tacos are not that complicated

Dear dining "services," AGAIN,

i am not a chef. however, i do know a couple of things that are not that hard to figure out.

first, pico de gallo is definitely not straight-up chopped tomato. i don't claim to know what it is, but i'm sure it isn't this.

(side note: i looked it up, and according to The Internet, you can find out the etymology of the name and also that it generally involves onion and sometimes chilis, lemon or lime juice, cilantro, cucumber, radishes, and other firm fruits. the end)

also, please do not look at me like i've got three heads when i ask for sour cream. or for crunchy corn tortillas. they may not be authentic to actual Mexican cuisine, but you've been serving them since september, and i could have found them in the grocery store at the age of six. And i am not all that good at directions. why are you confused about whether you serve them today?

part three, if you wanted to not block the entire utensil slash condiment area during the dinner rush, there wouldn't be the pedestrian equivalent of a traffic jam. if you really wanted to improve life, you wouldn't keep the forks six feet off the ground--they are literally above my head and therefore very hard to reach--but that's another story.

and since when do you make rice with hot sauce?

(the reason i care so much and am so damn annoyed about this: hard-shell black bean tacos are the only gluten-free and vegetarian option in the student union/on the weekends. besides salad, but i drop weight as easily as i drop F-bombs.)

Song challenge 06

A song that reminds me of somewhere.

Songbird, by Kenny G. My dad loves jazz, among other types of music, and sometimes in the evenings he would sit in the library in the front of the house, reading and listening to music. (I assume he still does, but I'm not around in the evenings much in pipersville.) This song in particular is one I associate with him, and more importantly with the corner of the house that is his personal spot. The blue leather couch and set of side tables are usually strewn with the newspaper, whatever novel or biography he's reading, and a bunch of highlighted copies of value line.

I even made a copy of his CD.

oh shit, does that mean to be a functional and not broke adult i have to invest? and read the tiny tiny print in value line?

like a mathematician who can't subtract

How did I end up in this mess?

I read enough to know this is a psychological stage and that things will get better, but i'm also human, and right now i'm angry at myself.

I was having a chat with a buddy earlier tonight that reminded me of something about myself. Backstory is that we haven't known each other too long, but he's one of the people i talk to online late at night when i should be doing homework. we were talking about a bunch of stuff, including something he'd alluded to a few times before but seemed nervous to talk about. my attempt to encourage him to continue if he felt comfortable was to take a guess at the topic. ...and i was right. pretty much spot-on in my perception of him and the thing he was worried about. Reading people is one of the things i'm good at in life. I like that I have the ability to tell what's up with people, even if they try to hide it. I can usually spot things others can't.

(This, incidentally, is exactly why I can't argue. Things people don't tell me directly are not fair game, in my book, and it's likely that everything I ever realized about a person would come spilling out in one rage-filled paragraph. I'm not a cruel person, even when I'm pretty angry or upset, but it means I have to keep my mouth shut. even at the expense of looking like a crappy fighter.)

So I repeat, how did I end up in this mess?

How the fuck didn't I see it coming?

And more importantly, what the hell do I do now? I don't want to be that girl.

life is improving

team,

my heart is warmed. i've talked to several people this week who don't suck. good listeners, don't dump all of their problems on me at once, friendly in a noncreepy way, etc.

Things that are good to do:

eat

sleep

express your feelings to other people, selectively.

understand that you are still a good person even if some of your grades are bad

i really want that tattoo, but that's a topic for when i'm less tired.

LGBTQIAlphabetSoup

i'm having a really intense physical reaction to something I just read, and I'm not entirely sure why. my heart started racing and i got that lovely twisty nervous feeling in my abdomen, and after a couple minutes' reflection I'm thinking it's that I might be about to discover something about myself that I might not like.

The blog is http://starfishwithwings.wordpress.com/ by a guy I know named Tristan (are we friends? I'd like to be friends. He's possibly too cool to be my friend, and I think I'm bad at making friends because I'm horribly shy at inconvenient times and my brain shuts down when I should be thinking of appropriate and inspiring conversation topics, but that's not relevant at present.) The section of the post titled Psuedofriends in Psyberspace that piqued my interest slash semifreakout was about the probability that sex with a man as a man is different than sex with a man as a woman. He used the words "power dynamics" and it hit a nerve.

First, because oh! lightbulb moment! I'm not alone in thinking this! yay!

Second, because I tried explaining this once to a friend (late at night while I was drinking, which probably didn't help) and she was totally confused. I was mostly thinking aloud about how my relationships with women are different than my relationships with trans men and how that would be different than being with a nontrans guy. This explanation really didn't go well for me, partially because I'm bad at talking but largely because I couldn't get across why exactly being with a trans guy made me not 100% homosexual.

Being with a man = not gold star lesbian. But that's not exactly a clear explanation--it's because of the difference in power dynamics, as well as a lot of other factors emotionally.

What upset me is that...I thought I was cool with that. This wasn't my first relationship of this variety, and I'm not clueless about what it means when you agree to this sort of tie with a person of a particular gender. But...I was bad at it. The power differential freaked me the hell out and I didn't like it. I'm just not sure where I went wrong--the person, the expectations, the situation? The place I was in at the time? My feelings about (the lack of) control in my own life? Something else?

So I thought I was bi with a couple of "types," or maybe pansexual; I didn't have a label and I wasn't too concerned with finding one. Now I'm not so sure. Is it always like this? Do I even want to find out? For sure, I'm not especially in a place to test the waters again.

On the other hand, I sort of actually do think I'm...not just into girls. And part of me desperately wants to see that that's okay. That it won't be self-destructive.

I'm whiny when I'm hungry

Dear Dining Services,

1. mozzarella cheese is inappropriate on a taco. it is also inappropriate on burritos, burrito bowls, and probably fajitas as well. Therefore, when i go to the taco station at 11:30 am, which is only half an hour after it opens, you should try to have appropriate cheese. you can't possibly have run out of...whatever normal taco cheese is...by 11:30 am.

2. you also seem to have run out of rice chex again, which is what i really wanted when i went to the dining hall at 11:30 in the morning, because I consider before noon to be breakfast time. I know that you get cases and cases of cereal from Sysco, who gets them from the Official Cereal People, who I am sure are not completely out of rice chex. so for the love of all that is holy, please stop hiding the rice chex. it's the only breakfast object i can eat on this whole campus. awesome.

3. please stop hiding from me when i look for you to ask politely to find me some more rice chex. i only cry and/or scowl when i'm really hungry, so the less you hide, the nicer i will be.

4. please stop telling me you'll get the gluten-free cupcakes again, unless you're actually going to get the gluten-free cupcakes. please don't tell me you're going to get the other guy to do it, because he told me you would do it. this is not supposed to work like siblings blaming each other for making the mess.

5. remember three months ago, when i was so hungry I sent you an email that i wrote while I was practically crying about how there wasn't any food i could eat on campus? and we talked about how we could get gluten-free food in the corner store, and you were sort of consoling and nice and assured me that i wouldn't have to starve? i do. THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP CARRYING THE FOOD all of a sudden.

Song challenge 05

A song that reminds me of someone...take me on the floor by the veronicas reminds me of a laundry list of cool people. i first listened to it while driving to virginia beach with my best friends from high school. it's a good song for flying down the highway with a week's vacation ahead of you, with the sun shining on your whole life. it also makes me think of the person i spent the whole car ride texting.

take me on the floor is also one of my friend steph's songs. it's something we play to get pumped for clubbing. so a lot of good memories associated with this one.