Thankfulness

here are some things I'm thankful for:

Denny's and how open they are even at midnight on Thanksgiving.
My mom and the courage she showed in leaving my dad and allowing herself to find happiness anyway.
My testimony of the gospel.
That I'm not an Eskimo.
Rudy.
The banana chocolate cream pie that Wiggle made for me for my birthday.
My friends.
My bike.
My awesome job working for honest people.
That I live so close to the grocery store.
That God seems to have faith in me.
The Barenaked Ladies.
That I'm not addicted to video games like my loser 29-year-old roommates.
Whimsy.
Chrisy, and that she bought me dinner tonight, and that we had a good talk.
Bro. Celaya and the Fairfield Institute of religion.
The Hundred Hour Board.
The Redwoods.
My rock collection.
That my prayers are answered.
Little children.
That I've been waking early lately.
Brad, who's always there, though never here.
Mubba Jean, for inviting me to Thanksgiving Dinner.
BamaBeau, for the dark chocolate orange cheesecake. Mmmmm.
My books, and my passion for words.

Life is great.

Brain (and Hair) Wash

I had to use a girls' shower the other day, and I spent a good fifteen minutes just reading all the bottles in there. I don't understand what they are all for. I mean, I do, because they say on them. There is shampoo for dandruff, shampoo for horses, shampoo with vitamins, shampoo with juniper, heat-activated shampoo, orange-scented shampoo, shampoo with aloe, shampoo with conditioner, shampoo for permed or color-treated hair. There's fortifying conditioner, leave-in conditioner, conditioner for body, conditioner for control, conditioner that makes your scalp tingle (and hurts like the dickens if it gets in your eye). There is hand soap, face soap, non-soap, soap with special little snowflakes in it, raspberry scented soap, exfoliating soap, glitter soap, I-can't-believe-it's-not-soap, soap with cucumbers and melons. There is body wash, body scrub, apricot face scrub, facial cleanser, and facial cleanser with special acne-fighting agents, there are oils and oil-removers and bath beads and bath salts and bubble baths and lufas and shaving cremes and shaving gels and shavers themselves in multifarious colors.

The packages are interesting, too. There is a shampoo for every color of the rainbow. There are some in English and some in French and some that seem made up, with words like "ClAriTee" or "cleen". The bottles have a few curved lines that are supposed to represent naked women, as far as I can tell. The backs of the bottles have simplified pictures of bubbles that represent molecules and vitamins and list unpronounceable words like "methylisothiazolinone" and "hydantoin." There are tall bottles and square bottles and round bottles and stumpy bottles and bottles that hang down instead of stand up and there are tubes.

Shampoos have their own vernacular. They don't "clean," they "cleanse." They moisturize, revitalize, rejuvinate, add vigor and sheen and shine. They give a noun called "bounce." They are allowed to add anything that sounds like it was grown in a jungle: "With pineapple husks!" "With ginko!" "With treefrog venom!" they exlamatorily point out.

I hate them.

There is shampoo that says "For silky luxurious hair." I think I can understand what that one does. Then next to it is one that says, "For dry or damaged hair." Now I don't know which one to use. There is shampoo that says "Now with witch hazel!" Are they claiming that it's magic? Next we'll be seeing "Now with eye of newt!" But really, how dirty can three single girls get? I think I'm missing something.

War and Pizza

Was it Roy in the Kitchen with the knife? Was it Jayson in the conservatory with the fork? Perhaps Gravy in the den with the remote control? Whichever way you slice it, somebody ate the rest of my pizza!

Last night while I was hanging out with Uffish Thought and Phoenix, I ordered three large pizzas from Domino's. We really only needed maybe one and a half, but it was cheaper to buy them wholesale, and since I can't cook, I decided to buy the extras and just leave them in the fridge to last me a few days. Tonight, they were all gone. Well, actually, there were two slices of sausage left sitting on the counter, and they had apparently been there all day.

Now, normally I'm all about sharing what I have. However, in recent times I have become shriveled and envious of the cooking abilities of others (particularly my roommates). I don't even have an assigned cupboard or fridge-shelf, because I don't ever have any food here. It's become cheaper to buy food ready-to-eat at the store than to keep burning and ruining my groceries. I have a spot atop the fridge for some cereal and Doritos. That's really all, though. Every night I get home and there are three or four individual dinners being cooked on the stove. My roommates sit there and feast on the most sumptuous meals while I pathetically scrape Doritos dust off my fingertips with my teeth.

So tonight I am excited because I'm going to have a real meal (Well, cold pizza is a real meal to me. Oh, and it's cold because apparently our microwave broke yesterday. Hopefully that'll get fixed if and when the landlord comes to repair the toilet), but I get home to find the carrion that is three empty pizza boxes and some crusts and flies. Okay, maybe the flies were thrown in for dramatic measure. Anyway, you can imagine my despair.

And the worst part of it is, I go over to the referigerator, and I open it up, and all that's in there is my roommates' food. And that consists of ingredients, and not actual food. Like some kind of special flour, and raw meats, and vegetables that I don't think grow in the U.S. And the only bit of food I still have in the house is a single bottle of black horrid Noni Juice.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I've considered just downing a whole little baggy of that special yellowish flour. Maybe that will cause in them the same kind of empty helpless longing that the missing pizza caused in me. First I need to make sure that stuff is really flour. I am suddenly reminded of yeast. I wonder what happens if a person eats that much yeast. Maybe this war will have to be a cold war.

Rugged or Overrated?

I know a guy who labels everything either "rugged" or "overrated." Rugged is good. Overrated is bad, but not necessarily overrated. So, in the spirit of James Evans, who recently did not get married, here's my own list of all things rugged and overrated complete with defenses for the ones that might need it.

Wedding receptions: overrated. I'll go to my own, if I have one. That's about it.
Cats (the animals): overrated. Scary, too.
Into the Woods: rugged! That play has so many great morals to it. It's better than some books of scripture.
Corn: rugged! Especially fresh off the stalk, and raw.
My psychology textbook: rugged! I read it for fun.
Calvin and Hobbes: rugged!
Remedial basketball: rugged! (close call, though, but I think I love it)
Capital I's: overrated. Most of the time i forget to do it and have to go back and fix it.
Grandpa Joe: overrated. That's a scary, crotchety old man who dispenses bad advice and a worse example.
Logan: rugged. Prettier than provo, but also freezing in the winter, I've heard.
The Marx Brothers: rugged!
Banjo Kazooie: rugged! I wish I lived in that game sometimes.
Bagpipes: overrated. What's with the constant buzzing noise? The instrumet clashes with itself.
Africa: overrated. Well, that was kinda arbitrary.
Stripes: rugged! But they have to be horizontal. I'm pretty skinny.
Conrad: rugged!
SunChips: overrated.
Saturday Night Live: Rugged! Probably nothing I do in this life could make my parents prouder than my being on that show.
Shawn James: rugged! If you know him, you already agree.
The word "scuttling": overrated. Kinda creeps me out, whatever it means.
Mulan: overrated. And offensive.

That's about it for today. Thanks, James, for the idea, and may your next attempt at marriage be much more rugged.