Caustic Cupcake's Creepy Cupboard

Tuesday evening:

• Send possible final exam essay topics to literature professor who is cleverly relying on students to write their own fucking final.
• Rip apart John McGahern's Amongst Women for source material.

Late Tuesday into early Wednesday:

• Begin ripping apart Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle.
• Shower, knowing damned well there will no time for hair-drying or giving a damn in general the next morning.
• Sleep.

Wednesday morning:

• Leave house half an hour late, obey all local speed limits, and somehow arrive at school exactly on time. The gods are on my side.
• Participate in all classes, bolstering good-student image.
• Write short paper on "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros. Turn in.

Wednesday afternoon:

• Nap. Have violent and horrifying nightmare, most likely influenced by an unusually explicit photograph that I saw the other day of a tragic car crash. (See above, re: obeying all local speed limits.) It was somewhat inadvertent; I looked up the name of the person in the crash and the images have made it past Google's filtering. That, along with the fact that the photographs are haunting the victim's family, is why Logic Professor suggested I not link to the Wikipedia article (although it is safe). If you've seen the images, you know what I'm talking about. At the time I was surprised that the photograph didn't bother me more than it did: although something in the picture had clearly been a human at one time, it was mangled enough that I felt detached, like it was staged. But now I'm having nightmares and driving under the speed limit.
• Begin writing Irish lit essay.

Wednesday evening:

• Continue writing Irish lit essay.
• Pizza.


CONTINUED

• 9:40 pm- Still typing. Paper getting longer. I like to type my papers single-spaced, and then when I'm finished, frustrated and desperate, I can highlight the text and make it double-spaced and KABLAM! It's twice as long as it was before!
• 11:00ish - shower. See above, re: knowing damned well there will no time for hair-drying or giving a damn in general the next morning.
• 12:30 am (technically now Thurday) - Reading in bed; decide on linguistics n' politics paper topic: African American Vernacular English.
• 12:45 am- Sleeping the sleep of the blessedly topic-decided. Kind of. Went to bed knowing that it will be easier to write after having slept than before. Unfortunately, it is also easier to sleep after having finished writing. Not that I will ever know.

Thursday morning:

• 4:30 am- HOLY SHIT IT'S THURSDAY AND I HAVE TWO PAPERS DUE IN T MINUS NINE HOURS
• 4:50 am- socks, bra, hoodie, orange juice. Begin paper.
• 6:30 am - The library opens when? Check website and discover that my campus is the red-headed stepchild of the university, and our library is only open when the moon is waxing gibbous, whereas the libraries of bigger, better, more favorite campuses are open until 2 AM. ON WEEKENDS. The good news? Apparently the moon is now waxing gibbous.
• Make tea. Delicious, delicious, life-sustaining tea.
• 6:55 am - Prepare to leave for library. Prepare for the eventuality that in several hours I will scream "Why do I do this to myself?!" as is my custom.
• 8:48 am- Currently ensconced in the dusty old linguistics section in the basement of the library. Even the ceiling is dusty down here. Why don't I come down here more often? There are scads of sofas and desks and there is abundant wireless internet and outlets for laptops and nobody is here. (Captain Language once told me that even he doesn't go down here.) I SHOULD LIVE HERE.
• 10:37 am - AIIIEEEEEEEEE
• 12:07 pm - Failure --> frustration --> self-hatred --> failure (repeat)

To be continued...

Now here's what I was talking about. This is Parsley's favorite sleeping spot, under the coatrack that he has nibbled nearly to pieces. The fur has since been vacuumed up. Then, it got vacuumed up two more times, because it keeps happening. We're not going to have any bunny left before long, just a skeleton.



P.S. Today I wrote and turned in the shortest of the three papers I had to do. Now I have to write two more tonight. I'm working on it. Pray for me.

Labels: Bunny

I have two major papers due in 36 hours. And god damn I do not want to be writing them at 4:00 in the morning the night before they are due, nor do I want to be printing them out five minutes before class starts.

Better get started. First up: fatherhood in Irish literature.

THE SCENE: A few nights ago. Cupcake is tired, hungry, and angry. Logic Professor is an innocent bystander, amusing himself by deliberately poking Cupcake in the side to provoke a whirlwind of indignation.

CUP: StoOoOOooop!
LOPRO: Nope.
CUP: Why are you doing that?!
LOPRO: Because you'll be annoyed at ANYTHING I do.
CUP: Then don't do ANYTHING!
LOPRO: That's impossible! I can't not do anything. Then I wouldn't exist, and you'd be annoyed at that, too. Mocking Cupcake: 'Where's my annoying thing that was just here? God damn it.'


After this conversation, he went down the block to Wawa and got me a slice of pound cake; I immediately turned as docile as a kitten. I hadn't wanted him to go, but he maintained that if he had to sleep next to me, I was going to fucking eat something first. It worked; I was happy.

Labels: Logic Professor

This is going to be a rough week. I have to write three big papers (one of which is a week late as of today) and one small paper, catch up on my reading for two literature classes, bake something for the English department party, and read the mountain of books lent to me several months ago by Captain Language, my trusting and patient linguistics professor. Then I have a couple days off before finals. Believe it or not, I'm excited about the challenge and the sense of accomplishment I know I will feel when I stop screaming. That's probably because it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm a delirious idiot. Also, I have a cup of tea to keep me happy. I am totally not frightened. Yet. Irish breakfast tea is my current favorite. I like it with loads of sugar, creamer, and denial.

I made a cup of tea for Logic Professor, too. Here's how our past eight or so hours have gone:

11:15pm- I realize I am too tired to effectively discuss Robert Browning's character development in dramatic monologue; I decide to procrastinate even further because a week is just not enough wake up early and finish the paper in the morning.
11:20pm- Tooth-brushing, hair-unclipping, Parsley-patting, clothes-offtaking, pajama-onputting.
11:30pm- Logic Professor tells me that in an adorable show of solidarity, he will wake up early to grade assignments instead of staying up late to do so.
11:45pm- We curl up together and fall into the deep and satisfying sleep of the unrepentently procrastinatory.

(Here I throw in a tangential side note. Yesterday LoPro told me about our latest nighttime conversation: We were in bed, and I was sleeping. I told him I liked his outline. He asked what I was talking about. I replied, "BEVERAGES." When he told me about this later, I had no recollection of it, but I would love to know what it was about.)

5:30am- The alarm goes off.
5:31am- Logic Professor sets it for 5:45.
5:45am- The alarm goes off. Logic Professor asks if maybe I would want to turn it off, you know, to get me out of bed. After all, he had to get up the first time.
5:46am- Grudging acquiescence. I ask if he wants to come help make tea. He answers the same way I would answer if I were in his position.
6:00am- Tea is made.
6:00, 6:15, and 6:30 ams- Attempts to rouse Logic Professor, several of which look to be successful at the time only to end with Logic Professor falling back asleep as soon as I leave the room.
6:40- I ask Logic Professor if he really has to grade today; when he says no, I tell him to go back to sleep.

You know, had I been the first one to reset the alarm, I could be in his shoes right now.

By the way, Parsley is shedding EVERYWHERE. He has a kind of tufted look right now. When I pet him, I get a handful of fur. There are white drifts in the corners of the living room. No lie: I'll take a picture later. The other night we rolled a ball across the floor to him, and it kicked up a Wile E. Coyote-esque dust trail, except instead of dust, it was made of fur. We're not sure if we should vacuum or wait to see how much fur accumulates.

I have discovered an online version of SimCity Classic- remember the 2D version?

And that was the last anyone ever heard of Caustic Cupcake.

Some things I did this week:

• Made four dozen cupcakes for Easter.


• Made four dozen cupcakes for a bake sale.


• Made three dozen pineapple upside-down cupcakes for a school event. (I will probably not do this again; they were adorable but laborious to create.)


• Took my nephew to an Indian restaurant, where he ate only naan; conspired with his mother to create a blog called "White Breads of the World (with JQ)", in which we take him to a variety of ethnic restaurants where, if history is to be believed, he will eat whatever closest approximates white bread, and nothing else. (For the record, he wanted to sprinkle sugar on his naan. You know, to liven it up.)


• Had a sleepover with said nephew. Dyed eggs with Gramma. Threw eggs in street. Went grocery shopping the next morning, and concocted a recipe for Nasty Cupcakes (which he gleefully reported to the cashier): dirt, shampoo, popcorn, fur, mustard, and flowers.


• Met linguist K. David Harrison; got an autograph.


• Had a number of silly conversations with Logic Professor that I meant to blog about, but can only remember one. It had to do with jet skiing behind two whales instead of a boat. I asked how we would yoke them; there's nowhere to attach a harness! He replied that we would plug the yoke into their blowholes.


• Picked five classes for next semester: medieval literature, hieroglyphics, pop culture, research techniques, and freelance articles. I intend to take another linguistics class, too.


• Started that adjacency pair experiment. It was a partial failure; will explain later.


• Blogged - right now - as a strictly procrastinatory measure.


• Realized that for my decision to set the clocks forward to be effective, I would have to set them forward at least a week.

My nephew is sleeping in the other room.

Highlight of the night:

I don't know how, but while they were dying Easter eggs, JQ and Aunt Junket started talking about what someone would say if they got an Easter egg for their birthday. (It probably had something to do with JQ's own upcoming birthday.) "They'd say 'Ew, why did you give me a stinky old egg?'" Junket postulated, adding that they would probably throw it in the street, and then a car would hit it, and then the driver of the car would yell "What did you do to my tires?!" This entire tale was accompanied by peals of laughter, and was retold over and over. He especially liked the phrases "stinky old egg" and "old stinky egg". He also liked the idea of someone throwing their birthday egg into the street.

You see where this is going.

After much laughter, and because we are the best aunts ever, Aunt Junket took JQ by the hand - and this was fairly late at night, mind you - and let him throw an Easter egg in the street. Then, all three of us threw Easter eggs in the street. Afterwards, we waited for a car to go by and hit them, but it being late at night, we only saw one car and it didn't even crush all the eggs. So finally, while JQ sat on the front steps with Junket and his Grandma, I got in my car and drove over the hard-boiled eggs six times. When I was done, I yelled out the window, "What did you do to my tires?!"

A good time was had by all.

Labels: Dr. Thumbscre.ws

Tonight I'm going to start my final project in linguistics.

For over a year I've been gathering data at work to find out things like whether I make better money wearing a skirt or not. For the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to find out whether I make more money by saying "Hi" to the customers before asking what they want to drink.

There's more to it than that, but that's what it boils down to. Despite the possibility that performing such an experiment could negatively impact my income for a couple weeks, I am SO F-ING EXCITED ABOUT COLLECTING DATA!

Sometimes, when I'm reading something confusing, dry, or tortuously boring about linguistics, I think, "This isn't what I signed up for." But then something like this presents itself and it's all I can think about.

A few days ago I set all the clocks in the house forward by five minutes in an effort to cure my perpetual five-minute-lateness.

Let me tell you how effective this has turned out to be:

I have to leave for school in twenty minutes, and I still haven't showered, sorted out my books, or gotten dressed. Instead, I am blogging and drinking Twinings Indian Spiced Chai Tea (dear graf I could eat the box). However, every time I look up at the clock, it says that I will start hating myself in fifteen minutes instead of twenty.

I should go now.