lady and the tramps

Well well! It appears I have successfully completed my first year of post-grad study! I'm halfway to being a Master! Now all I have to do is write a book... and take some classes... and appear smart to the masses. But I can rhyme and that's already half the battle.

Funny, the end of classes & essays hasn't really meant the end of madness... but now "madness" involves good laughs and long grocery lists and bubble baths and loud music, instead of Microsoft Word and a pot of coffee.

(I don't actually drink coffee, but it's kind of a romantic idea, so I'll throw it in there)

T & I are getting excited because mom comes to visit the day after tomorrow! I have been telling T over and over that he must clean up his little toy soldiers that are scattered everywhere, and if he could please start pooping poops that aren't quite so smelly, we'd all sleep a little better. So far neither has happened. Still smelly Tycho poops, still soliders everywhere. It's a metaphor for the state of the world, I think. Tycho's way of taking a stand.

Or should I say, a squat...

[caption: "This one's for you, Bush!" *poot*]

SO
in less than a week I will be in Ontario... seeing family, seeing boyfriend, seeing Jenfriend, seeing dundalkfriends... I am going to have to get me some mean shades for all of that brightness!

I spent most of tonight blissfully sprawled out in that big old armchair that used to be Adam's family's, thinking, man, wherever I end up going after Montreal, it has to be somewhere where I can ship big old armchairs. I don't think I could survive without this thing, especially since The Great Furniture Rearrangement. T couldn't live without The Chair either. Whever I come home from school I can hear him meowing mournfully on the other side of the door, but there's always a T-shaped warm spot in the blankets on The Chair, so I know he has been sleeping until the moment he heard my keys, regardless of his insistence that he has been starving for hours and thought he was near death.

Off to finish this wine and sweep up some more tumbleweeds of T-fur!

Almost over...

One more essay to go, and then it's Ontario-or-bust for a good wee holiday! This week ends with a Friday the 13th, so I am sweating to get this puppy off the presses and into the drop box before that, for good luck. But if I don't, that's okay, because this Friday also happens to be the birthday of a very important not-so-little girl, who is not only a track star, a public speaking star, and a many-many-other-things star, but also happens to be my surrogate little sis and thus is quite important to me! So I think this Friday will be lucky for everyone, especially her. Happy almost-your-birthday, Linnea!

In the meantime, the paper-sweating continues, but to crack a momentary fissure of relief here is a picture of two cute lil pipsqueaks who share my DNA! (aren't they lucky?) (Actually, the real reason they are lucky is that they just had a big European holiday with Mommy & Daddy. Padma, if you keep taking them to all of these cool places with you, what are they going to do to rebel when they graduate from high school? "Come on Rishi, we're free, let's go backpacking around Europe!" "Nah, it's been done. Let's just go to med school.")

Just in time for Easter, Tycho practices his best "bunny rabbit"

Skintense (a post of complaints)

Back for yet another Sunday evening post!

I am currently feeling annoyed - mostly because of taxes. I try not to let them get to me, but they always do! Somehow my shoddy record-keeping skills has made it appear as though I have a $16,000 surplus. If that was true, why am I worried about not having enough work this summer?!

I am also annoyed at facial cleaning products, and their lack of working on my skin. If anyone has a solution to the year-long breakout that's been having a party on my face, do share! I've tried everything! Maybe the key is just not to try, but a girl can only take so much passive-aggressive skin therapy before an artillery of foam washes and deep cleansers and alcohol rubs and moisture creams is lathered into action. I have never been engaged in such a long-standing stalemate with my complexion before. It baffles me. Is it from stress and the consequent spectacle of hormones? Doubtful - if anything, Concordia is less stressful than Western, and now I even have a giant double bed that affords me long, luxurious sleeps, so I can't imagine what little hormonal misfits are parading around in my system, thinking they know what's what. I just hope this little problem "clears up" soon, but that's what I've been hoping since September, so I'm starting to wave the white flag (aka Neutrogena Oil-free Cleansing Cloth). Mom is coming to visit soon and we're planning on getting facials together, so hopefully that will be a good step forward... maybe I've just been watching too much Degrassi lately and am starting to get Junior High sympathy skin. Although, really, for a show so boastful about its uninhibited honesty about teenagedom, there are suspiciously few skin crises happening. Pregnancy, drugs, divorce, all admittedly unpleasant businesses for a teenager - but what about that devastating moment when you get out of bed and count five new friends in white hats on your chin alone? And it's your day to give a presentation in biology about foot diseases? And that guy who once dedicated El Scorcho to you at a coffee house will be there in the back row, smirking? (possibly based on a true story)
When you're caught in a moment like that as a teenager, it's hard to imagine anything worse.

Luckily, when you're caught in a moment like that as a 20-something career student, you can hide yourself in cover-up and skip off to a tea party with your friends, knowing everyone will be too polite to say anything, and the boy who you'd mind seeing such a crop is off in another province and has a kind memory. I was lucky enough to be such a girl yesterday, and spent the afternoon at Faye's apartment with several other beauties, each of us wearing a fancy dress and picking through the selection of tea that we had each brought, sampling everything we could and listening to classical music and eating cucumber sandwiches as though that was what we did every Saturday. I skipped putting sugar in my tea (another of my theories about Skin of Death = too much sugar in diet) and found out that I actually like it that way. Plus it was so beautiful outside that I got to walk home, which was nice except for the 500 times I had to stop and find a bathroom along the way (all that tea... who woulda thought...). I have some nice pictures from the day but we were all a little scantily clad as per Faye's instructions, so it's perhaps not in good taste to post them here. Use your imagination! And if you do, give me clear, flawless skin! It's what God intended.

I know one guy who doesn't give a hoot about complexion, and thusly has a lot to teach me. And he looks like this!