Mm-hmm. A More than Mushy Post (Barf)

It was my full intent to write this evening about the Minnesota Opera's production of Cosi Fan Tutte, but unfortunately for you, my mind is elsewhere. The show was good, and I'd love to discuss the disturbing staging choices that were less funny and instead made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but instead my mind is focused on the company I held this weekend.

As you are probably aware, Mr. Sturm accompanied me to the opera, but he also watched a movie with me Friday night, went for a walk with me on Saturday afternoon, and his whole family came over for the experimental trial run of the outdoor oven today. If mushy things make you want to barf, you should probably stop reading, or maybe get a bucket or garbage can closer to you.

At one point over the weekend, we were all curled up, snuggling, talking about this and that, and I was getting more and more tired. When Mr. Sturm informed me that it was late, and time to get up, I glanced at my watch. I certainly didn't disagree. It was late, and I was half asleep as it was. Still, I kind of ignored him the first time.

So we talked a while longer, and when the end of our time was mentioned again, I couldn't deny it, and I had already ignored the first warning, so I gave him a sleepy, "Mm-hmm."

"I know that 'mm-hmm'," he told me.

The smile on his face and the tone of voice he used as he gave me a quick squeeze took me a little off guard. I loved the way he responded to my sleepy "mm-hmm". Needless to say, it made me want to let go even less.

Numerous times over the last year I have referenced how living by myself has made me weirder and weirder. Without a roommate, significant other, or family members to keep me in check, I've really developed some bizarre habits, and I've kind of let my crazy run free. I might have the coffee table a mess, but every day the piano books are stacked exactly right when I'm done playing. I might not make my bed, but all the bottles and containers in the shower go in certain spots. I may wear real clothes to work, but I rarely wear all the clothes one would require to be seen by another person when at home. I eat food off the floor, sing out of key at the top of my lungs, have ice cream for breakfast, eat two dinners, hit the snooze button three times, and leave books on every surface in the apartment. I talk to myself, dance around, make weird faces, use the stove top to go through important paperwork, and can dirty every mug in the cupboard somehow.
 
So far, he has not been phased by anything, but I often wonder what the tipping point would be? I am not a good liar, and I am a pretty open person. Honestly, he makes me very comfortable and I am myself around him. I guess I'm not worried that he'll discover that I'm a weirdo. I'm more worried that I'm not so worried about it.

But for now, I'm going to continue enjoying this feeling of contentment and daydream about that smile.

It's SO Hot That.....

The following statements are modeled after "Yo' Mama!" jokes, except they aren't jokes, they are true, and I can say the following sentences as a little white lady without being beaten up or given weird looks.

It is SO hot that.....

• I have an ice pack shoved down my shirt.
• even sitting in front of the window air conditioner, my clothes are wet with sweat.
• I want cupcakes but refuse to turn on the oven.
• I've gone to the fridge several times just to browse.....but really to feel the cool air.
• the condensation on the linolium at work actually splashed onto my legs as I walked across the floor.
• my glasses fogged up as soon as I left my air conditioned car.The heat literally blinded me.
• I left my lunch dishes in my car while I volunteered this evening, and the remaining eggplant Parmesan baked and crusted onto the sides of the pan and the lid popped off. Now my car smells like burnt eggplant parm.
• I am actually wondering, sanitary issues aside, how long it would take to cook cupcakes in my car in the garage.
• school is canceled tomorrow due to extreme heat and unsafe conditions in our building.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

I am a northern girl who loves the seasons and prefers cold weather to hot. Unfortunately, right now at 5:30 in the evening, according to my local weather people, it is 92.5 degrees Fahrenheit but feels like 112. What is that? This is not ok! And so I am sitting in my underwear as close to the window air conditioner as possible, sweating profusely. In fact, when I get up to move, I will probably leave a puddle of sweat. Yuck. That's kind of gross.

This video with music by Buster Poindexter makes being hot seem like more fun than it really is. Below are ways to cool down on hot, gross, Minnesota days like this. Most of them should be done in your home, and you probably don't want other people around. Just sayin'. For you normal folks out there, I'll throw in some "normal" ways to stay cool.

1. Don't go outside.
2. Sit as close to the window air conditioner or fan as possible.

3. Leave the house and go somewhere like Starbucks or the mall where the air conditioners keep everything a frigid, slightly uncomfortable 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Buy yourself a milkshake or iced coffee or something along those lines.

4. Fill the slip covers or your couch with bags of frozen vegetables (peas and corn work best). Sit on the couch in your underwear, possibly with another bag of frozen vegetables on your forehead.

5. Fill a bathtub with cold water. Empty all your ice trays into the tub. Get in.

6. Drink lots of water.

7. Buy and freeze fruit such as pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Once frozen, place these fruits in a metal bowl and hold in your lap. Stick whole pieces of frozen fruit in your mouth and try to eat them. This is most enjoyable if you are sitting on your couch filled with frozen vegetables that you have placed as close as possible to the window air conditioner.

You are of course encouraged to mix and match any of the above for maximum coolness and/or enjoyable-ness. Any other ideas?

Attack of the (Probably) Killer Fly!

When I got home this evening, there were two rather large, kind of green flies living in my apartment. I expect they got in through the little openings around my window air conditioner. It is my intent to get packaging tape or something and totally seal those cracks up, but so far I have forgotten to buy packaging tape at every single available opportunity.

Now, as you may remember, I am insane. I am just absolutely crazy. My crazy runs deep and reaches into many aspects of my life, so I'm never really free of my own insanity. One particular aspect on my crazy that impacted my evening was that I don't like to kill things. I dread running over an animal in the road, from now on refuse to put out mouse traps, and I don't even like killing insects that have found their way into my home. It isn't that I can't deal with the dead animal. No, I can dispose of a mouse that has passed on to the big cheese in the sky, flush a fish that is now swimming in the pond around God's feet, or vacuum up the tiny, crunchy carcasses of Asian lady beetles that seem to have committed mass suicide in my window sill.

My problem lies only with the actual killing of the animal or living thing. This is why, when there are bugs, I either tend to ignore them and let them live out their life, shoo them away from me, or stalk them in my home, armed with a facial tissue with the intent of throwing them out the door to live the remainder of their lives in nature. I especially feel that spiders should be saved and released to the wild, but this general non-killing procedure extends to all other insects and the occasional mouse as well.

So as soon as I got home and heard and saw these two enormous green flies buzzing around the apartment, I put down my purse and armed myself with a Target brand facial tissue. The first fly was pretty easy to catch. It kept throwing itself against the window in the living room, so I just stood there for a few seconds, then covered it in the tissue, scooped it up, wrapped it up, opened the window, and shook it out. The fly happily buzzed away, probably thanking me for its new found freedom.

The second fly was much more athletic than the first fly. Instead of picking one spot on one window to repeatedly bounce off of, this second fly - from now on to be referred to as Malicious Taunting Fly - chose what is probably considered a better survival technique where it moved around a lot. After maybe ten minutes (my particular brand of crazy has made me quite patient), I stood still and listened. Deciding that Malicious Taunting Fly had grown tired and would be quiet for the rest of the evening, I shrugged and went about my business. In my head, I told myself that Malicious Taunting Fly would probably slip right back out the way he came in.

But it was not to be so. Little did I know this was just the beginning of a long, epic battle between crazy woman and non-threatening insect much, much smaller than her.

After a while of going about my business, I continued my evening festivities by putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth. Because I live alone and because, despite the window air conditioner, it is approximately 300 degrees Fahrenheit in my apartment at any given time, I will admit that I don't sleep in much. So there I am, lounging in my pajamas on the couch, reading a Percy Jackson book without my glasses (just holding the book rather close to my face), when I hear it.

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! buzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Malicious Taunting Fly is flying laps from the wall where my head it to the lamp and back again. I squinted one eye and watched it for a couple of laps, then stood up to retrieve my bug-catching tissue. As soon as I stood up, Malicious Taunting Fly disappeared. Just to be sure, I held very still for a long, long time (probably like 15 seconds or something ridiculous like that), then threw myself back onto the couch.

No sooner had I again become engrossed in the hijinks of half-blood Percy Jackson and his friends Annabeth, Grover the satyr, and Tyson the cyclops, than Malicious Taunting Fly begins flying frantic laps again. It was like Malicious Taunting Fly thought he was in the Indy 500 or something. It was crazy and noisy, and I would stand for it no longer.

Even though when I stood up again, Malicious Taunting Fly stopped, I waited. My patience paid off when he started flying laps again. I began trying to capture Malicious Taunting Fly without killing him.

Let me just say that it is more difficult that you would think to catch a crazy, psycho fly that won't land without killing it using only a tissue. Malicious Taunting Fly had me running all over the living room, climbing on furniture, and trying to set little traps. I discovered he liked the lamp, so I sat in wait, hand poised, to catch him should he land on the lamp. I climbed onto the armchair to try to reach him when he crawled on the crown molding. I opened the blinds so he couldn't hide behind them, allowing anyone walking in front of my apartment to view the Crazy Fly Catching Show.

Still none of this worked. Malicious Taunting Fly continued to fly at practically light speed in circles around the living room. That's when I got the brilliant idea that if I could just stun Malicious Taunting Fly then I could scoop up the little guy in his second of immobility and throw him outside. I began swatting at him, trying to hit him hard enough to knock him to the ground but not hard enough to kill him.

Unfortunately for me, however, Malicious Taunting Fly is some sort of mutant un-stunnable fly. When my causing-head-trauma plan didn't work, I took a deep breath and told myself I could move on. I decided I could be the bigger person and let the fly live out the rest of its life annoyingly buzzing in frantic circles relentlessly around my living room as if it were always hopped up on cocaine. How long do flies live, anyway? It is my understanding they don't live very long.

Half content with my decision, I laid back down on the couch and turned off the light. I decided to watch an episode of The Office on my computer before going to bed. As I started to relax, Malicious Taunting Fly flew at my computer screen and just started walking around. I stood up to retrieve my discarded tissue, and Malicious Taunting Fly just started flying at my face. When I put my hands up to protect my face, Malicious Taunting Fly began pummeling my torso. He flew at me again and again, bouncing off of me, all the while buzzing louder than I think flies are supposed to be able to buzz.

That's when I knew Malicious Taunting Fly was intentionally, and with malice, going out of his way to mess with me.

Malicious Taunting Fly started taking a promenade on my screen again, so I reached for a tissue. I briefly considered killing him, but I didn't want fly guts all over my computer screen, and also, I spent so much time already trying to get him out alive, killing him now would make all that other time seem like just a bunch of time wasted by a mentally unstable crazy person. After a moment of hesitation, I slowly tried to gently scoop him off the computer screen and wrap him up.

And that stupid Malicious Taunting Fly flew off.

When he came back, however, I was ready for him. I scooped him up in the tissue without a millisecond of hesitation and wrapped another tissue around for good measure. As I walked as quickly as I could for the door, I could feel Malicious Taunting Fly buzzing and flipping out inside his tissue cocoon. He was angry, and I knew that if he managed to escape, he would kill me with his little fly ways.

Panicking ever so slightly, I flung open the balcony doors and threw Malicious Taunting Fly - tissue cocoon and all - outside and slammed the door. I peered through the window for about a minute, expecting to see Malicious Taunting Fly emerge from his pillow-soft prison and disappear into the nighttime, but it didn't happen.

For all I know, Malicious Taunting Fly is still inside the house, laying in wait and plotting to kill me in my sleep.

How Celebrating My Country's Independence Made Me Uncomfortable

I do a lot of things by myself. I cook, clean, re-arrange furniture, pay my bills, and open jars of spaghetti sauce by myself. Over the past year, I have gone to movies alone, gone shopping alone, and gone out to eat at a restaurant all by myself. I frequently walk by myself, go shopping at the mall by myself, and have even attended dance classes sans partner. This usually doesn't bother me. In fact, I almost prefer going to movies alone now. I like to watch movies on DVD with my friends, but when it comes to the movie theatre, I rarely attend with anyone anymore.

Now I realize this makes me sound kind of lonely, but the truth is actually quite the opposite. I have many friends and family members that I love dearly and see quite often. I have just come to appreciate being alone. I might even go so far as to admit to liking being alone sometimes.

Yes, I wish there was someone with my overly-vocal feline to greet me at the door when I came home. Sure, it would be nice if I could cook for someone other than myself and if I had someone to share my mundane daily thoughts. Of course someday I'd like to crawl into bed next to a significant other and snuggle. But to be honest, right now being alone isn't so bad. It is kind of pleasant. I can walk around in my underwear, not clean up my spill from cooking until after I eat, watch TV guilt free at 3am when I can't sleep, sleep right smack dab in the middle of my bed, and drink the milk right out of the container.

Life is good, and so I have come to enjoy the pleasures of living and doing things alone.

But alas, as I went around the corner to celebrate our country's independence this evening by watching colorful explosives, I began to doubt my security. With no friends in town who were not already with other family or had small children, I decided to walk the 1/2 mile and watch the fireworks by myself. I didn't even think twice about it. Once I got there, I felt confident and full of self-worth for about 10 minutes, and then I started getting a little twitchy.

First of all, I didn't know where to sit. Where were the fireworks going to be exactly? Which trees were going to be in the way? How close could I get to those people? Was someone saving that spot?

Finally, I chose a spot kind of behind a couple with no children and in front of a tree. I felt out of the way there, and it seemed, based on the direction people were facing, like I would have a decent view of the display. I stood for a while, then decided I would feel less conspicuous sitting down. So I sat in the grass, despite being incredibly allergic to grass.

After about two minutes, I chastised myself for being so self-conscious and stood back up. Everyone else was with friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, husbands, wives, boyfriends, or girlfriends. No one else was alone. No one that I could see up and down either side of the river or on my little walk to the edge of the lake looked like they were alone.

Desperately, I began to scan the crowd for people I might know. Were there any colleagues already here with their families? Maybe I could sit with them or at least engage in some friendly banter or pleasant small talk for a few moments? Was that one of my students? I could go check in on the family? But alas I found no one, so I returned to my spot near the tree.

I stayed for the entire fireworks display, and even tolerated the incredibly loud teenagers that eventually came and stood really close to me, drawing a lot of attention to me - the quiet adult sitting all alone in the grass right next to the noisy teenagers using a lot of inappropriate language in close proximity of little kids. They did leave after about five minutes, so that was good.

Isn't it funny, though, that I have no problem eating alone in a busy restaurant - sometimes without a crutch such as a book or crossword puzzle - and even signed up for a second dance class all by my lonesome knowing that most people would show up with partners, however it seems I have an issue attending fireworks displays by myself?

And that is how the 4th of July made me feel socially inept, awkward, and uncomfortable.

On that note, Happy Fourth of July, and a Merry belated Canada Day!

How I'm Getting Weirder Every Day and Am No Longer Fit To Co-Habitate With Other Humans

Eventually I'd like to have a significant other that I return home to each night and wake up to each morning, but lately I've been thinking about living with another person. I have only lived completely on my own without my family or roommates for about eight months now, but I think it may be ruining me. I have reverted back to the ways of barbarians - or at best the ways of a crazy, socially inept person who is stuck in their ways and no one would ever want to live with. Perhaps I could be featured on some nature show where they do an in depth look at young single teachers who reside by themselves.

This whole train of thought was brought on by something I did last night. After returning from work last night, still in my mismatched, sweaty clothes from the epic tennis match hours before, my hair standing on end, and my eyes all squinty from working on a Sunday evening, I proceeded to jump around and sing a couple of songs while the water heated up for my shower. Not knowing the words, I mostly sang nonsense syllables. But this isn't the part about my behavior that worried me. After my shower, I sat on the couch in my pink elephant pajamas eating some Half-Baked Ben and Jerry's straight from the container when some fell on my pant leg, just above the knee. Determined not to waste the ice cream (with the secondary motive of not getting chocolate ice cream on the couch), I placed the container and spoon on the coffee table and tried to pick up the ice cream with my fingers. That, my friends, did not really work since the ice cream was melting too quickly. I then decided to lick it right off of my pants.

I am not the most flexible person, but I dare you to find someone who can easily lick chocolate ice cream off the part of their pants, let's say about a third of the way up the thigh. Even if they could do it, no one could look good doing it. So here I am, contorting myself into different positions in an attempt to lick chocolate ice cream off of my pajama pants. Mostly I wanted the ice cream in my mouth, but also, I didn't really want it on the couch, and I wanted to minimize the damage on the pajamas. After several failed attempts, I decided to start slowly removing my pants - just enough to give me a little more give in the fabric and also to lower the piece of melty ice cream closer to my knee so I could more easily bend and get it.

Eventually, I succeeded.

But my success got me to thinking. Would such behavior be appropriate if I lived with another human, and not just an overly opinionated feline that believes she is a human? If I had a roommate, what would she think if she had come home to see me on the couch with my butt hanging out, licking my pants? Something about it seems socially unacceptable. I think I learned once that it is frowned upon to lick your pants in public. Or maybe it was that you should never partially remove your pants in order to lick off melted ice cream? I really can't remember.

And so, if any of you have ever, will ever, or have ever considered living with me, I have compiled a Top Ten list of reasons I am not fit to co-habitate with other human beings.

1. When I eat, the food doesn't always end up in my mouth. This leads to incidences like the one describe above. Or it could just lead to me walking around with crumbs in my scarf or a soup stain on my collar.
2. I do weird things. Again, I'll bring up the incident described in detail. Also, I may or may not sometimes use a Dirty Dancing workout video, make hilarious attempts at doing push ups or other upper-body exercises, or just do clumsy things like walk into walls, slam my fingers in the cupboard door, trip over my own feet, fall off the couch, etc. Sometimes I find things like a jelly bean in the sheets or a piece of popcorn under the couch. Should I throw that away? Probably. And I would if there were another person there to judge me. However, since I live alone, I eat it. Usually I don't regret it either.
3. I hit the snooze button more than once. I set it for impossibly short amounts of minutes, but insist on hitting it repeatedly, rather than just hit it once and have it set for the number of minutes I know I want to stay laying in bed.
4. I use all of the mugs. I own a ridiculous amount of mugs for one person. Naturally, I have a set of four matching ones for when company come over, but beyond that, I probably have another eight or so. I don't know. I've never counted. The point is, there are enough mugs to go around, and yet most of them seem to be dirty most of the time. I drink a lot of tea, but I also reuse mugs fairly often, so I'm not sure how this happens. It must be a magic trick I can do. It isn't the best magic trick, but whatever.
5. I sing and talk to myself often, and it usually doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I tell myself things, talk to inanimate objects around the house, and sing really loudly. Sometimes, like Marshall from "How I Met Your Mother" I just sing strings of nonsense words. Sometimes I sing strings of nonesense syllables. I don't know what to tell you. I have a degree in linguistics and make a living teaching language, and yet on my own I revert to gibberish.
6. I make a lot of sound effects. Upsetting email demanding more paperwork be done - BAH! Not the food I want in the kitchen - RAWR! Computer going too slow - UUUUUUUGH! Walk into a wall or door - GROMP!
7. I walk around in various states of undress. There's no one here. And I am pretty good about remembering to close the blinds. It doesn't really help that I keep things like underwear, socks, tights, pajamas, and undershirts in the bathroom, but everything else in the bedroom. Still, I may start getting dressed in the morning, but give up partway through because I need my cup of tea immediately. I might come home where it is too early to take a shower and put my pajamas on, but too late to justify changing my clothes. Who wants to take out jeans and a sweatshirt, put them on, get them dirty, only to take them off again almost immediately? On the other hand, I don't want to do dishes in my dress clothes, and it is difficult to get comfy on the couch in work clothes. I could get spaghetti sauce on my dress or cat hair on my pants. So some nights I might walk around for an hour or so in tights and my bra. What? No one else except Squeaky lives here. It's not like the cat wears clothes!
8. I have too many shoes. Seriously. I have a lot of shoes. Where would the other person put their shoes? There's no room!
9. I play the same song on the piano or my ipod over and over and over again. While I like this, another person my find my compulsiveness annoying. I try to only play the piano or listen to my music loudly if I know Downstairs Neighbor is not home.
10. I fold my laundry and leave it on the arm chair for days. Where would anyone else sit? I have basically taken over the entire couch. Just because I usually sit curled up in one corner doesn't mean I don't need the whole thing. Every once and a while I need to sprawl out. But if my laundry is on the chair, my roommate would have to sit.....on the floor? On my laundry? On the piano bench?

As you can see, there may be some issues should I ever live with a roommate again or move in with a significant other. With any luck they'll be just as weird as me so they can't judge. On the other hand, do I really want to live with someone like me? Meh. I'm an acquired taste, but I'm not that bad, right?

When I ate ice cream earlier today, I didn't spill any on my tights, so the incident from last night has not yet been repeated.

Dr. House would judge me

Although it is way past my bedtime, I am nowhere near sleep. For some reason, the stresses and unfortunate news I have received over the past week or two have hit home tonight. I was going about my business just fine, happy as a clam (although I don't know exactly what clams are so happy about all the time), and I was driving home from dance class when suddenly the emotional discomfort struck. What terrible timing since sleep is such a precarious thing for me, anyway.

So I thought I'd have some ice cream and watch something on Hulu. Unfortunately, there was nothing new on Hulu that I wanted to watch. Furthermore, I decided I didn't want ice cream. So I returned the ice cream to the fridge and started popping an obscene amount of popcorn. It was alright that I was being noisy, because downstairs neighbor had (and still has, actually) his TV on pretty loud. I then proceeded to pour an even more obscene amount of melted butter on the popcorn and vigorously apply salt from my bear shaped salt shaker.

New and improved bedtime snack in hand, I returned to the couch to find new entertainment. Dissatisfied with everything on my shelf, I settled for House, season 2. I popped it into the computer and curled up under some blankets on the couch, munching away and handfuls of buttery, salty popcorn.

In the show "House", the medical team often breaks into their patients' homes and try to find possible environmental contaminants. While doing this, they make snide comments and remarks about the patient's lifestyle. In the episode I now have paused, they broke into the home of Dr. Cuddy, the anal-retentive chief of medicine. Her house was impeccable, and yet they found traces of a freaky kind of pneumonia-causing black mold. If they find that in her ridiculously sterile and clean home, what on earth would they find here?

This is Dr. House's face when he walks in the door to my apartment.

 This is his face after the results of all those tests come back. He can't believe what a petri dish I live in.

Currently, there are dishes in the sink, a bag of recycling outside the back door, two abandoned tea cups in the living room, and I think I may have left my tea cup in the bathroom this morning when I went to go brush my teeth. I admit that when I vacuum on the weekends, I don't always get under my bed or couch, so who knows what things could be accumulating down there? And I have not even considered cleaning things like the pipes under the sink! Then there's the whole thing where I have a cat, and there are messes that go along with that, such as plastic mice all over the floor, the occasional tumbleweed of hair, etc. On top of all of this, there is laundry folded on the big, comfy chair, ready to be put away, then dirty laundry on the bathroom and bedroom floor.

All in all, Dr. House is disappointed with me. Look at him judging.

The people in "House" never know that they are going to get sick, which I suppose is fairly accurate. There is no way I can predict if I am going to suddenly develop Lupus, ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency, botulism, or eastern equine encephalitis. Perhaps I need to start cleaning my apartment better. Perhaps I need to re-fashion my current lifestyle to reflect my fear that I will suddenly be struck down by an extremely rare disease and a team of snippy and judgmental doctors will break into my home and go through everything. It is kind of like that thing where you always have to put on clean underwear in case you are in an accident so that the peramedics know that you are a decent, civilized person. Only this is about 5,000 steps further than that in that I need to start scouring and disinfecting my apartment on a daily basis.

This may become a full time job.