So this is the part where library school gets insanely boring. This is the part where I realize that I’m in a professional program and there’s no real room for asking questions. I know I sound like a horrible spoiled child even complaining, because I’m SO lucky to be in any graduate program and do I KNOW how bad it is for people in the real world? Et cetera, et cetera, repeat until you or I vomit.

I’m just glad it’s the Spring of my Discontent, rather than the winter, because discontent is much less bearable in the winter. Now I can nick off and go to a park and watch the clouds turn into Nick Belkin and Evil Dewey. I will just hang in there until it is thesis time.

The nice part is that even though school no longer has me in its intellectual grip, I am aware that there are other challenges to be had. Back to pleasure reading, now that I am an assigned-reading skimmer. Back to gardening, now that I won’t spend hours agonizing over a paper. Back to doo-in it with out thought or care about how much sleep I’m going to end up with. No more Pretty Princess in my nine-thirty class, but at least I am extra-curricular again.

Well, out on the town last night, if you count “the town” as being the University District. I have this crazy night class: Information Systems, Architectures, and Retrieval. They strong-arm the future librarians into taking it, much to their bitter dismay, but as a future Evil Information Scientist, I can see how I can mold the class to my evil future purposes.

Anyhow, we escaped from the lab early last night, and my lab partner was craving a College Inn grinder, so we hit it. There is a meeting place in the back of the College Inn that bears the squirmy title “The Snug Room.” I glanced up as we walked by snugtown and noticed it was full of people, not an unusual sight on a Thursday night.

But then I started seeing my classmates walk by on their way to the bathroom. Someone finally stopped and said, “Hey, you two, there’s a librarian meeting over there. Why aren’t you joining us?”

Suddenly I remembered what was happening…it was the librarian social, organized by the student organzation that I am VP of. Shit. Here I was sitting three tables away from them. I had completely forgotten about it because I was supposed to be in class until late. Plus I don’t really want to meet any librarians, especially if they’re as basket-casey as my classmates.

That’s it for the College Inn on a weeknight.

Poor Mr. Husband. Or, Mr. Crabbypants, as I prefer to call him lately. For some reason he has a problem with me discussing Carl Fucking Sagan at length and in great detail immediately after doing the No-No Dance. Man, it’s not my fault. He’s the one who brought up alien abduction as we were laying there cuddling.

I think I’m like a lot of people. If I’m interested in something, I will research it until I’m satisfied. Carl’s popular books are so cheap at bookstores they are just impossible to resist.

I know that Saganism is a phase that many fourteen-year-old-boys go through, and then move on from, but I was never that boy. I was reading science fiction and gaffling my mother’s Stephen King novels (gloating every time I made it past her steadily-moving bookmark). So this is like a breath of freash air for someone who has been fairly credulous her whole life.

Still, Mr. Husband is disappointed in me. This is the man who owns Fifty Years of UFO History and everything Graham Hancock ever wrote.

Last night:

Mr. Husband: “So you think that all those millions of people who say they got abducted, never did?”

Me: “Well, yeah.”

Mr. Husband: “Just because there’s no proof doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Me: “Yeah, okay, but don’t you think that this sort of thing would be international news? Why would the government be trying to hide it? They’d have an excuse to bring back Star Wars.”

Mr. Husband: “I think that if enough people believe it’s true, maybe it becomes true.”

Me: “Wha? Carl says-”

Mr. Husband: “Zip! It!”

Me: “But…”

Mr. Husband: *reaches for pillow and holds it menacingly over my head*

Poor, credulous Generation Y. I think the “Y” stands for “Yeah, okay.”

Is there anything worse than good intentions? I hate them:

“Sorry, didn’t mean to run over your foot, my intentions were good.”

“Didn’t mean to stick my penis in your ear, I had good intentions.”

Anyway, I have been Miss G. Intentions for the whole of spring break and I am sick of myself.

Things I Intended To Do:

-Paint the bathroom. It is the most awful kind of sponged-on greyness. Who paints a room GREY in SEATTLE, fer christsakes?

-Clean out the file cabinet. Everytime I open it I find the the deed to the Lusitania or the souls of a thousand dead puppies or some gold doubloons. But what if the IRS comes knocking? I keep asking myself. Then I will be glad I have my embarrassing undergraduate paper from four years ago titled, “Courbet’s Romantic Redux: Gustave Courbet’s Struggle Against the Constraints of Realism.” Uck-puh! Truly I was smoking the crack. Now my papers are titled things like, “Response Paper,” and “Essay Two.” That certainly has a ring to it.

-Write something! Anything! I try to finish a short story every school break. I even found a sexy Portland literary/arts mag to submit to, and I have nothing. I even produced a little something over xmas break which turned into something more substansial elsewhere.

-Have a party! In someone else’s condo! The only way to travel! But then they crapping came home early and I was all tired from my stupid research report anyhow.

Things I Actually Did:

-Took my sister on her job shadow, with the very nice rock star. She had a great day, and so did I, because I sat in the studio all day reading Broca’s Brain by Carl Fucking Sagan.

-Watched Frannie pottytrain herself, because as much as you want to, you cannot force your little imp to make in the pot, even if you have a room full of candy and Barney videos. Even though the world is going to Hell in a Kate Spade clutch, thank Buddy Christ that my days of diaper-toting are so goddamed numbered.

-Went to the local Japanese Super Complex and bought many pleasing things to cook up, but am now too lazy to cook them. I am a goddamed psychic, I can see the future:

Tonight, at my house:

Mr. Husband: “What’s for dinner, babyhead?”

Me: “Um. Pancakes. And leftover squash. And…surimi…and a quail egg!”

Suddenly I am freaking culinary Yoko Ono.

Something good happened there, though. Bergamot gum. I am an Earl Grey worshipper and an occassional wearer of oil of bergamot.

Haiku for the Lotte Gum Company

O! Bergamot Gum
I delight in contemplating
odd-scented pieholes.

What I am Doing Right Now:

-Chowing fortune cookies.

Best fortune: “You will dance to a different beat next summer.”

Weirdest fortune: “Confucius say: Angel with wings not so hot as angel with arms.”

I, Asshole fortune: “Angel with wings not so great as Angel with a hot ass.”

Mmmm, angel wings.

Out: “mommies” and “shorties”
In: “humpies”

Trust me on this one: “If you mess with my humpy, Ima be the one to break it to ya.” “I want to go kick it tonight, but I got two humpies coming back to my crib later.”

Out: age-progression
In: dragging the lake

Out: French tickler
In: Freedom tickler

I don’t make this stuff up, I just report it.

Out: genital lesions
In: back pimples

Specifically, never-ending back pimples. Yes, it’s still there. It’s a good thing I’m not a stripper, because I’d be on permanent disability by now.

Out: Kleenex
In: the tops of your large American breasts, which also serve as sauce magnets.

Where is the damn Kleenex? How can a person lose a box in a house the size of a Ford Focus?

Out: mother-trauma
In: capital “E” Ex-trauma

Out: My baby mama
In: My baby’s mother.

Ex: 50 Cent: “My baby’s mother has stabbed me worse than that.” I feel that, 50.

Out: Red wine
In: Monster Energy Drink

With a monster headrush! And monster peeing! And monster weird almost-identifiable flavor. And monster taurine? Meow? And then…monster shakes because you are just used to drinking caffiene like a NORMAL person, and not some crap that grows on the underside of a rainforest.

Out: Pervy/skeevy/sketch/nastil
In: Porny!

Ex: “That guy’s tee-shirt was so threadbare you could see some nippleage. Porny!”

Ooh la, so my rampage that I go on at the end of every school quarter has caught up with me today.

I ran out this afternoon, like the Eager Mail Beaver that I am, to flip open the little white door that I always think will reveal golden treasure of Ark-of-the-Covenant proportions, but usually just reveals the mail equivalent of Gong Show donkeys.

Today it was a Gong Show Ark, if that makes sense. Okay, it doesn’t.

I reached in and pulled out a copy of Entertainment Weekly that did not have a bill attached to it, and it even had my name spelled correctly: “SJ.” How did this miracle occur? Usually it’s “S.J.” because no one realizes I have a middle name too, and am not just initials. Or at school I am the ever-popular “Sj” because their computers can’t accept two caps in one field. Or “S J” all spread out which makes me think that they want to say my name extra-slowly. Tenderly. A whisper from across a crowded room.

ANYWHO. As I was thinking all of this, I realized 1. that I was getting very wet in the rain, standing there, staring. And 2, I had some dim recollection of a late-night session of drinking and clicking, drinking and clicking…something about eight free weeks of EW, with absolutely NO obligation on my part, I could cancel anytime, etc.

Damn you, Gato Negro. Damn you straight to Hell. Double that for pop-up ads. On the other hand, now I have something to read in bed tonight! You go, Intoxicated SJ! My past self looking out for my future self! Great Scott!

So, I set foot in a salon yesterday for the first time in fifteen years. I don’t know what finally possessed me to do it. I guess I finally got tired of giving myself the same three haircuts. And for the first time ever, I have sucessful bangs.

I like it, but I don’t think anyone else does. Everyone I have seen hasn’t said anything, I have had to say something. Not a good sign. My sister was pointedly terse about the whole thing. I had to prod her for her opinion, which is on the list of Things Not To Do.

Me: “Well?”

Morgan: “Your bangs look, um, European.”

Me: “What does that mean?”

“They kind of go ‘woosh’ off to the side.”

I have Eurobangs? It’s a good thing she didn’t say French, because then I would have to have Freedom Bangs.

Yes, I am obviously not trying to think about war, too. Or that poor girl who got sawed in half. Or how exhausting it will be attempting to move to Canada or Australia. Tbbbpppt.

For some people it’s Sartre of Foucault, but I always find myself quoting the modern philosopher Ludacris. And now that you’ve forgotten why you read this blog, or why you’re friends with me (for my offsite peeps) I will leave you with this:

Thank you, Giant Head of Ronald Reagan, for letting me start my period, so I can go back to obsessing over food and my boring-ass research report. Which is how it should be. Instead of, you know, me deciding if I should hump the bus stop sign or wait for another hobo to walk by. Armchair or television set? Cherry tomatoes or mashed potatoes? Dirty bombs or DIR-TAY bombs? I would’ve taken someone in a surgical mask and a beard at that point, and it would have been even better if they wouldn’t have been an MD. I would hump anything two days ago.

Back to “normal” for another three weeks, at least.

Thank baby Allah that the quarter is finally over. Because no one thanks baby Allah. It’s always baby Jesus, or Big Allah. Does anyone know what Allah was like when he was a baby? Golden vomit? I think Jesus vomited gold, but I can’t be sure.

I digress.

Yesterday I survived my ultimo college nightmare. For the first time in five years of post-high school education, I left a paper at home on the day it was due. Not just home, either, but on my hard drive. I hadn’t even given it a final edit.

I walked up to my professor, who was standing at the front of the class while everyone was chowing down on all the food they brought for the last day; it was noisy and everyone was distracted.

“Hello,” I said. “My college nightmare has just come true. I forgot my paper at home, on my hard drive. I am an idiot.” I smiled like a dope, because it is the thing to do in situations like this.

“Oh, that’s alright. Just email it when you get home.”

Which was great, but “getting home” didn’t really happen until eleven that night…because my cool professor from last quarter was having a celebratory pub night. What could I do? He said I had to go…as the incoming V-P it was my DUTY to meet-n-greet his evening degree students.

It was also my duty to drink a really horrible lemondrop and then spend the rest of the night drinking beer out of my tiny sticky martini glass.

So I sent it last night when I was still wobbly. I would feel better, guilt-free actually, if he hadn’t agreed to be my thesis advisor just the day before I forgot to turn in my last five-page paper for his class. I am absolutely certain he’s patting himself on the back for that decision now. The decision to supervise me doing real research and churning out 50-100 pages. Yeah.

An excerpt of my forgotten, very tedious paper that is about the structure of a certain thesaurus:

“The AAT mostly operates on post-coordination. When a user enters a term into the search box, the ‘terms are coordinated at the time of searching’ (Foskett, 1996, p. 97.) This means that the AAT finds text that is the same as what the user entered, or makes sense out of a combination of terms, such as a Boolean query. I searched

Aha. So today was the day. No more panty lines, said I. I snapped the smallest two-pack of g-string underwear I could find off the rack at Target with unperturbable determination.

“I figure you might as well have a small piece of fabric in your butt, instead of a giant clump,” my helpful shopping friend said.

“Or just half your underwear, which is worse,” I reasoned. Good. I pitched the tiny two-pack into the cart and they floated to the bottom in a sinister fashion.

What happened after I got out of the shower this morning was a different story. I held up the minuscule piece of fabric I had selected to be my guinea-floss and hesitated. I felt like Ye Olde Virgin Bride: “You want me to put what? In where???”

I had serious doubts that I could even get the item in question over my hips. I have been living in quasi-grannypannies ever since I had Miss Frannie, since they are so crapping comfortable…safe…like wine-in-a-box is safe because you know you will feel awful if you drink too much and, hey, it doesn’t taste very good anyhow. But now I was switching to some Cristal.

“Oh c’mon,” I said to myself. “You’ve been working out, you can do this.” I asked myself the important question I always ask when faced with a situation that involves potential trampiness: “What would the Hilton Sisters do?” Then I realized that they are so wee that one half of my butt could be Nicky’s whole body and the other half could be Paris‘s, and that I should probably leave them out of this. Although how cool would it be to name my buttcheeks after them?

I put it on. Felt okay. Ran for a mirror check and then realized I would be wearing slightly baggy jeans over them anyhow. My ass was free! I felt so liberated. I flexed one buttcheek and then the other, and as I flexed I imagined that the Hilton sisters were catfighting over who would get to bump the last rail. The slightly uglier cheek would be named Nicky. “Get her, Paris! Pull her hair!” Jiggle, jiggle.

Then I wondered if people could tell. I mean, we’re all naked under our clothes, yes, but some of us are more dressed than others. Would people sense my almost-nudity? Would I be giving off the dirty-bird vibe all day, even more than I do already? Who did I think I was, anyway? Did I think Seattle had suddenly become Rio Freaking de Janeiro? I went red, and since I was looking backwards in the mirror I could see that Nicky and Paris went red, too.

Okay. I am breathing again. I left them on and got dressed, and as I write I am sitting on a friendly little strip of fabric that, as my friend said, would normally be a big clump. I wonder if I will miss squirming in class? Probably. What if they get wedged in so far that a black-hole situation is created and the thong gets sucked into my body, doomed to get lost and float around for years, just like we all thought tampons could before we started our periods?

Wish me luck for today, and if it all ends in a disaster I have only the mysterious and powerful Gods of Ovulation to blame, who make me do stupid things like this.