and i have this haunting feeling that i made some bad impressions, but when i look over everything i did i can't think of anything too out of control. except for one thing that i said but i'm pretty sure she didn't hear me. here are the things i think about when i think about what happened at the winter ball:
it began pretty auspiciously. i tripped over my own cowboy boots and skinned both knees. they bled. a lot. everyone asked me if i wanted a band-aid. i didn't. i cleaned up my knee in the bathroom while carolann curled her hair with the provided curling iron.
somehow i got two extra drink tickets. i put them in my dress and handed them out later. i actually didn't drink anything at the winter ball. not even water.
i guess i danced some. i'm pretty sure i did more talking than dancing. probably more like yelling, actually. the music was pretty loud and not that awesome. but there are some pictures of me dancing, so there's that. a lot of them are pretty terrible. i was way into my dress when i put it on but i untagged myself from about eight pictures when i went on fbook today.
i did remove a balloon someone had tied to someone else by cutting the string with my teeth. was that uncouth?
around eleven i wanted to go home and even went as far as to put on my coat. i was bored and pretty tired. this is when things picked up. i made several new friends, a few offensive comments, and slow-danced with carolann. apparently we slow danced with a lot of encouragement in the middle of a large circle of people. i think carolann remembers this wrong. she says we were the life of the party and that everyone loved us; i'm pretty sure that either i was relatively quiet the entire time and no one noticed me except for the fact that i was a little bloody, or we were the center of attention in kind of a bad, ridiculous way.
then we went to a bar where there were some nachos and they were playing chris isaak. i ate a bunch of james king's fries but he wouldn't be mad about that, his impression of me was set a pretty long time ago. also i'll buy him pizza to make up for it. i guess we did make a bad impression on the waitress there because she talked some smack to us and we didn't really know why, but then we spent ten minutes outside talking about taking her and some asian dudes were pretty impressed and blasted jackson five for us to dance to in the street. so that was pretty much the night. nothing seems too embarrassing or out of control, but the human memory is a fickle thing. only fbook will tell.

oh and this one obviously

man i remember watching this and thinking "if someone in charge knew i was watching this i would be in big trouble." so of course i am going to put on a party dress and ask to dance to it.

is it a fake idea to think that i can learn to do this in cowboy boots by saturday AND get all my homework done?

i dip you dip we dip

on my way home today, i saw a prius i have seen several times, always near the intersection of comm ave and chestnut hill. boston's not like san francisco, with eight priuses at every stoplight, but i probably still wouldn't know this prius from the one other prius in town except for the woman driving. she's got big owl-eye glasses, crazy old lady hair, and she always, but always, has the hem of her coat caught in the door. not just a little hem, either. a lot of hem. she must have ruined about eight coats driving around like that with all the salt and dirt on the road. you would think, after ruining about eight coats, she would start pulling up the hem of her coat before closing the door, or maybe check it after she had gone a couple blocks. maybe this is something she secretly likes about herself, that she is too absent-minded to check that she doesn't have the hem of her coat caught in the door. i can see indulging in the belief that one is too absent-minded for something like that. then again, my mom has broken dozens of coffee cups leaving them on top of the car and then pulling out of the driveway.

also on my way home i went to bagel rising. i thought for a minute about giving up bagels for lent, but then i realized a. i'm not actually that catholic b. that would make my life impossible. chocolate is still on the radar though. i can't actually remember the last time i had any - can you give something like that up for lent? does it even count? anyway, the guys there were talking about this video. i told them about this one. they think i am really awesome.

here are the songs i am going to request at the winter ball:
gettin jiggy wit it
give it to me
izzo
pony
candy rain
and probably about a million more i'm not even excited about yet.

AUGH I FORGOT ABOUT PUPPYBOWL

HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT PUPPYBOWL

i just spent the superbowl READING when i could have been watching this i am so upset with myself

nothing bad is happening. should i be worried?

well obviously my interest in self-presentation has gone absolutely nowhere except a bunch of conversations at a party i went to on friday. i think we all knew it would wane after last week's blog entry. that is just the way of these things. i guess there's a chance the arrival of "get rich or die tryin" through interlibrary loan will rekindle it. just a chance though.

the party was great. i cleared up some conflicting pieces of gossip that had been nagging at me, drank out of one red cup and one blue one, and yelled some without actually making any bad impressions. at least, i don't think i did.

that night i slept at carolann's. we watched flight of the conchords, ate pub mix and talked about boys some. when we woke up, we watched flight of the conchords for three hours and then got pizza for breakfast. i haven't laughed that hard in weeks. maybe ever. i know it sounds like we didn't do very much but when every tiny thing that you see or do causes an uproar it feels like you have crammed a whole week of fun into a morning. well, afternoon. it was two by the time we had pizza.

saturday night, james took us all out to dinner with some money his grandfather had given him to do something all together because we were nice to him while he was in the hospital. really thoughtful, right? especially thoughtful was the fact that james actually came up with something for us to do all together instead of just buying us some pizza and pocketing the rest. that is what i probably would have done. that or bought everyone shoes. here is what we did:
got picked up by marissa
informed her that james' grandfather wasn't actually here, just his check
got on the t
made fun of people on the t
got off at government center
took pictures of ourselves with various statues







found a restaurant that looked small and good and smelled incredible (cibo)
ordered wine we knew very little about
pretended it matched the food perfectly, although i for one would never have known
appreciated the waiter for talking to us like we were adults
realized it was a date restaurant
didn't care about this
ordered appetizers AND entrees and ate ourselves ill
went to mike's pastry and ordered two of every kind of cannoli
walked around looking for a park james likes
found a little alley full of pictures of saints and flashing things, but it was locked
got upset about that a little bit
found the park - christopher columbus park, i think, right on the water with a big archway of blue lights
decided that the arch made us feel like romeo and juliet a little bit, or at least like claire danes and leo
ate the cannolis
got powdered sugar up our noses (by accident)
ran around a little on a sugar high
walked back to the t
got driven home by marissa from the t stop

all in all, an incredible caturday.

now it's tuesday and i'm in that mode where i just live entirely in my own head and sometimes have a hard time figuring out what is real and what isn't, or at least what's important and what isn't. here is a breakdown i came up with last night:
school = important
crafts = not as important
pizza = awesome