two day work week!

i think i have a problem saying no to bosses. consequently, i am often working a 50 hour week while trying to also go to grad school full time. i wish i was the kind of person who could call in "sick," or even call in actually sick, but no, i have to be told to stay home before i will stay home.

so to have a 16 hour work week, hee. i'm giddy! plus i'm going on almost a real vacation, as opposed to most of the rest of my life when vacations all mean "houston frickin texas."

indy 500

hee hee.

just the fact that i happened to see that it was on yesterday is a freak accident. i don't follow sports. i know when baseball season is, and football, and basketball kind of, because i live in the world. but wide world of sports stuff like race cars? not usually on my radar. the other day, i saw this thing on some tabloid news show about danica patrick and i was like, hmm, stuff magazine spread about some hot-ish race car driver. i wonder if she's any good or if she's like racing's version of anna kournikova and it's all savvy posturing to gain attention while she can. you know, emphasize the "hot" and maybe nobody would notice she ain't that good.

but then i was babysitting and i turned on the tv and she was in, i think, 6th place. i was like, wow, maybe she's good. anyway, she's the only one i cared about because i'd never even heard of anybody else except dario franchitti (only because he's married to ashley judd), and A.J Foyt the fourth. damn, they are milking that name. and the poor kid, he doesnt seem like that great a racer. from the 5 seconds i saw, where he sent that dude flying into that wall.

so then danica did that thing where she stalled her car in the pit and everyone said it was a rookie mistake and she was all of a sudden in like 16th place. and i thought, "damn. too bad for that kid. well, it was fun while it lasted." then like a hundred laps later, you know, and i'd left the room to give my small friend some lunch and stuff, kinda peeking in every now and then to see how she was doing, she'd crept up to like 8th place, and i thought that was a pretty good recovery.

then i swear to god, i left the room for like a minute and when i checked again, she was leading the whole f*ckin race! oh my g! i got so excited! like i'd bet on her. like i'd even knew who she was before the other day. my tiny friend, he's two, was eating in the next room (man, two year olds can eat and eat) and i kept running back and forth between him and the tv going, "there's no way! there's no way!!!" because what are the odds of seeing a news story on the one person, a rookie, a chick rookie, who ends up winning the whole shebang?

okay, so she didn't win. but she kicked ass in first place up till like two laps from the end. and then the press, the relentless press, everyone was freaking out, like "the first woman to ever lead a lap in the indy 500! This is a historical day for racing and danica is now immortal, blah blah blah! women women women!!!!" and meanwhile, dudes all over the place are crying, like the winning team dudes, and they finally interview danica, like, as she's getting out of her car and taking her helmet off, and throw all this "women/history!" stuff at her, and she totally kept it together, did not weep or even shake at all as she spoke, and never once talked about herself as a woman racer, and dodged all the stuff about women racing. she was just like, "i'm a racer, just like everybody else out there today. and i came in 4th, which is pretty good for a rookie."

danica patrick is my new idol.

even if she is 10 years younger than me.

i guess she's way better than britney, even if they are both into nascar.

my little monster

being a nanny is a weird weird weirdo weird gig. my job is to have the most intimately close relationship with a small child who will then, esentially, not remember me once my job is done. it's not that hard a pill to swallow, mainly because i'm used to the cycle, but also because kids take this turn at about age 4 where the become a pain in my ass. i'm sure that some people love 4 year olds, and yeah, i still prefer them over people my own age, but in general, they're sweeter when they're younger.

take, for example, my little monster: he was my old charge and now i take care of his tiny angel sister. i'm telling you: monster and i were best friends, man. it was very "theme song to the courtship of eddie's father," only i'm not a dude and he's not my son. my job was to shower him with all my love and attention, which i enjoyed and was paid well to do. after spending 50 hours a week together for 2 years, my little monster friend started "school" and i became his new sister's first best friend.

man, was my monster friend pissed off. he was mad at his parents for having another baby, and he was mad at me, his traitorous ex-best friend, and he was mad at his angel sister for existing and being so beloved. his big joke, which, btw, is not that funny, is to say, "my little sister is dead. she's dead!" he's also a big fan of, "you're stupid," and, "i don't like you."

and a lot of times, when i show up at his house in the morning now that i'm spending 50 hours a week with his sister (have i mentioned she is an absolute angel???), the monster is so mean to me ("i don't want her! i don't want her to be here!" etc. etc. etc.). but some days, he loves me so much and curls up in my lap like old times.

i have a job that overwhelms me sometimes with pure emotion. these kids, their energy is just 1000 percent. there's nothing fake about their feelings. the angel, man, all she has to do is crawl towards me from across the room with her little maniacal glee thing that she does, and i cry a bit, just happy to be a part of it. i love coming to work. i love love love my baby angel that i've gotten to watch grow from her mom's belly to the 15 month old she is today, and i love her insane 4 year old monster of a brother who wants nothing else to do with me 4 days a week.

it's just a job. technically. but the love makes it kind of intoxicating. hard to quit. i'm addicted.

summer is here

yep. the reasons i know this are threefold:

1. the spring semester ended. when spring ends, summer commences.
2. there is all of a sudden a dearth of activities for me to engage in with my tiny 15 month old boss (because remember i'm a nanny). every summer this happens, and every summer, it blows. you'd think there'd be more things going on for wee tots in the summer, but all the city rec centers are busy with programs for school aged kids.
3. i have to get a bathing suit. eeeeeeeeeeek!

dudes. what's more horrifying than having to go bathing suit shopping????? i don't even ever go regular clothes shopping. i think i've never been good at shopping, anyway. you know how you always have that one friend who actually finds really great stuff at the goodwill, but whenever you go to the goodwill, you're like, "how do people ever ever ever find good stuff at the goodwill?"

anyway, i guess i better hit it, since i know this experience is gonna take a billion jillion kerpillion years. i almost feel like it'll be a waste of time except that i need a new suit. even if i hate it, i still need one. maybe i should just keep the one i've been wearing for the past 10 years? literally, i have not gotten a new suit in 10 years. hee. and i live in california.

alright, summertime. you win.

first ever

dear world,
so i know i am kind of late to start messing around with my compy now, when i am already a kabillion years old, but i am always reading other blogs, and i know nobody is going to read this anyway because i will tell no one what i am doing. mwoohaahahaha. if you blog in a forest and there's nobody there to hear you, does your blog exist? i'm sleepy. i'm sleepy labeef, but not really.

recently these are the things that i've been obsessed with:

• Television Without Pity, specifically the staff page. i wish i were staff. when i was little, 4 years ago, i was friends with this guy who said i should have my own off-broadway show doing re-enactments of episodes of felicity.
• the film Tarnation, by Jonathan Caouette. i can't get it out of my head, partially because i thought it was a good movie, but partially because i realized halfway through that the movie was filmed in my hometown and he used to go to the same club that my brother used to go to and then all of a sudden in the movie, one of my brother's friends from 9 million years ago suddenly appeared. so, all of a sudden, suddenly, that was weird.
• crappy YA fiction, like the Gossip Girl series, the A list series, the insiders (which is terrible, i can't believe i read this crap), plus anything by meg cabot, who wrote the million princess diaries books, plus has written other books, all of which i've read, even though every single book is exactly the same and all of the characters have the exact same speech mannerisms.
• Broadway: the golden age, a documentary that i netflixed and then i loved it so much, i bought it. it's so good, if i had a time machine, i'd go back to being a kid just so i could redo my whole life and take mad tap dance lessons so i could move to the big apple and try to make it on the old broad. i also was fairly obsessed with the pbs broadway special.
• sandwiches. ooooh, i started making gooood sandwiches recently. these gourmet ingredient jobs, and plus regular working-class proletariat fried egg sandwiches. excuse me, but can anyone tell me what is better than a fricketty frackin' fried egg sandwich??? anyone??? i think the answer is nothing.
• the top 25 songs ever played at numbers, this club in my hometown that we used to go when i was wee. anybody who went to all age dance clubs in the 80s is gonna totally remember all these songs. i was particularly howling with laughter and old memories when i saw that my personal favorites join in the chant, headhunter, and halloween were all 3 in the top requested list.
• wtf is tom cruise doing with katie holmes???? as summer roberts would say, ew. did you see him on oprah? me neither, but i saw this, and it freaked me out. he's a weirdo, which we all already knew. at this point, come on, he's fricketty tom cruise, how could he not be a nut case? kinda like how julia roberts (no relation to summer) always plays these characters that supposedly are down to earth and relatable but are actually horrible people that you'd never be friends with (ie, the "best friend" of dermot mulrooney, who's wedding/relationship she tries to sabatage in that crap movie where she chain smokes and constantly shows her midriff and why? why? why is she america's sweetheart???).
• Veronica Mars!!!!! omg, i know it sounds lame to think that the best show on tv is a highschool show about a girl detective, but it is the world's greatest show. like, buffy good. like, my so-called life good. is it wrong to watch a highschool show when i'm closer in age to the dad on the show than to the teenaged star (by one year only at least) ? i just really really really want logan and veronica to get together!!!! is that so wrong????

anyway, i have to go now. how do people end blog entries? bye! i feel like i should wave. bye bye! (picture me, waving). bye! i'm tired! bye! thank you for reading my first ever blog posting! come again!