Dear everyone who was a part of last night:

Thanks. I had a great time.

So last night I made my first grilled cheeses ever. Not the first that I have eaten, but the first that I have made. Ashley and Steph taught me how, and well, the third one I made was the best. I know it sounds weird that I can have survived this many years loving grilled cheeses and not know how to make them, but my dad loves to cook, so he always made them for my brother and I. I felt like Lucille Ball though, standing in the kitchen with curlers in my hair, trying to tend a pot of tomato soup at the same time as I burnt a grilled cheese. It was funny.

Today is Tuesday.

Cable will not be upgraded until tomorrow, and I might miss Nip/Tuck, this will be a tragedy of great proportions.

So in 7 days I will have officially survived this planet for 252 months. I'm super pumped.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH! And in two more days, HAPPY BIRTHDAY OTHER JOSH!

So Ashley's graet aunt makes this really yummy apple pie drink thing. It tastes like apple pie and about 2/3 of the way through it, I'm pretty toasty. Life is good.

Also, there is a large pink flamingo in our living room. Not that I have seen any other colored flamingos, but it is amusing.

So I don't think that I am meant to be domestic.

My father has been out of town for almost two weeks now. The house has been cleaner in that time than it ever has. Today was my day off. I decided that I'd mow the lawn and then come inside and dust and vacuum the whole house, considering that I have been at the Fortress all weekend and the dogs got stir-crazy.

First part of the plan, I go outside and start to mow the lawn. It is going rather successfully, except the mower seems to be losing steam on the thicker patches of grass, but that makes sense. And then, all of the sudden, in the middle of the lawn it just stops working. And then it starts smoking.

I come inside, and move all of the dog toys off of the ground so that I can vacuum. It's coming along well, I've finished two complete rooms, am working on the hallway. And then, all of the sudden, in the middle of the hall, it just stops working. WTF? So I empty out the filter and all, thinking that that could be the problem. Nope.

So now I have a lawn mower that doesn't work sitting in the middle of my backyard and a vacuum cleaner that doesn't work sitting in the middle of the hall. I'm afraid that I'll be in the middle of this post and my computer will stop working and start smoking everywhere. Maybe it will catch on fire. That would be kind of cool to watch, at least until I realized that I hadn't saved my post yet, and that my computer was on fire.

Through an interesting series of events, I am not moving in with my mother. Huzzah! Ashley and I will be living in one of my mother's friend's apartments while she undergoes chemo and radiation therapy in Utah. It is a mutually beneficial situation. My mom was talking about my grandfather today, and I realized that I know practically nothing about him. He passed away before I was alive, and it was my understanding that he died of emphysema or some other smoking related disease. Apparently he died of cancer. It started in his lungs, but when it was found, it had already spread everywhere, his brains, his bones, etc. I also thought that he was a heavy smoker until he died, but also apparently he quit shortly after my mother was born. I don't know really where I developed all these stories about him, maybe my grandmother, who knows? It was just weird to see how off they were.

I used to hate tomatoes, you know, when I was little. I even hated tomato by-products - salsa, pizza sauce. I always loved ketchup though, I couldn't figure out why, and it drove my mother crazy. Then one day I'm at this diner, and I order some turkey-something sandwich. I was tired and hungry and didn't think twice before I was halfway through my sandwich - it was so good - they must have some secret ingredient that I'd never heard of, I thought. So I pull back the top of my sourdough roll and what do I see? The same little red slices that have haunted my finicky eating my whole life. It was amazing, it was like my own personal tomato revelation.

This isn't a true story, but a monologue that I wrote a couple of years ago for no particular reason that I came across the other day. This monologue does not reflect the opinions of the author. I have yet to have a tomato revelation. It was inspired by a conversation, yeah, you remember the one.

On another note, it is a beautiful night. Perfect for reading and writing on the patio. Also, I painted tonight. I haven't done that since I was probably 9 and I tried to paint a whale. It looked more like an abstract dream-like cow.

So I am now alone in the house until October 6th, when my father returns from Europe. It will be nice to have my own place for a while, but I assume it will get depressing. Come visit me.

Which Britney Spears are you? Sexy Almost Naked Britney You are young and you have nothing to hide. You are a free spirit who has fun dancing and being sexy. You will be old with wrinkles some day, enjoy it while you can.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Why are Otter Pops so darn good? I mean seriously. I know Ashley doesn't like them, but right now, they are like my favorite thing in the world.

Approximately one hour after my last post about my mom's house, she came home from work early to find me bawling and curled up on her bathroom counter so that her dogs would stop trying to consume my flesh. Needless to say, I'm not so sure about the move anymore.

I'm starting the moving process into my mother's house. This is going to be interesting. And I know that I'm going to have some frustrated times, but it really is the best choice. As much as I would absolutely LOVE to move out anywhere else, there really aren't many people who I would want to live with. And of that small amount, there are even less who aren't on a lease, and even less than that number who can afford it. So, I will move the mile west to my mother's crazy house. I'm sure there will be good times, and I'm even more sure that I will finally save money. Seriously this time.

Anyone who wants to volunteer some time to help me move, it would be appreciated. I don't have very much stuff, so it will take at the maximum three trips (of a mile).

Word.

I don't really know what I have been up to lately that has made me so busy. But I am hardly ever home, and usually when I get here, all I want to do is sleep. It's weird to think of all of those semesters in which I worked this much and was taking six or seven classes. I slept about two to three hours a night and was never phased by it. Now it seems like if I don't get eight hours that I am useless and will need a nap. Maybe my body was just very understanding and patient in school and knew that I could only have so much sleep, and that it would have a chance in the near future to sleep oodles. That time would seem to be now.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that made me quite mad for it's stupidity. Maybe someone can explain. It said "God Would Be Pro-Life." There are two things wrong here. God "would" be, this implies that the almighty He either doesn't exist or is dead. As to say, "if there was a God, he would probably be pro-life." This bumper sticker was most likely placed on the car by an extremely religious (most likely Catholic) pro-lifer. And then secondly, and most annoyingly, those who want to bring God into these arguments, like I said, are most likely Catholic, or subscribe to some sect of Christianity. Christianity has always prided itself in the selling point that God gave us free will. Free will is the freedom to choose. So it only makes sense to me that God would be pro-choice. The almighty He wouldn't give us free will and boast about it just to prefer that we not have the legal freedom to use it.

I have my license now. That is fun.

I haven't had a kinda-sorta in a while, and I like it. Things are going well.

That is all.

How to make a jessica

Ingredients: 3 parts competetiveness 5 parts crazyiness 5 parts energy

Method: Layer ingredientes in a shot glass. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of curiosity

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

Projects:

Clean my room (again)
Rip CDs onto computer and get rid of unwanted ones
Figure out what the hell is going on with insurance from when ribs were broken
Organize pictures on computer (get cable from the Fortress to connect camera to computer)
Train Dixie not to be such a shithead (said with love)
Find a new rear end-cap for my bumper that mysteriously went missing and put it on
Figure out when I am moving to mom's, when I am moving away, where I am moving, etc.
Plan trip to South America (this is my favorite project so far) with Ashley
Enjoy some time with Ashley before she traipses off again
Play with Google Earth because it is wicked cool

Mostly blonde now! Figured that I never have been before, so it would be fun to try. Also, Ashley will be home later today!! If you can't tell, I'm super-excited.

This has been a pretty crazy summer. And as it comes to an end and school is about to start again, I feel like I am in a weird place. For the first time since I was in diapers, I am not going to be going to school. I don't think that it has hit me yet that I am graduated. It probably wont for a while. It is good to see everyone back in town for school though.

The ribs are at about 85%. I am at the point where I wonder if they are ever going to get back to 100%. It feels like the fall was ages ago, but I still have pain in my ribs. Come on now, it has been months! Body, let's go! Get your healin' on!

This afternoon I had what I believe to be my first encounter with a migraine. And wow, I never want to do that again. I have only really ever had an extremely painful headache two other times in my life. Once, in third grade, after recess, my teacher was reading us a story and I was crying quietly because my head hurt so bad. Turned out that I had the flu. During spring of the following year, my friends and I had rode our bikes to the 7-Eleven by us and I had to go home immediately, couldn't wait for them, because of a headache. Turned out that I had the flu.

Today I got home from my morning shift at work planning to go back to work a shift at night for a friend. I was cleaning and started seeing spots. I thought that it was just from moving around so much, and there were a bunch of lights on in the house, etc. I was having trouble seeing fully out of my right eye. I was le tired, so I had a nap, figuring that my vision would be up and running properly when I woke up. But oh the pain in my head when I woke up. Weird, the eye thing was still going on too. Weird. I tried all of my usual get rid of headache tricks - pop my neck and back, take Advil, apply pressure. Nothing. It wouldn't go away. Oh well, I didn't have time to deal with it, I had to go to work. At work, things were no better. My head hurt, who knows what was going on with my eyes, and then I started feeling like I was going to pass out. My depth perception was off and I barely felt like I had the strength to carry out a soda pop to one of my tables.

At this point, the lovely Brittany took notice to my odd behavior and told our manager that she ought to send me home, that they would do fine without me. I had my pops come pick me up because I had no idea what was going on with my body and figured that I was in no condition to drive. Trying to think of what might be wrong, I remembered seeing Brian go through some similar symptoms with his migraines. I asked the internet who replied, "You have a migraine silly girl!" Since I had already taken a nap earlier, I couldn't really fall asleep, but I knew that staying in the dark was the key to my relief. Then I remembered the percoset that I still have from the fall(see June posts if you are clueless). I woke up a few hours later feeling a little tingly, but with my vision restored and my head back to normal. I couldn't imagine the people who get migraines for days. How utterly awful.

Well, that's the exciting news of the day. Oh, and if I haven't mentioned it, my fantasy baseball team is not good. It is actually rather terrible.

And next week = Ashley!

Little Shop was delightful. The seats weren't the greatest, but pops and I still had a grand time. I will say though that I wanted the actors to be louder. And not louder in that I wanted their mics turned up, but there are quite a few songs in this show in which the character can really let loose and belt it out, and I felt like they held back a lot. Still good, I just wanted more out of them. I also think that in the case of this particular show, it is going to be hard to top Steve Martin in the character of Orin Scrivello, DDS (a.k.a. the dentist). It really isn't fair that actors are subject to such a comparison, but they are. The dentist is one of my favorite Steve Martin characters, and as such, it makes it hard for me to like anyone else in the role. Ho hum.

In other news, Ashley will be back in about 14 days! Hurrah!

Ahoy to the hotties of my alcohol class. If I am getting anything out of this experience, it is a great view and some numbers. When I went to jail I got hit on all up until I was put in my cell, I got a phone number and proposed to at traffic school, and good god the guys in my class today were good looking! Hey, I'm not saying that I am happy about the whole situation, but I am finding the silver lining in the clouds (I don't know that I really fully understand what that means, but I'm using it anyhow).

Otherwise things are good. Brother is moved into an apartment with a friend his own age. Good for him, he should have fun. In other news, I am taking my daddy on a date on Tuesday night. He doesn't know it yet but we are going to see Little Shop at Gammage and eat somewhere yummy. I haven't figured out where yet, but Sabuddy is always a good choice.