krink

yesterday i drove with my family to broken arrow, to visit my grandmother. she just moved in with my aunt last week. before that she was in a nursing home, but she had stopped eating. she's 88 years old, 'recovering' from bronchitis. she still won't eat. she's starting to forget where she is, and speaks about her husband like he is still alive (he died 4 months after I was born). it was so sad to see her like that, just laying in bed, barely there, I think they said her weight is down to about 80 pounds. she used to be so strong and loving. and she was still so happy to see me! she remembered me, and I held her hand, and we joked about how we had the same hairstyle now that i've cut mine short, and she's finally got a hip hairdo after 20 years of looking like an old lady. to me she still felt alive, she was still there. but when she was alone with my mother she told her that she just didn't want to eat anymore, and that she was in pain. in a roundabout way, she was looking for my mother's approval to let go. my mother is her youngest, and is closest to her of the four daughters. so she just wanted to make sure it was ok with my mom to finally let go. i wonder if i'll ever see her again? after i talked to her for a few minutes, i went next door to my cousins old room to see the dollhouse i used to play with, and there lying on the floor was the old copy of goodnight moon that my grandma used to read to me. i have pictures of us with that book, cuddled up in her old recliner. we seemed so happy in those days. she used to make me toast, macaroni and cheese. we'd go to this grocery store in tulsa when i would come to visit and she'd buy me anything i wanted. this is so hard to think about. i'm really going to miss her, and she's not even gone yet. how hard will be in the future, when my mom goes? not easy. i wish i could understand all of this better. wish wish wish!

marketers are inherently afraid of numbers. that's why we major in marketing, because we're no good at accounting or finance. in my marketing analysis class, we were assigned a case study of a paint company in the dallas-fort worth area. their sales had been declining, and we were supposed to suggest some reallocation of their marketing mix (oh drool at my fancy lingo, please) to counteract the growing competition in the area. and my answer was correct, one of very few right answers, because i analyzed each of the options financially, and the one that seemed stupid was really the best one because it saved boocoos of cash. i am super marketing woman. i fear no numbers! huzzah.

the weekend is upon me. i feel the urge to cause some trouble.

my prof is going to try and get me some consulting work with a free trade zone based in catoosa, for my independant study.

neat.

i am finally getting rid of that ugly plaid couch, i discovered today that my group partner david works at bill's used furniture, and he'll come haul it away for free :) this makes me happy. my living room with be open for sock-sliding gleefully across the varnished floor, and now rick and i can stop arguing all the time about the feng shui of my furniture placement. last night i think about five different times i yelled with the finger pointed accussedly at the accursed couch " that couch has god damn negative energy! "

anyways. small pleasures in life right? i'll go pick up my bike from buchanan, and go home and drink some tea. yippee for tea.

p.s. the promotions project topped out at 30 pages. about nesquik milk. isn't that ridiculous? college is ridiculous. life is ridiculous. i wish i were a squirrel.

work work work. 5 weeks to christmas vacation, yippee!

i keep a baby silver bobby pin in my agenda, so i can quickly flip to the current week. it tastes funny, just like a penny, but much more delicate.

it has been a tumultuous week. fast and slow, happy and sad, busy and lazy. school work is plugging along. finished the case study, turned it in on time, cheers to me. now working on the promotion project - we have to create and market some ficticious consumer packaged good (CPG in marketing lingo) that you sell in a grocery store. we're doing a flavor extension of the nesquik flavored milk drinks... orange milk. yum yum. it's all the rage overseas according to my foreign compatriates. my impression, melted orange julius? eww.

show at the deli was cancelled last night. i was so disappointed. it sent me on a downward spiral that led to *gasp* bed before midnight. i got all dressed up, and rick walked all the way over to my house (about a mile, he lives at lindsey and pickard), and we walked all the way to the deli, to find that stupid big white resident funk van parked in front. grrr. i did not want funk, i wanted my pistol arrows. they all have strep throat as it turns out, c'est la vie. all the pent up dancing in my belly is very uncomfortable. like butterflies, but much more bouncy.

mom, sofie, and i are taking a rented car to eastern oklahoma tomorrow to check out the changing leaves on the Talimena scenic drive through the Ouachita Mountains.. near McAlester. And hopefully hit Robbers Cave on the way back in. fun stuff, oklahoma has more to do then you may expect...

Weekend update. Maybe got a job at Dillard's for the holiday, waiting on a final callback from the manager. I can't settle on a peaceful way to arrange my furniture, does anybody want my couch? It is holding back my feng shui possibilities. I got my computer back from Lacy, but still no internet at home because phone lines/dsl are far too expensive. I was in a bad mood last night at the show. I hate it when that happens. The boys were written up as the #4 thing to do in the state this weekend by the Daily Oklahoman. Good for them! I also went to a sex toy party. It was very funny. Like tupperware, but with dildos and lube instead of microwave safe plastic. Although come to think of it, lots of the items were microwave-safe or plastic. Interesting...

Last night Rick showed up about 3am whiskey-drunk. He let himself in and collapsed on the bed where I was already 75% asleep. He laid down on top of the duvet and said, "You know, even though I'm drunk, I just wanted to tell you how nice it is to come lay down beside you to sleep and wake up beside you in the morning..." which was followed by a *clunk* *clunk* as he chucked his shoes on the floor, *rustle* as he got undressed and under the covers, and then that long now-i'm-in-bed-and-comfy sigh that he does, and then he whispered "sooooo nice" right before he fell asleep. He didn't see my sleepy smile, it was buried under the green sheets.

So nice.

jet setter because TR is studying in Stockholm in the spring, and Sofie is looking on the scandanavian airways page to find me a cheap ticket. hah, so come spring break, Sweden, ho! if you buy it from a swedish airline it is considerably cheaper, assuming you have a swedish address to mail it to, which i luckily do. now you guys see why i hang out with 'those exchange students' all the time. oh, and in may a week after graduation I get to fly out to LA (then drive to Santa Paula) to see my dad graduate, and then maybe i'll play in Cali before I start my June class. my mom asked, and how on earth are you going to pay for all this? to which my philosophy is, if you've got it, might as well spend it on something fun...

one of these days i'm gonna say all the things i wanna say but until then we can do with vague listings of the general topics i've been concerned with lately. caution, heavy stuff contained within. for instance: a. experiencing a growing attraction to women, all the while growing in what has been my greatest prospect at a "serious relationship" in two years (i.e. since donny) - the relationship being decidely heterosexual. mere curiosity or cause for genuine concern? girls are just cuter. b. wondering why is it that i suddenly unexplicably became alienated from friends. animosity, anxiety, lust, or annoyance? no one ever calls. i don't get why that happens. i must have disrupted some unspoken rule. c. still the ever underlying concern of my direction in life, geographically, upon graduation. the possibilities remain endless. people keep asking me what i plan to do. but i don't know. should i? d. my musical pursuits are growing stagnant, i'm going to stop lessons for awhile. reaching the extent of my guitar abilities, poor teacher-student relationship, or sheer boredom? i don't like to play guitar anymore. that makes me sad.

it's so funny, i was talking last night to a friend, and i said i was doing very well. i keep saying that lately. i am happy, but in such a strange way. there is so much changing and unspoken and unknown, and i think that i am becoming more content with the idea that things will always be like that, so i'm not so uptight about it all the time. yes, people grow and change, people move away, people don't care anymore, people pretend. and in that entire crazy mix of life, things will always just move on so why freak out about it? people ask me what i've been up to and i just say 'not much' because there isn't really any easy way to talk about all the things that are REALLY on my mind.

Rick comes the closest to understanding of anyone, in the sense that I can be myself with him. we don't air concerns such as these, but we don't have to work to hide anything. that's a nice feeling. i was getting so tired of people pretending.

Promotional lesson of the day all manufacturer's coupons are mailed to plants in El Paso, Texas. coupon sorting is a very labor intensive job that most companies can't afford to do themselves (unless they're huge, like Proctor & Gamble), and so since El Paso has such an abundance of an affordable manual-labor work force, everyone sends their coupons there for processing. that, and coupons are required by law to be assigned a cash value. i.e. the little "this coupon has a cash value of 1/100 of 1 cent" in the tiny print across the bottom.

interesting.