After dinner with the witty, blue-eyed chap, he indulged my morbid curiosity and took me the BodyWorlds exhibit at Science World. Together we lingered around the plastinated deceased, considering life and death and how on earth they [successfully] created Drawer Man. He was not deterred by my dark and twisty side, which gloried in the company of the cadavers, so we went out again. And again. And so on.

Quite quickly we navigated the no-man’s land of casual dating and the nervous volleys of phone calls and texts fired from the trenches; we made our relationship facebook official. This was followed by several reenactments of Meet the Parents during a marathon weekend of birthday celebrations (his, not mine). After rave reviews from all three sets of parents, my nerves were considerably calmed and we have settled into something I’m reticent to call a serious relationship. Because serious is such a dreadful word – serious condition, serious illness, serious accident, serious repercussions… Serious has a nasty connotation; serious tends to imply that something terrible has been done to you.

I like to think this development is quite wonderful.

Last night, McDreamy – who has earned the moniker by means of  possessing ridiculously thick hair, an impish grin, and eyes blue enough to make Patrick Dempsey jealous - cooked me dinner. After digging into the fabulous meal he whipped up, we sat with our feet propped up on the cold glass of the coffee table and attempted to rationalize how quickly we’ve jumped into our serious relationship. I joked that we had already spent about 150 hours investing in our relationship through phone calls, texts, and various outings, which is more time that some couples invest over a matter of months.  Today, my McDreamy corrected me: we’ve spent 75 hours together and 25 hours speaking on the phone – and that doesn’t include the 3600(ish) text messages we’ve exchanged.

So maybe we’ve jumped into the deep end a little.  I’ve always been a serious relationship sort of girl; I like to have the relationship clearly labeled and understood by both parties. But this time it seems different. For the first time in my life I believe I deserve a brilliant man and it just so happens that one fell into my lap. I’ve got a man in my life who cooks me dinner and remembers my complicated Starbucks orders.  He does all the little thoughtful things that matter.

I could get used to this.

Today I bought the most perfect little black dress.  I put it on and stood in front of the mirror, blinking blankly at myself, genuinely surprised because it fit. It fit really, really well.  Despite my hard-to-dress, slightly disproportionate petit frame, it looked as thought it had been made for me. It brought out the absolute best parts of me and it made me feel like a million bucks.  Even though the Christmas party, to which I intend to wear the dress, is over a month away, I had to try it on once more once I got home, and the child in me wanted to play princess and bounce around, dressed to the nines in my fabulous dress.

I guess that’s all anyone can really ask for – the perfect fit that brings out the very best in you, but maybe I’m not just talking about the dress anymore.

I will preface what is about to follow by stating it is entirely factual, although likely hyperbolized. Possibly hyperbolized to the point of unrecognition, but that is not to say that it isn’t completely true…

Last night I entered an altered state.  Or maybe it was a particularly vivid dream.  The latter is more likely, but the former is entirely more intriguing and I shall henceforth refer to whatever I experienced as such.  My altered state, I am convinced, was a resultant of an overdose on Red Bull, shoddily written Philosophy articles (Igor Douven’s; not mine), a sizable brick of chocolate, and general sleep deprivation. The cause must appear to digress from the tale, but I feel it’s important to note, as, for scientific purposes, I feel there may be merit to recreate the events of last night. I drank 1 triple sized Red Bull at approximately 7:00 pm; this was later followed by two standard-issue Red Bulls between the hours of 11pm and 2 am, along with approximately 32 squares of Cadburys delicious chocolate. I went to sleep at 5:04 – or at least that was the moment at which I sealed my eyes after casting a final look at the neon numbers of my clock. And in the darkness of my mind, I seemed to transcend human limitations and travel to a magical place.

The magical place was much like the train station at which the Narnia children arrive in the countryside. In the BBC version, not the new-fangled Hollywood version; I will permit, however, that new Lucy is infinitely less annoying than BBC Lucy (but let us not digress!). Only, it had been lifted and nestled somewhere in New Jersey; I know this because I could hear the distant chatter of people and they all sounded like Snookie and the Cake Boss.  The sprawling lawns all around the intersection of two train tracks rose into Deli’s and hole-in-the-wall cafes. It was one such cafe in which I found myself. In the cafe, I heard soft voices that told me all the secrets to unlock the mysteries of philosophy and to write what would most certainly be the most kick-ass philosophy paper of all time. Of. All. Time. In fact, the more I reminisce about my experience, I’m fairly sure the voices were those of Dumbledore and Harry Potter, from the scene towards the end of Deathly Hallows, at the point in the story when Harry has died (oops, spoiler!) and has an out-of-body experience, meeting Dumbledore – also deceased (if you didn’t know that, you’ve been living under a rock); in the book, I suppose Harry learns something of the mysteries of life and death, but it seems to me they were really talking about epistemology and the meaning of everything in the universe. Clearly, I shall have to re-read the book. It’s a dreadfully important conversation.  In any case, Harry and Dumbledore were about to reveal the most secret, sacred secrets of the universe to my listening ears when a terrible thing happened.

My bedroom door opened and my mum said, “It’s 7:30. How late are you going to sleep?”

Apparently, I was only going to sleep until 7:30, despite the fact my alarm remains set for 8:00 am. Curious, indeed.

I was cruelly snatched away from epiphany – and Harry and Dumbledore and the distant cast of the Jersey Shore – and hurled back the the cruel reality that is a drab Wednesday morning after just two and a half hours of sleep. I do not possess knowledge of the innermost workings of the universe, nor the dark and twisty corners of my mind that converge to create such an altered state. But from the experience I have learned three things:

1. In my dream I did compose the 56 words my paper lacked, which had left it hanging just below word count. I scribbled these down immediately.

2. Out of body experiences, dream sequences, and the like, all seem to occur more frequently around train stations – both in my head and in children’s literature. This must be further investigated and researched thoroughly.

3. There is a safer, at-home alternative to having John Stamos put you under anesthesia, should you want to experience vivid dream-sequences of the Glee-inspired variety.  Red Bull be thy name.

The blinking cursor seems like a cocky s.o.b., as far as I’m concerned. He’s that guy that gets baits you into an argument and gets you so thoroughly worked up that you’re ready to pitch a fit. That is, of course, until you realize you’ve grown so aggravated that you can’t string a coherent sentence together. And then he asks: “Is that all you’ve got?”

Yes, blinking man, that’s all I’ve got. Are you happy now?

The best of times, I can ignore the blinking cursor. He’s like an ever-present gnat, flitting about my head, landing on the computer screen, getting stuck to my lip gloss… you get the picture. He’s an annoyance most days, but his level of of distraction is not usually enough to derail my train of thought.  It seems, however, that nights like tonight – a night on which I’m feverishly attempting to crank through an epistemology paper, which is completely over my head even when I’m on my A-game – he strikes out with the force of a plague of gnats. And a plague of Biblical proportions, for that matter. I’m convinced that blinking cursor, if set just right would have been just as, if not more effective, had God sent him as a substitute plague to the Ancient Egyptians. But let us not digress…

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away – a galaxy in the era BM (that’s Before Macbook) – I seem to recall there was a way to reset the speed of blinking cursor. If memory serves me correctly – and this is stretching back to the days of napster and installing C++  with sets of multiple 3.5 inch floppy disks – blinking cursor could be set to blink at a painfully slow speed or a speed likely to induce seizures in children that have spent far too much time watching Japanese animation. Neither option is satisfactory. If blinking cursor is set to blink slowly, it’s easy to lose track of him entirely. And he has a great knack for popping up at the wrong place and time and wreaking havoc on an entire term paper. Quite oppositely, if blinking cursor is set even a smidgen faster, he is likely to give my over-caffeinated self an anxiety attack. As it is, his incessant blip, blip, blip upon my screen, like a foreign dot upon a radar, pokes at me. Each blink is a subtle dig and my inability to string a coherent sentence together about the Lottery Paradox.

So I confess, I hate the blinking cursor. Not just a little. A whole lot. Especially tonight.

Yes, blinking man, that’s all I’ve got. Are you happy now?

Go is the word that sums my rushed existence. Go – the word itself – is hurried in nature. It’s painfully brief and lacking in substance. Without embellishment, it’s directionless. Go, like the implicit command of a starter gun, is jarring, reactionary, and hollow, as it hangs in the air. Catapulting forward, even with the speed of Usain Bolt, is pointless if you are rushing to an unknown or ambiguous line in the sand.  And pounding pavement anxiously may take you many city blocks, but it wont take you on a journey through used bookstores or allow you to browse the windows as you pass or to soak in your surroundings with a scalding cup of coffee.

Go where? Go with who?  Go to what? And why even go in the first place? It’s easy to forget.

I’m so swept up with going that I’m at a loss to remember why I started running in the first place. Caught up in the momentum of this marathon stretch, I feel like what I’m doing has lost any meaning.  It’s just empty, purposeless, journeyless, go.

I’ve been told that runners reach a second wind, that after pushing through the pain and exhaustion, they hit a new high, abounding in energy and enthusiasm. I keep telling myself that if I just keep going, I’ll hit my second wind, too. But it hasn’t happened yet, and I wonder how long I will continue harried and hurried. How long must I wait to hang up my running shoes?

In no particular order, here are my favorite albums to play this summer:

1. Pretty. Odd. - Panic! At The Disco
2. 1 - The Beatles
3. Save Me San Francisco - Train
4. Shout It Out – Hanson
5. The Great American Midrange - The Elms
6. Now, Volume 6 – Various Artists (2000)
7. Forrest Gump Soundtrack - Various Artists
8. The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd - Lynyrd Skynyrd
9. Tragic Kingdom – No Doubt
10. Gold – Bob Marley and The Wailers
11. All Their Greatest Hits – Barenaked Ladies
12. Born To Reign – Will Smith
13. Number Ones - Michael Jackson
14. Everybody Else - Everybody Else
15. Monkey Business – Black Eyed Peas

In no particular order, I present to you the most awesome moments of the week…

The one with the guy at the stop light:

Thursday morning, it was too overcast (read that: cold/gray/miserable/freezing/depressing) to have the windows and sunroof open. I was, however, driving the SUV, which has a respectable sound system. This resulted in ear-throbbing levels of bass during my commute.  Upon rolling up to a stop light, the guy in the car next to mine began giving me over-zealous head nods. I admit I did look pretty hot. At the very least, I was having a good hair day.  A quick glance revealed that this young man was an East Indian chap dressed in thug apparel; he was driving a completely riced Honda Civic; he was a total wangster.  The more I ignored him, the louder he cranked his system. When I could take it no more, I cranked up the bass and rolled down my windows. My song of choice?  ”One Time” by Justin Bieber.  He tried to crank his system louder than mine, but it didn’t work.  Embarrassed, he was forced to concede that he spent too much money on his ridiculous aluminum wing and coffee-can muffler and not nearly enough to better  my stock CD-play and speakers.  Or Justin Bieber, for that matter…

This was almost as awesome as when I drowned out the neighbor guy’s Eminem album with almost 40 minutes of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”

The one with the employee discount at the store I don’t work at.

Tomorrow in Kids Unlimited, we’re talking about God’s plan for the Israelites and how he intended for them to live set apart for Him; I prefer the way my Bible college prof, Ken Esau, put it: “Wow-Weird!”  I thought glow sticks would be a cool object lesson. Moreover, I thought glow sticks would be ridiculously fun.  After  buying 150 glow sticks and six glow-in-the-dark batons, I ventured into the dollar store (insert shudder here) to pick up glow-in-the-dark balls.  The balls I found have flashing blue and red LEDs inside, and they’re awesome.  One of the sales associates helped me find an extra four balls, and, in the course of our conversation, she asked why I was buying insane amounts of glowing toys.  When I explained where I work and what I do, she told me that she has been teaching Sunday school for more than 30 years; she also gave me her employee discount.

The one with the thousand-foot roll of foil.

While a co-worker is out of town, I have taken it upon myself to ensure that all of his office things are thoroughly wrapped in foil.  By “thoroughly” I mean that I intend to wrap every singular object in foil, right down to the littlest push pin and loneliest business card.  I’m about 10% done. Monday might end up rather busy.  The best moment in this adventure [thus far]: flipping on the lights for the first time and realizing just how effective (and reflective) foil can be in a small space.  Next on the to-do list: figuring out how I shall best capture this fellow’s reaction.

Think I’m over reacting to the threat of pigeons?  Perhaps not!  I’m not the only one unwilling to sit idly by and let the sky rats run rampant.  Kings of Leon recently stopped a concert just three songs in because of the nasty creatures.  People magazine tells us:

Three songs into their St. Louis concert Friday night, the Kings of Leon had to shut down the show on account of some unexpected accompaniment that CNN pins on “pooping pigeons.”

“Jared [Followill, the band's bassist] was hit several times during the first two songs,” said Andy Mendelsohn of Vector Management. “It’s not only disgusting – it’s a toxic health hazard. They really tried to hang in there.”

The dirty birds were reported to have been lurking in the rafters of the Missouri city’s Verizon Amphitheatre and launching their aerial attack during the band’s opening number, “Closer.” Followill, 23, got it in the face.

“I was hit by pigeons on each of the first three songs,” said the musician and self-professed germophobe. “We had 20 songs on the set list. By the end of the show, I would have been covered from head to toe.”

Nor did he feel safe gazing skyward to see who his attackers were – or how many of them.

“The last thing I was going to do was look up,” he said, “but if that was only a couple, we must have caught them right after a big Thanksgiving dinner.”

After the cancelation – and, presumably, a good, hot shower – the band said in a statement through its manager, “We want to apologize to our fans in St. Louis and will come back as soon as we can.” Added the band’s publicist, “No fans got pooped on as far as we know.”

Kudos to Jared and the guys!  Next time, I hope they arm themselves with pellet guns and take more aggressive action against the sky rats.

This video of the concert popped up on youtube:

Towards the end, you can see the drummer and lead singer wipe sky rat scat from their faces. If I’m not mistaken, the singer’s shirt is also dotted with pigeon bomb shrapnel.

These birds must die!

My war with the pigeons started several months ago.  I was soaking in the tub, but I had left the window open. It was a nice sunny evening, and I was enjoying the neighborhood sounds as I relaxed. The window, when opened, creates a hole sized about one square foot in the bathroom wall, facing our neighbor’s house. The neighbors have no windows on the east side of their house, so this is safe enough – especially as the window is considerably higher than the tub. In other words, one can soak quite happily without fear of creating a neighborhood peep show. Especially if one uses copious amounts of bubbles and keeps the shower curtain drawn.  I feel the need to explain this quite thoroughly, lest some of you take to driving by my house. You wont see anything. Not that I bathe with the window open any more. No. The pigeons put an end to that.

There was I, soaking blissfully, when some great flappery interrupted my musings. A pigeon actually tried to fly into the window. Naturally, I sprung to action and successfully deterred said sky rat. None the less, I felt the sky rats had robbed me of one of my simplest pleasures. Sigh. I do not wish to offer them entrance to our home.

Since that day, I have regarded the pigeons with resentment. Those heathen sky rats have not been satisfied to rob me of open-window baths. They’ve taking to roosting under the eaves of the neighbor’s house, as well as sitting outside by bedroom window. They rob me of sleep as they coo and chatter in their pigeony way.

One Sunday morning, perhaps three weeks ago now, I awoke to the sound of their vocalization. Still groggy, I was infuriated that they had woken me before 6:00. Without truly considering the repercussions, I began to look for something – anything, really – to throw at the sky rats. My still-sleepy eyes locked onto a rubber band, and my mind was made up.  Slowly, almost painfully slow, I raised my blinds. The brazen birds did not scatter! I proceeded to lean out the window, as far as I could, and then I took aim.  I must interject that I possibly have the worst aim of all time. I didn’t truly expect to hit a sky rat; I simply hoped to frighten and scatter them in a satisfying fashion. But I did. I hit a sky rat. I nailed him with my rubber band. The whole pack (alright, there were three or four) took flight. They didn’t, however, fly the coop for long.

Instead, they have returned in greater numbers.

Pigeons, I once assumed, are a lazy, loafy type of bird. These seditious sky rats use their harmless appearance to infiltrate our society, and then they wait for an opportunity to do their worst. Even Disney has proliferated this pigeon propaganda, encouraging children to offer their few tuppence to support the sky rats!

Once welcomed into our parks and neighborhoods, the sky rats begin to bomb aggressively. They are not happy to drop the occasional load; they carpet bomb.  My car, and, more recently, our folding camp chairs and patio, have been the unhappy recipients.  This was an inconvenience and an annoyance. But the pigeons didn’t stop there. They waged a heavy assault on something near and dear to my heart – my Toy Story 3 Action Heroes wading pool!

Friday, I spent an hour draining and scrubbing my pool with bleach wipes until the smell of chorine was deeply ingrained in the surface. Granted, this shall create a more authentic pool experience, but I can’t honestly say that I’m thrilled about it.  Those pigeons stole something from me – something sacred.  I’m not taking this sitting down.

Today, I shall take my first strike against the pigeons.  Sky rats apparently hate the smell of strong spices. I’ll be mixing a disgusting mixture of garlic, cayenne, and everything else in my spice cupboard, and then venturing out onto the roof to distribute the mixture. With any luck, this will provide temporary relief. Should the sky rats return, I’m fully prepared to take more drastic measures.  A family friend has graciously offered the use of his airsoft gun; I fully intend to borrow it and take whatever means necessary to defend my family and our pool.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

1. Ate breakfast in the shower. How have I not been doing this for YEARS? Epic. Seriously.
2. Fought the addiction and won! I did not buy $tarbucks today!
3. Drank at least two litres of water.
4. Had the will power to not buy at least three different cardigans I was thoroughly convinced had been taylor made for me.
5. Stuck to the my diet unflinchingly. With exception to a handful of M&M’s during a rough patch this afternoon.
6. Got some good exercise power walking at the mall and Grandview. Shopping is hardcore. Seriously.
7. Watched the first half of A Very Potter Sequel.
8. Greek Yogurt + Fresh Blueberries = Totally Awesome. (Refer to number one)
9. Devoured the fabulous fish tacos I made with the cantaloupe salsa I made last night.
10. Wore my favorite black shirt.
11. Caught up with some awesome GP people I haven’t seen in ages.
12. Checked out our new college group.
13. Flossed. Twice. This is common, but awesome no less. Dental hygiene FTW!
14. Cut back on the number of times I used the word “Seriously.” Seriously.