I I do so love incense and chrism.

Thirty-six hours until I'm back in school! Well, until my sister is back in school and I'm killing another six hours before my class, but whatever. I'm not splitting hairs.

Meanwhile, I had my first little catechist meeting tonight...yes, that's right, I decided I liked Confirmation more than I like watching How I Met Your Mother. I know, right? Emotional growth. Also, I really like being involved in big fun Masses at the cathedral and yep, there's pretty much only Confirmation for that. ANYWAY. It was fun. Probably more fun than the Learn-How-Not-To-Molest-Your-Students meeting I have to go to later this month. I'm not thinking it will be too much of a problem- I didn't like seventeen-year-olds when I was seventeen. The entire first session seems to be devoted to role playing with flags and crazy awkward questions? I don't know. I'm sure the Holy Spirit will pop up in there sometime.

To be perfectly honest, I don't remember a whole lot about the prep classes I went through, even though it was only a few years ago. I remember that Mary and I were the only ones who showed up in ninth grade, I remember being ridiculously uncomfortable during the two hours of sex discussion with Father Ken in tenth grade, and I...kind of blanked on eleventh. I remember my interviews, and thinking that was pretty stupid because it was with a man who knew me quite well and knew that I was coherent enough to have consciously decided to be confirmed. But other than that...nope.

So. This should be a whole new experience!

Stupid technology, messing with my oversharing.

Facebook won't let me upload pictures. And that knows that very important people in my life like that kid I went to grade school with and my old priest won't get to see pictures from our cupcake/Phantom of the opera viewing night last weekend. Which was actually less viewing and more shouting increasingly lewd comments at the screen as the evening wore on.

What? I'm sorry. You cannot expect me to be mature during The Music of the Night. That's crazy talk right there.

So, I will have to try again tomorrow, when I'm supposed to be doing all sorts of other things that I've ignored for the past few weeks because on days I have to work I prefer to expend all my excess energy on watching Doctor Who episodes and trying to figure out if it's possible to hate someone as much as I hate Billie Piper. Cleaning the pit that is my office so that I could theoretically compose a senior thesis in it this year? Not so much.

All that and a trip to Wal-Mart because I'm too poor for Target ($25 for fitted petite workout pants, Target? I think not.). Exciting!

I know, it's been a few days.

Last night, babysitting:

Zoey: Where's that blue lady?

Me: Who?

Zoey. That lady that was with you. The blue lady.

Me: Um...oh, my sister? Colleen? She was wearing a blue shirt, that's very smart of you to remember.

Zoey: Is she coming?

Me: No, she had to go out with her friends.

Zoey: Oh. *pause* She wears your shoes, you know.

Me: Yeah, I know.

Zoey: That's silly.

I'm going to miss that kid.

I fail at being an adult.

Oh, internets. A week from tomorrow I'll be heading back to school and I won't have to work a whole lot and ah, yes, the world shall be right side up again. Because while I do enjoy that whole oh, hey! A paycheck actually gets deposited into your checking account thing, I don't care how many reserves for The Lost Symbol we get. In fact, I think Dan Brown kind of sucks as a writer (!!!). My problems with The Da Vinci Code were less that I disagreed with the subject matter (which I did...but FICTION PEOPLE) and more the with dangling modifiers. I don't know if it had an intriguing plot because I couldn't figure out where the verbs were in most of the sentences.

Again, I'm not allowed to say this.

I'm also not allowed to say, "Oh, thank God you're locking it in at 40% off. Because trust me, you do not want to pay more than $16.87 for this."

But in a week! In a week I will be back in art history and history and Jewish studies and ZOMG SO HAPPY. *squee*

Apologies

In June, we rented my Grandpa's house. The house that kind of technically wasn't totally finished yet. The house that still had, oh, a lot of stuff in the closets as well as the stuff we needed during the year it took to get it ready (tools, cleaning supplies, industrial size bottles of Maker's Mark, etc.). When we rented it to the family that lives there (or God's Gift to Landlords, as we refer to them, or, depending on how much I've had to drink, I Want Them To Be My New Mommy and Daddy I Love You But You Don't Pay My Tuition) all that stuff had to go somewhere.

Shockingly, our house wasn't quite big enough to absorb everything from there (I know right? Because if my grandparents were known for anything it was their sense of minimalist decor.), and finally it just become a "oh, screw it, stick it in the basement and we'll deal with it later" sort of situation.

(We had a lot of those during this whole experience. Shocking, right? Because it's so completely unlike us to ignore bad things. It's all Grandma's fault- the genetic root lies with her.)

The place it ended up getting dumped in was my room in the basement. Not a big deal because I really only use it as a study during the school year, and my GRE study guide could be safely ignored from my bedroom upstairs. I generously offered them the use of the floorspace that doesn't technically belong to me at all in any way, as long as it would all be cleaned up by the time school started again.

School starts next Tuesday Wednesday. (I totally thought it was Tuesday until yesterday.) As of last night, there were still eleventy jillion boxes and bags and some dead animal that my grandma called a fur. I may have expressed some thought that it would not be cleaned up by the time I needed it in a few weeks.

(By expressed I might mean screaming and yelling. Again, so unlike me.)

But lo! I needn't have worried. My mom was completely true to her word and everything is gone except for a teensy weensy bile of boxes in the corner that I hardly notice because, hey, it's not like I'm that clean, either. My clutter just originates post-Reagan era, that's all.

So my apologies, Mommy. You totally kept up your end of the deal.

Dear Phantom*,

Hi! I'd just like you to know that since that whole thing with Christine didn't work out, I'm totally available to take your calls. I mean, completely. I wouldn't stomp on your heart or anything. I'd be totally into all the dungeon sex and the dioramas of my life and even the weird Dress Up Barbie doll you've created of me. All good things.

So...yeah. Not all of us are stupid whores who are probably secretly lesbians because why else would you leave with that pansy Raoul? Huh?

Just thought you should know.

Love,
Kathleen

2004 Movie Version Phantom Need Only Apply

I'm not going to tempt fate.

I would say that I'm finished taking the last standardized test I'm ever going to have to take, but I'm sure then God would think it was funny to make me go get an MBA or something that would require ANOTHER admissions test that would require ANOTHER morning spent chewing on my bottom lip and dragging my mother to friggin' Brookfield because I knew if I was alone in the car it would just lead to more major freaking outage and I CANNOT HANDLE THAT. Yes. Haha, God. I see what You did there.

While we were driving out to the testing place, I asked her if she was nervous before she took the LSAT. My mother's LSAT scores are something of a legend in my family. She worked ridiculously hard and earned a ridiculously high score that she maintains is due entirely to her practice test acumen and I maintain is due to her innate intelligence and STOP PUSHING THE KAPLAN BOOKS AT ME WOMAN I DON'T WANT TO WORK THAT HARD.

ANYWAY. I figured she must have been pretty nervous about it, seeing as there are also stories where she blanks and loses it during a law school exam. My kind of person. No wonder, half of her DNA makes me!

She kind of thought for a minute and said, "Yeah, I was a little nervous. But I also hadn't told that many people. I didn't PUT IT ALL OVER THE INTERNET."

Pssh. You know what? This the 21st century, Mother Dearest. And if I want to overshare, dammit, I am going to overshare.

There's no screaming...

...yet. I am kind of quietly freaking out. I've done all the practice tests, but I can't remember any of the math or any words or why I'm doing this again instead of taking up exotic dancing because surely a future of body glitter and answering to the name Candi Sparkles would be preferable to this agony.

Oh. I emptied all my wastebaskets. That's normal.

BBC Reading List

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' next to those you have read. Tag other book nerds.

[x] Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[] The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[x] Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[X] To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[x] The Bible
[x] Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[x] Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[] His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[X]Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 8/10

[x] Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[] Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[] Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[] Complete Works of Shakespeare
[x] Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[] The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[] Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[] Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[x] The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[x] Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 4/10

[x] Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[x] The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
[x] Bleak House - Charles Dickens[x] War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[x] The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[x] Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[x] Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[x] Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[] The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 8/9

[x] Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[x] David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[] Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[x] Emma - Jane Austen[x] Persuasion - Jane Austen
[] The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[x] The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[x] Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[x] Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[x] Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 8/10

[x] Animal Farm - George Orwell
[x] The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[] One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[x] A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
[x] The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[x] Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[] Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[x] The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (Made me want to burn my bra.)
[x] Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[x] Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 8/10

[x] Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[] Dune - Frank Herbert
[] Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[x] Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[] A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[x] The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[x] A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[] Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[x] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[x] Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 6/10

[x] Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[x] Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[x] The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[x] The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[X] Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[x] On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[] Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[x] Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[] Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[x] Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 8/9

[x] Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[x] Dracula - Bram Stoker
[x] The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[x] Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[x] Ulysses - James Joyce- I tried. It counts.
[x] The Inferno – Dante
[] Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[] Germinal - Emile Zola
[x] Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[] Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 5/10

[x] A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[] Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[] The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[] The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[x] Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[] A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[x] Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[x] The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[X] Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[ ] The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 5/10

[] Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[X] The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[] The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[] Watership Down - Richard Adams
[] A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[] A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[x] The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X] Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[x] Les Miserables - Victor Hug

Total 5/10

TOTAL: 65/98

Irish Fest Break

Most things in my life stop the third weekend on in August. Like blogging. Or cleaning my house. Or sleeping, eating normally, doing athletic beyond walking from complex carbohydrate to complex carbohydrate (Dinner last night was a potato and french fries. Yeah. I know.), or being fiscally responsible.

But I have an Ireland sweatshirt! And a Connemara marble necklace!

But it was fun- I loved the whole focus on Northern Ireland thing, even if it was disturbingly nationalistic. I danced on a table and managed to not fall off like the woman next to me. Also, the woman who read the first reading this morning said "appreciate" with an "s" sound, and that made me happy.

I came home and had major plans to vacuum, do some laundry, and work out. And...then I took a two and a half hour nap. Which was also good.

Lazy.

I really like wearing my dark purple nail polish, as it is exactly as far into "edgy" as a five-three pasty redhead can get without looking ridiculous, but oh, the upkeep. I have to, like, paint them and stuff. Way too much work.

Okay. That had nothing to do with anything. Which has been pretty much the last few days. I've been working- a lot. I've been annoyed with people- a lot. I've gotten nauseous about the GRE- a lot. That's pretty much it.

I cannot express how much I want it to be a week from tonight. Because then I won't have this ridiculous test hanging over my head and I can return to not even caring about how you factor (a+b)2-(a-b)2 or more importantly, why you'd want to. That is exactly how I have survived the four years since I took advanced algebra in high school and we've all gotten along just fine thank you very much.

Meanwhile, I now have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to fail the verbal section because I've been focusing on the math (which such fantastic results). Ignore the fact that there is no way to actually fail the test. Or that I've never had a problem with the verbal portion of any test. Or that half the schools I'm applying to don't care whether I got a 200 or an 800. I'M STILL GOING TO FAIL.

Speaking of which, I kind of fail at life. Ugh. I'm going to bed.

Be all things to all people.

So...apparently Possible Tenant #2 seems perfectly nice, if a little confused and heartbroken and omg ur takin my dog!

To which I say, no, you do not need to work out your personal problems in my house.

I'm sure Jesus is watching me and going, "they're wasting a prospective theology degree on this one?"

Once Upon A Time...

...so you may have noticed that the number of "what the frick this house is killing me" posts have decreased substantially. Now, the number of "what the frick the GRE is killing me" posts have increased exponentially. I know what you're thinking- hey, the crazy is starting to make sense. But that's not necessarily a correlation.

No, really, I'm just crazy about two different things.

The main reason is that we rented the house at the beginning of summer. I was so not cool with that. Really, really not. Those were MY countertops and MY house and ALL Y'ALLS NEED TO JUST STEP OFF. However, we ended up with the best family in the world. Independently wealthy, clean, short-term tenants. Dear God, I wanted them to be my new parents.

The last couple of months, gradually, I've gotten used to someone else being in that house. The (sometimes visceral) pain has kind of faded. I no longer freak out about certain things. Things are good.

But now they're leaving. And we need to find someone else. And I don't like this. AT ALL.

Again with the not sharing.

When one prospective renter asked what we were interested in, I really wanted to say, "Nice millionaires with adorable three-year-olds who need a babysitter? Is that you?"

Day 2

Much like when one has a newborn, I've been up late with my iPhone the last few nights. Mostly because Apple is an evil company that most likely employs people who are way, way more intelligent than me (and didn't get an embarrassingly low score on their practice math GRE this afternoon) to sit in a room and come up with way to screw up something as simple as uploading data.

Fortunately, they also employ people who answer phones and give you illegal solutions all the while telling you "No, miss, I'm sorry. There's no way you can do that. But please right click for me..."

Our relationship. It's complicated.

This just in.

iPhones are fantastic.

Updating your facebook status from the car is fantastic.

iTunes stores that don't work on your computer are not so fantastic.

Having to put your 289 songs on CD and then transfer them to your laptop because of some weird theft protection thing is also not so fanastic.

Steve Jobs needs to call my father.

So this evening I was exploring my phone upgrade options and made the mistake of discussing the service plans in mixed company.

Me: So that's thirty for the data plan, and five for texts...

Dad: Why do you need text messages?

Me:...because I live in the world?

Dad: You're holding a phone. Why don't you open the phone and call the person?

Me: Okay. We're not having the generation gap conversation right now. I need a new phone!

Maybe he knows I voted for McCain.

Even though I haven't actually changed majors yet, I decided to go ahead and drop my gnosticism class before the cut-off for, you know, being charged.

This means that:

1.) I don't have to take a GNOSTICISM class.

2.) I only have one class on Mondays and Wednesdays, which will make the whole car situation a lot easier.

3.) I saved $900 of overload fees.

4.) I don't have to head to the Illinois border and start stripping to come up with the $900 in overload fees.

5.) I won't have the urge to scrawl "I'M PAYING $900 TO TAKE YOUR STUPID CLASS WHY DO I LOVE YOU SO MUCH???" on my exams for Jews in Wisconsin.

A pretty good deal.

According to PAWS, I owe $3853.15, of which financial aid (I use that term loosely- the money that the government is allowing me to use for a few months while they begin charging me exorbitant interest RIGHT NOW because God knows that this whole "Grandpa's house" thing has been such a financial boon to us. Please, Federal Government. You obviously haven't been reading this blog too long.) will cover $3731.26. So I only have to come up with about $120.

Which means I might be able to actually afford books! I know, right? Don't get too crazy.

The books. They talk to me.

I've been using this GRE study guide for a while. It's the typical, huge, clinical study guide. Full of practice tests and chapters devoted to explaining the sections and the most personal thing in it is an admonition to eat breakfast the day of the test. Honestly? This is a graduate school test. You can't just trust us to eat if we're hungry?

Since I registered for the test, though, I've been hitting several different books from different companies including, my favorite, GRE for Dummies. I love this book. I want to have this book's babies. It's not-at-all-condescending babies.

Because the study guide is mean. It's all, well why don't you remember how to factor a polynomial? You had to ask your little brother for help? You fail. At life. And oh, yeah, you're fat, too.

The Dummies book is like, you're okay. Calm down. Seriously- keep breathing. You have other gifts. You are still a functioning member of society, even if you had to text your 16-year-old brother from work saying "omg we're doing quadratic equations when I get home". Seriously. Breathe. You'll be fine. Also? You're pretty and not at all bloated.

I think I'm only going to work with the Dummies book from now on. Because REA clearly wants to ruin my life.

Much more my speed.

Ahhh. There were no sports. No embarrassing "oh, hey, I've...yeah, I don't have that" volleyball things. Just trivia night.


So even though I didn't know that Uncle Tom's Cabin was only outsold by the Bible in the 19th century, a pretty good evening.

Is 8:53 too early to go to bed?

I don't think so. I'm tired. I've had a long day of pretending to care about retail and my goodness, I just do not.

This? THIS is why I need to get into graduate school. Because I do think it's important that people understand the nature of the sectarian tension in Northern Ireland, and I do think that when we look back at the Good Friday Accords we will be seeing about a ten year ceasefire rather than a lasting peace, and I do want to tell EVERYONE this. This is important.

How many Twilight calendars I sold? Notsomuch.

Obviously, I cannot do the whole "retail as a career" thing. Obviously.

Ugh. Tomorrow...well, let's just say tomorrow the B crew is on and I'll be able to not even pretend to work. Thank goodness. I have limits. There are only so many copies of former Archbishop Weakland's autobiography I can sell before I begin to tell the customers what I think about it, and I'm guessing that won't be totally cool with management.

Possibly.

Ooh, I've decided to go ahead and do the Jewish Studies major thing, so with the click of a mouse I made my senior year way more interesting, got rid of the Advisor from the Black Lagoon, and saved myself $900. L'chaim!

Administrative

I finally got around to doing all the things I was supposed to do a few weeks ago today. Of course, those things really only amounted to sending a few e-mails. What can I say? I've been busy. Actually taking the time to spell-check an e-mail would have seriously cut into my Facebook stalking time. That would have been unacceptable.

So now I know that I for sure have a thesis advisor, and that he's totally down with my writing about the Jews (although not, perhaps, specifically eastern European ones- "There aren't that many left." Um. Yeah. I know. I'm a history major.) I don't, however know if I have a second major. Or, rather, a second major that will make the unbelievably huge number that shows up next to "You owe:" on PAWS now go down $900. Because the more I think about it, the more gnosticism is So. Not. Worth it.


(I mean the class, not the concept. Although I happen to not believe the concept is worth it, either.)

I'm feeling rather good about everything I accomplished. Except for the part where I opened the GRE prep book and immediately got dizzy. That part? Not so much.

What the hell did I know?

I remember leaving Port Washington High School on the morning that I took the ACT and thinking, "Heh. This is the last standardized test I'm ever going to have to take."

Heh. I was wrong.

I didn't exactly freak out over the ACT. I mean, don't get me wrong. I freaked out. But there was no wailing or gnashing of teeth or anything, which is remarkably restrained for someone like me, Keeper of All Things Academically Crazy. I had studiously avoided the practice tests that my mom tried to get me to take, and I was going on like three hours of sleep (WHAT? It's not my fault that John Paul II's funeral was on the night before and I stayed up to watch it. I was being a good Catholic.), and there wasn't any heavy-duty screaming or crying or anything. I remember being generally okay with the whole thing, mostly annoyed because it took forfreakingever.

That was four years ago. I just registered for the GRE, which I was supposed to do earlier this summer but studiously avoided because as long as I'm not sending scores to anyone, I'm still a kid, right? RIGHT? Yeah. Apparently, I've changed a little bit. Because I'm freaking out. Royally.

Quietly. But royally.

(My mom keeps looking over at me and going, "Are you okay?"; "Still doing okay?"; "Wow, I'm impressed. I thought there would be screaming.", as though I were a victim of PTSD or just went through a bad breakup or something.)

Make no mistake. I'm stressed. I'm not feeling ready, every word I've ever learned in my entire life has completely left my brain, and despite the fact that half the schools I'm applying to don't even require the damn thing, I'm convinced that I'll do so poorly I won't get in anywhere. But I'm not screaming.

Yet.

Give me a few days. Then I'm guessing you'll be able to hear me.

Meanwhile, I need to start hitting the novenas, like, hard. I mean, I want a graduate degree in theology to help glorify God, right? So shouldn't He be slightly responsible for helping me get admitted? I think so.

But wait. I think the best part of this whole, entire, nausea-inducing process is the part where I put in my credit card number and was charged $150 for the PRIVILEGE OF GOING THROUGH THIS, THIS WHAT SURELY DESERVES ITS OWN CIRCLE OF HELL.

That was my favorite.

I knew there was a reason that I work at a bookstore.

We received the New York Public Library Student Planner today, and I was able to purchase a copy at 33% off.

I am hard pressed to find words to describe how much I love this calendar. Last year was the first year I used one, and it is, without doubt, the best planner you can possibly find. EVER. Better than any of the other planners I've ever used. The days are laid out in columns, which makes it a lot easier to plan the week, there are sections at the bottom of each day that I can use to write which assignments need to be completed on which day (shut up, I'm organized, and it works), and there is a "philosophical" saying for each week like, "History is the name we give our mistakes," that just makes me laugh.

Let's put it this way. If I were stranded on a desert island, I'd really only need this planner and a supply of skinny caramel lattes. You know, so I could schedule "run from natives" under the extracurricular section, and "finally study for GREs" under the "assignments" tab. Because let's face it, the only thing that will finally make me do that is being stuck on a desert island.

Sadly, last year's died when I spilled water all over it on the last day of school, and I have been using a regular (*retch) planner from Target all summer. Which isn't too bad, because the only things I have to plan are "work two hours a week" and "count down days until school starts and you actually have something to write in here" and "fail at regular life". All pretty worthless.

But today! Today it is all better. And now I can go back to school.

In a month. *headdesk*