wham.

i noticed TWO funny things today!

i'm so glad. i was genuinely bummed yesterday that my thoughts have been so dull lately.

these might not make you laugh out loud, but for me...it was a good sign that my sense of humor remains intact. even though my life is on the suckish side of things right now.

1)

today at work a kid was carrying around a baby doll. AND a mallet. "why do you have a mallet in your classroom?" you ask. i don't know. the point is that it's funny, because who plays with both of those things at the same time?

2)

i read a little moby dick tonight, and the chapter title was funny:

"Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him"

that is the title. the whole title. it's funny because it's long, and then also funny because of how it is phrased.

i just remembered that things lose their funniness if you explain them too much...

oh well.

i also watched the first ever episode of gilmore girls, and i had forgotten something. the reason i'm reading moby dick, is because of this line...

"i'm reading moby dick right now. i realize it's kind of cliche for moby dick to be my first melville..."

so i decided that MY first melville would be moby dick.

is this another aging thing?

i'm worried about my mind. which is kind of funny because the mind is what worries.

one of my favorite parts of being alive is noticing funny things, and i just read my last few blog posts...and i haven't been doing that recently.

that's not good.

i really hope work/life stress is not ruining my sense of humor. i need to do something absurd, really fast. but i can't think of anything absurd to do!

i've been out and about, and i haven't noticed one old man humming while he grocery shops, or anything of that nature.

i hope this changes soon.

what doesn't kill you makes you stranger.

i just saw the dark knight.

why are guys so afraid of people thinking they're homosexual?

these two guys came in together, but sat a seat apart. i see guys do that A LOT. i find it hard to believe that they need that much leg room or whatever. you're all just afraid. insecure. get over it.

moving on.

AMAZING.

this movie blew my mind apart.

there are movies that come along every now and then that you have to see more than once to fully enjoy them. because the first time you see it, you just sit there marvelling at all the brilliant things that are happening before your eyes. so you can't really process it. the second time around is when you really "see" that kind of movie.

this IS that kind of movie.

i don't even want to ruin one second of it by describing a scene, so just go see it.

except that quote in my title is from the opening scene. and i did not misspell the last word. i never noticed that there's only one letter difference between the words 'stranger' and 'stronger.' how about that.

go see the dark knight. twice.

t.u.l.i.p.

since i have finally labeled my emotional state as "weary" i decided that this weekend i would spend time resting, but not in my normal way. usually i just lay around on the weekends in my apartment. but today i wanted to do things that i really enjoy, and get out of my apartment. it's a different kind of rest. the kind where my body might be tired at the end of the day, but my heart will feel glad.

first i went to chickfila because i have no food...and chickfila is yummy. but the fun part was that i took oliver twist with me and read it while i sat there. i can't read in super quiet places. the silence is really distracting to me.

then i decided to go to borders, because i like books. browsing without buying is even fun to me sometimes. sometimes. but the other day i came up with a brilliant idea. i want to get a "coffee table book" for every cool place/country i visit. something with cool photography. so as of right now, i need one for hawaii, texas, and mexico. those kinds of books are usually expensive, but one time i found a great photography book called "america 24/7" at borders in the clearance section.

and today, i struck gold.

i wanted one for mexico, right. instead, they had one on sale for $5, with pictures that are JUST of mexico city...the exact city i visited. perfect. now when i can't remember what the streets and the buildings looked like, when memory starts to fade...i can look at this book!

i'm also starting to grasp that i took a trip to the biggest city in the world. that's kind of a big deal. 20 million people. it really is a cool place, and i wish people would take mexico more seriously. i'll admit i've never paid much attention to it before, since i grew up in texas. i guess i always kind of thought of it as an extension of texas. there's some mexican influence in texas, you know. but it's nowhere near the same. it's really, really cool. art, culture, music...i'm a fan of mexico now.

anyway.

then i bought my niece a present because i'm going to see her in a couple weeks. i'm jealous that my other sisters are getting to know her more than i am, so i'm on a quest to win her affection with material possessions.

thinking about seeing my family and my precious niece...yep. that's rest.

and then i went to my favorite christian bookstore, the only one that doesn't make me cringe...logos. i must own their entire theology wall. i went there to find a book i've been wanting to read...a case for covenental baptism. it's the one area of reformed theology i haven't explored much. my mind is made up about the rest. i grew up southern baptist, and obviously they're not fans of infant baptism. but i never looked into it myself. not REALLY. not an extensive study. not to the point where i knew the logical arguments on both sides so i could make an informed decision. so now i'm going to.

"rest" does not usually involve spending money for me. i also like to go to radnor lake, or walk around taking pictures, or listen to music, or play my guitar. mmm, yeah. i should do that later. but today that's just how it worked out.

one and a half more days until i have to go back to work.

ugh.

i'm not a 50 year old woman.

i had one of the most frustrating days of my life today. i'm not saying that to be dramatic in a funny way, like i sometimes do.

i started crying in the middle of work today. at work. in the middle of the day.

crying.

the stress at this job has been messing with my physical health for a little while now (it started with losing hair and has now moved on to more things...)

and now it's messing with my mental health. let me tell you how i know.

i got off way early today and turned on the tv, and oprah was on. a show i never watch, unless i feel like making fun of the middle-aged women who cry when hugh grant walks on the stage.

today they had this teenage girl composing a song on the piano out of thin air, and i almost started crying.

crying while watching oprah.

yeah, i'm definately losing it.

i was actually afraid today would be the day i'd get fired, because i started flipping out at work. not verbally or anything. i was just really flustered and panicked, because they left me alone in a room with BAD, REALLY BAD toddlers, and they all started doing bad things at the same time, and one ofthem got a bloody nose in the midst of it, and while i picked him up to clean him up another kid started playing in his blood trail, and i couldn't reach the phone so i got my cell phone out and called the main number and they didn't answer, so i had to swing the door next to me open and scream for the teacher in the next room to try to get her to call them from her phone...

and that was only 5 minutes of my day. the rest was the same. (it was also frustrating when we walked in from the playground, and they took off in different directions, into different rooms, and there was no one to help me round them up, and a mom walked by while i was shouting for them, and running around like a crazy person...yeah, that's the kind of thing that could get me fired if that mom were to call DHS and say the supervision was lacking...)

it's seriously messing with me.

and i see no way out. i got the first response to a resume today that i've gotten in a long time, but it's very sketch. i found it on craigslist, and even though i asked for them to tell me the company name so i can look it up...they haven't. and they want me to get a credit report from a specific site before i can set up an interview...

i just don't know what to do. i need a new job. i can't find one.

i can't be a receptionist because i don't have any experience as the president of the united states, so obviously i'm worthless.

i have hit what you might call...a low point.

i am weary.

charles.

i am reading oliver twist right now.

the last time i read dickens (a tale of two cities) i did not have a good experience. i made it most of the way through the book before i caught on to the fact that someone had been murdered early on, and i still have no idea who did it. i'm pretty sure that's not what the author intended. i just could not follow what was going on.

but i bought oliver twist because it was only $2, and i want to read classic literature.

and i totally love it. i'm about 100 pages in, and it is gripping. i can tell exactly how it is going to end (awww), but at the moment...poor oliver is in some serious trouble.

so now i won't be scared to read more charles dickens....like great expectations. i hear that's a good one.

i can't tell if i'm more or less cool than i was 10 years ago. i'm a huge nerd. i like to read things like oliver twist. (and theology, and nonfiction, and a lot of other super cool books). so that could mean i'm LESS cool. BUT...i didn't know anything about the world 10 years ago. there was no classic literature that i was required to read because i was home-schooled. (i keep saying i'll rant about that one day, but haven't yet...but for my newer readers...i am not a fan....) so i had never read "to kill a mockingbird", or "the scarlet letter", or anything. so i'm catching up. and i think that makes me MORE cool.

not that it matters...it's just interesting to note the changes.

also, i've only been out of college for 2 years...but i've already forgotten how to properly emphasize book titles. not that i'm real concerned about grammar rules here at "i'mthechief" but it's sad that i don't know anymore. that is for sure...not cool. underline? italicize? i chose to put quotation marks or do nothing at all, which i am 100% sure is wrong.

a grief observed.

i just read a c.s. lewis book. he wrote it after his wife died. actually i think it's his journal. i haven't dealt with a death like he did, so i don't relate to it in that sense. but there were some really good quotes in it that apply to any kind of sadness.

he goes through stages in this book...so some of these sound hopeless or pessimistic. but that's how sadness goes.

"There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me."

"I was happy before I ever met her. I've plenty of what are called 'resources.' People get over these things. Come, I shan't do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this 'commonsense' vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace."

"On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos...I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it - that disgusts me."

"Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer."

"At first I was very afraid of going to places where she and I had been happy - our favourite pub, our favourite wood...Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else."

"I have no photograph of her that's any good. I cannot even see her face distincly in my imagination."

"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

"Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the spiritualists bait their hook! 'Things on this side are not so different after all.'...For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored."

"Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less?"

"And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned her least, I remembered her best."

"This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged."

"God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't."

"Did you ever know how much you took away with you when you left?"