Confession:

I'm only one Team Jacob t-shirt and one Justin Beiber album away from middle school.

When I was thirteen, I essentially acted like an adult.  I watched movies like Citizen Kane, read Dickens and Vonnegut, and listened almost exclusively to classical music, with some classic rock occasionally mixed in.  At youth gatherings, I inevitably ended up in the corner talking to one of the adult leaders about Ibsen's feminism or something we had both read in the New York Times.  I didn't fit in well with the kids my age, and I didn't know how to relate to their obsessions with make up, boy bands, and middle school drama.

Now I'm twenty two, it's almost as if I'm making up for my lost adolescence.  Sure, I'm still a reasonably responsible individual, and I still probably wouldn't fit in well with a group of tweens (somehow I don't think they'd appreciate my fondness for words like "bucolic" and "effervescent" or want to discuss the pros and cons of legal positivism).  At the same time, however, my tastes have become remarkably juvenile.  From what I usually feel like watching (10 Things I Hate About You, Post Grad, Clueless) to what I usually feel like listening to (Glee, High School Musical, and Taylor Swift [sorry Britny!]), I ought to be fourteen years old.  I prefer Seventeen to Cosmo and Forever 21 to Banana Republic (although the latter is purely because, if I have $30 to spend on clothes, I'd rather get eight t-shirts and a headband than one camisole, especially if it might be made by child labor either way).  I worry about who I'm going to sit with at lunch, and I'm still mildly scandalized when I find out two of my classmates are sleeping together, even if they've been dating for months.  This week, to celebrate the mid-term break, I checked two books out of the library:  James Joyce's Dubliners (a collection of literary short stories) and Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls (a young adult novel about an eleven year old who gets kidnapped by Vikings).  Guess which one I loved, and which one I found boring and may never finish.

P.S.  It turns out the secret to enjoying Notre Dame football games is to sit with one's friends, at least ten rows behind obnoxious sophomore boy and his sophomoric friends (who, more than halfway through the semester, still haven't managed to figure out that their assigned seats are not in the middle of the law student section).

Go Irish!

Notre Dame might accept students and offer classes, but beyond the trappings of dorms and dining halls, ND is football.  I've seen Rudy, peeked through the fence to glimpse the football team practicing, and watched almost every home game on tv.  I was SO excited that we were finally able to afford tickets this year (for a student and a spouse, tickets to the home games cost $500).  Yesterday was the first game of the season.  Mike and I got to campus early and wandered through the huge crowds of people, who were all dressed from head-to-toe in Notre Dame gear and were taking pictures of everything in sight.  Grown men were acting like children on Christmas morning; it was hard to watch them and not get absurdly excited for the game.

Our seats were right next to the stairwell the players came through, which was really cool.  Our team stayed ahead the entire game, and we ended up beating the Boilermakers by a comfortable margin.  Despite some missed tackles, it was a very promising start to the season. And yet...

It was a mostly-miserable experience.  Perhaps this was partly the product of overly-inflated expectations, but  I couldn't wait for the game to be over, and kept thinking I'd be enjoying it more if I were watching it on TV.  Tailgating, it turns out, is pointless if you're not ingesting large quantities of beer. The ridiculously overpriced hamburger I got before the game was almost entirely raw, and the two bites I had before looking down left my stomach queasy for hours.  The stadium was so packed that we didn't have room to stand facing forward, but were forced to stand twisted sideways (and my shoulders are NOT that wide).  My shoes got drenched in Coca-Cola, and everything smelled like vomit and alcohol.  We had to remain standing on the benches the entire game, and even then a guy in front of me was so tall I could only see half the field.  

Our section, which was supposed to be reserved for law students, was inundated by sophomores who were too drunk to find their real seats (which certainly didn't help the crowding problem).  One of them, who decided to sit on Mike's other side, was constantly throwing his elbows out during cheers and knocking Mike and I down from the bench.  This same fellow yelled a constant stream of filth, not only at the referees and the other team, but at our own players.  His friends found it hilarious.  

Notre Dame students have the tradition, whenever our team scores, of hoisting small-sized females into the air  and throwing them up and down in celebration.  The large, obnoxious sophomore was not paying attention, and thought that we had scored off an incomplete pass.  He grabbed a drunk girl sitting in front of him and threw her up in the air.  The other boys nearby didn't notice, and were busy trying to listen to the referee announce a penalty.  Obnoxious boy couldn't catch the girl on his own, and she crashed down onto the ground, hitting her head on the bleachers.  Blood started pouring down her face.  A few of the boys seemed mildly concerned (i.e. put a worried expression on their faces and quickly asked if she was ok, but continued intently watching the game), but obnoxious boy thought her injuries were even more entertaining than his profanities.  The girl's friends were, perhaps, even worse.  One of them yelled to obnoxious boy "Make her stand up so I can get a good picture."  And so obnoxious boy forced bleeding girl to her feet and held her up while her "friends" pulled out their cameras.

All this stood in sharp contrast to the games I watched last year, sitting on the comfy futon, eating homemade salsa and cookies and getting homework done during the commercial breaks.  I'm all for cheering the Irish on, I'd just rather not do it from the stadium.  As we have season tickets, hopefully yesterday was an anomalous experience, but ... I feel like such a terrible Notre Dame student right now.

The Finals Diet

If I kept a food diary, this is what the last 24 hours would look like:

Dinner last night -  a mini bag of baked potato chips, orange juice, and one bite of disgusting macaroni and cheese, made with canned whipping cream instead of milk

Midnight snack - tortilla chip fragments from the bottom of the bag

Breakfast this morning - 1/2 a mini bag of baked potato chips and a handful of sweetened coconut

Lunch - a can of green beans and three oreo cookies

The conclusion?  Studying for finals and trying to finish several massive papers = no time to cook or go to the grocery store = a wonderful way to encourage creative meal planning. If I don't get off Blogger and finish footnoting my paper, dinner tonight just might be canned tuna and ranch dressing over spaghetti noodles.  Yum!

3, 2, 1, - Back to writing my paper!

I may be looking towards a late night of paper-writing, but I'm not here to complain about it, I promise.  Not that my random observations will be any more exciting:


3. Running in the rain is not nearly as awesome in practice as it seems in theory.  Especially when the individual contemplating the running is as out of shape and un-runnerish as I happen to be. 


2.  Cadbury mini eggs are incomprehensibly delicious.  I may or may not have (ok, may have) eaten an entire bag since Easter.  Why do they not sell these things all year?  They make M&Ms seem so inadequate in comparison.  Plus, unlike M&Ms, Cadbury eggs are animal-cruelty free (although, unfortunately, still the product of all sorts of awful child labor... my Transnational Corporation and International Human Rights class is ruining my life by giving me a conscience.... as if the calories weren't already enough to feel guilty about.)


1. Ok, so I promised I wouldn't talk about my paper, but: so glad not to live in China!  Let's just say the reading I've been doing about forced live organ donations from prisoners who refuse to denounce their illegal religious beliefs is making me more than a little bit squeamish.  Also, I dislike most rice, so the country probably wouldn't be a good fit for me anyways.

The Skinny

A few years ago, whenever I saw someone wearing skinny jeans, I shuddered.  The 1980s and early 1990s are not a fashion era I find very aesthetically appealing, and I didn't really want graffiti denim and parachute pants to make a comeback. I still feel that way, but I've become acclimatized to skinny jeans - and seen a lot of people pull them off adorably.  But my closet remains resolutely full of flared pants and bootcut bottoms that are quickly becoming "mom jeans"

Part of it is due to my overall ignorance when it comes to fashion - I love clothes, but I like shopping on the cheap and definitely don't keep up on my Chanel and St. Yves Laurent (if that's even a thing) or what ridiculous get-ups are draped over models on the catwalk (they can pull off anything... I can't).

Another reason I've avoided skinny jeans is because many of them simply don't fit.  A while ago, I found a great chart that evaluated your measurements - and it kindly informed me that my ankles would only be proportionate on a woman who stood over six feet tall.  Many skinny jeans in my size, even some of the stretchy ones, literally will not fit over my monstrous heels because the bottom hems don't have much give.

Both of these obstacles could be overcome... there definitely are skinny jeans out there that would fit, and they've become so pervasive that you can pick them up at K-Mart and wear them with any shirt on the shelf.  The real reason I persist in my mom-jeans is psychological.

There was a period of time, when my family lived in a ridiculously big house we couldn't sell and my family was trying to pay two college tuitions (both mine and my mom's) when we didn't have much money.  As a result, I was dressed mainly in hand-me-downs from relatives and the bounty from an occasional trip to DI.  When I was 14, I owned three pairs of jeans, and all of them were skinny jeans.  Today, this would probably be fairly normal.  In 2002, back when Britney was still all that and most teenagers didn't even text, wearing a pair of skinny jeans was something only women over 35 attempted.  Any passer by could have seen that I must be wearing clothes someone more sensible had rejected, and I was painfully aware of it.  Shy 14 year old girls don't tend to excel at "working it" in "vintage". 

When our/my money situation changed, I loaded up on flares and gave those skinny jeans back to DI.  Unless you count weak moments in dressing rooms when I've temporarily thought about giving in to the trend, I have't been in a pair of skinny jeans since.  My past experiences being unfashionable have scarred me to the point where I now insist on being unfashionable.  My main consolation, besides how awesome it is to wear skirts and not have to worry about pants at all, is that at some point bootcuts will be back and I'll be the hippest 30 year old mom around.

The Invention of Propaganda

Last night Mike and I watched The Invention of Lying.  From the trailer, the movie looked very entertaining - I imagined a screenwriter overhearing a child telling a fib and thinking to herself  "What would it be like if we lived in a world where everyone ALWAYS told the truth about everything, and then one man discovered how to lie.  He'd have a lot of fun, but someday it would catch up to him and he'd learn a valuable lesson... hey, this would make a great movie!"

The first part of the film was pretty enjoyable, though peppered with the unnecessary and unappealing vulgarity that Hollywood seems to throw into every PG-13 comedy.  About halfway through, though, during a long and uncomfortably sacrilegious scene, it became evident that the movie was actually born in a conversation by a bunch of Hollywood executives who consider themselves enlightened, creative intellectuals.  "Let's make a movie," one probably said "that forcefully drives home the point that Christianity is a sham and organized religion is a myth that paternalistically exploits people.  Oh, and let's package it as a comedy and get some big name actors, so people will actually watch it."

Such a disappointment...

You're (Unfortunately) Not a Kid Anymore When...

My sweet tooth and I are very good friends, and for a long time it has encouraged me to give it free rein in the mornings... preferably with some pie or cinnamon rolls, but, in a pinch, by munching on Trix, Reese's Puffs, or Cap'n Crunch.  Mike and I bonded over Blueberry Muffin Top cereal, and I've always stayed as far away from Raisin Bran and Rice Crispies as I could.


Lately, however, I've undergone a transformation.  While I still would NEVER turn down pie for breakfast (ok, so maybe I would if it was mocha or blueberry or a very mushy pumpkin without whipping cream), Reese's Puffs aren't so tempting anymore.  Instead, Mike and I load up on cereals with words like "almond", "grain", "oat", "morning" and *shudder* "fiber".  The worst part isn't even that we've been duped into buying them... it's that we're so deluded that we actually think they taste good.  I've taken to eating cereal just in the morning, but also again after I get home from school.  The dishwasher is full of bowls and spoons, proof of our new habits.


Clearly, we have a problem... and I think I've decided the perfect solution.  We'll stage an intervention this weekend in front of the TV - enough subjection to advertisements for sugar bombs and cocoa kernels and we might regain our sanity.  


P.S.  It has occurred to me that my face in the last picture looks far more MySpace than Chaplin, and definitely does NOT make me look ridiculously happy.  I must have been thinking about that parade :)