11/10/00

my roommate takes such good care of me. i came into our room today cranky with a headache |------this big------| and facial muscles that twitched and hurt and eyelids that were heavy under the affect of gravity. she fed me peanut butter crackers (peanuts being some magical cure for headaches, according to her e.m.t. expertise) and put me to bed. and now after a light, in-and-out hour-long sleep i’m sitting here, yawning and blinking sticky slept-in contact eyes, feeling much better.

the other night kim, lindsay and i decided to be sickeningly seventh-grade girlish. we pulled on pajamas, piled on the floor with pillows, put “the breakfast club” in the vcr, brought out junk food and nail polish and tried to remember how to gossip. where’s the “girl talk” board game when you need it? (yes, i’m lame.)

lindsay contributed a vast selection of glittery nail polishes and taught me how to use nail “buffers.” my nails ended up being an m&m green with foil-like strips of sea blue and pine green sprinkled over it. it looked good for all of two hours, then it was chipping and flaking like head-and-shoulders dandruff. maybe i’m just not meant to be girly.

my hair has been dyed again and is now a purplish/reddish/burgundy color. the little white, shiny package said “tropic” on it. it looks more like the color of a nasty bruise to me, but i’ll assume that the hair dye company knows what they’re talking about.

so, i’ve been spending too much time sitting around pampering myself and not enough time doing anything constructive. i’ve had an alarmingly small amount of homework to do lately (i’m not complaining, promise) and even that i blow off and then have to struggle to finish at the last moment. i remember a girl who used to do her homework as soon as she got home from school and completed stellar projects a week before they were due and was organized and precise and a perfectionist ... but she’s apparently turned into someone who would rather sit around and sing out of key to punk rock songs and see how many colors she can get her hair to be before it falls out.

i haven’t been writing (that’s obvious, isn’t it?), i haven’t been keeping in contact with anyone back home, i haven’t been doing my schoolwork, i haven’t been reading anything, i haven’t been sleeping, i haven’t been swimming. i have been eating way too much overly tempting, colorfully wrapped halloween leftovers, though. we’ve had a box full of pink and orange and yellow and green, etc. treasures sitting in the middle of our floor since halloween and it’s been all too easy for kim and i to just grab a handful each time we walk past it. in a desperate attempt to prove the freshmen fifteen to be a myth, we’ve hidden them from ourselves (along with the butter cookies and nutty bananas). out of sight, out of mind.

i really do want to go swimming, though. my limbs feel heavy and leaden and i know that some exertion would make all the difference, but i’ve got reservations. the last time i went swimming, i walked home with cool night air blowing under my hoodie and onto my chlorine infested soggy head. i had a cold for a week afterwards. and considering that the temperature has dropped a good twenty or thirty degrees since then, i’m hesitant to do it again. but i reallyreally miss swimming; the rhythm of the motions, the feel of the water gulping me in, the soft swooshing sounds of the cascading waves stretching out from my arms like geyser wings.

from two days ago (i was too lazy to post it):

okay, i’m sure that everyone will be posting their two cents on this election deal in their journals today. and since i want to be cool like everyone else and fit in (hah!) i’m going to do the same:

the electoral college is bullshit.
bush jr. is possibly even more of an imbecile than dan quayle. (whoever thought such things were possible?)
both parties and both candidates suck.
ralph nader has more intelligence in his excrement than bush and gore have altogether.
the idea of an all republican government frightens me.
the only good thing that has come out of this election was the witty “bush and gore tour” name by bile. (get it?)
the whole situation makes me proud to be of anarchistic tendencies.

the weather recently has been amazing ... dreary, gray skies, fog rising off the mountains, misty drizzles falling, crisply chilled air. kim says it’s perfect sweater weather but i’ve skipped the sweater part and have been walking around with bare arms so that i can feel the cool drops extinguishing against me. the cleansing smell and soft pelting sound have awakened my senses and i feel more alert and together than i have in a month. it’s invigorating; compels me to play in puddles and drink from the sky and sit outside for hours and write bad poetry. i want to bottle it all up, all six senses of it, and keep it in my pocket for whenever i start to feel as if my seams are coming undone.

recipe for ingi’s very own magic potion:

one quart fresh mountain rain
one tsp fog
one hour moshpit frenzy
one mind-boggling kiss
a dash of poetic device

stir well and serve at any damn temperature you please.

the only thing i don’t like about rain is the slippery underfoot feeling. when you’re as equilibrium challenged as myself, walking on dry surfaces is enough of a challenge. add rain to the equation and the perfect opportunity for my nose to meet the ground is created. it’s not just rain: ice, the soapy puddles in the dish room at work, freshly waxed floors, etc. when it starts icing over here i’m going to have to start leaving a half an hour early for class just so that i can walk the whole way in my teensy baby steps with my hands out for support, shuffling carefully with my eyes intently focused on my footing. i literally cringe the entire time i’m walking on slick surfaces, vivid images of my battered body laying on the ground flashing through my mind: open fractures, shattered bones, missing teeth, strips of detached skin ... it’d make for good “faces of death part XIII” footage.

being that i have no sense of balance whatsoever, maybe it’s not the best of ideas to take up skateboarding, but i am anyway. i got an awesome deal on a beautiful (11:11) red board that i finally received in the mail yesterday. i’ve never really skated and i have no idea what i’m doing, so i’ve been gingerly rolling back and forth on the board on the small patch of uncarpeted flooring in front of my dorm room door. maybe i’ll eventually muster the courage to take it outside for a ride (only in a vacant hour where no one will be there to laugh as i fall and end up in that tangled “faces of death XIII” position). i’m suckering my brother, who has been skating for around eight years and can do almost anything perfectly on his first try, into teaching me some skills. don’t be surprised if i come home from xmas break (when i’ll be seeing him next) in a body cast.

my roommate and i are very, very bad. there are all these extremely specific, almost boot camp like in nature rules pertaining to what you can and cannot do with your rooms here on campus and we’ve seemingly made a point to break every single one. for instance, you’re not supposed to use tape on the walls; we’ve gone through a fat roll of sturdy double stick tape already. no candles? oops. no microwave? why, of course not. the main rule is the issue of using electrical sockets, though. we’re supposed to basically surrender to an amish lifestyle and use only a bare minimum of appliances. but, we’ve got this obsession with lights, you see. purple, blue, green, penguin shaped, lantern styled glowing bulbs that send rainbow shadows across my glittered fingertips as i type. in order to keep our aurora borealis shining, we’ve illegally strung a slew of cords, extensions, and double/triple plugged sockets across the room (fastened in place by the oh-so-very illegal tape). we should both be sent to the corner.

did you actually read all of this rambling? i’m impressed.