So I just spent my night drinking a glass of Pinot Noir and playing Trivial Pursuit with my Dad. (I'm not going to say who won, and who lost...but maybe if *I* had 25 years on my opponent and had actually LIVED through half of the events that the questions were concerned with, I might have an obvious advantage, too. grrr....) And yeah. I don't know I feel about that.

I feel like I'm increasingly being identified with the parental generation. Today I talked with my sister about keeping a gas log in the car so that neither of us has to pay for gas we're not using. (A system that I thought would be *obviously* mutually beneficial.) I don't know what I expected. "Thank you, Katherine, for taking my financial needs into account as well as your own. You're so nice! I'm so lucky to have such a considerate big sister. Want to go out and do sister things like go to the mall and paint our nails and talk about boys and bind together against common enemies like our other siblings? Jeepers....this'll be great." In retrospect, yeah...maybe that was dumb of me. But all I got was the "Yeah. Sure. Whatever." type of answer and then a closed door.

And suddenly I had a crisis. "What?!!" I shouted. (In my head.) That's....that's what you say to a parent when they're *obviously* trying to make you concerned about something irrelevant and annoying. That's what you say to...you know, not a peer! That's how you blow off an authority figure who only *thinks* they're an authority figure and is not, in fact, the boss of you! Oh god! I was not trying to be the boss of anybody! And all of a sudden I'm an old farty stick in the mud, somehow trying to put a damper on everyone's fun...aaargh! When did I stop being on the late-teens-to-twentysomethings team? I want to be on that team!!

What am I doing wrong?

It wouldn't worry me, except that I feel it happening more and more. Maybe in the past year. Even like, while I'm hanging out with people my own age and not my sister's. And suddenly I feel ancient. And stuffy.

I mean...it's all well and good to be edgy, and you know...forward-thinking. But what happens if sometimes you just think your parents' generation may have it a little more together than our own? When does "forward-thinking" just become a word we use to excuse things? :::sigh:::

I don't know. But now I don't know how old I am. I feel like I'm nowhere near ready to be an actual adult doing actual adult things (like worrying about insurance and playing Bingo with my geriatric friends) but sometimes I look around me and I don't feel like I fit in with the edge, either.

Just don't want to be 80 too soon...

Is there nothing easy these days?

The shopping around has begun. Ever since I moved out of the old (dearly missed) Berkeley apartment, I've been keeping note of things that I need before I move into a new place. For instance, my old bedspread didn't last long- the one I got before the start of my freshmen year bleached out at the top, and has already gone flat. I think I want new window hangings for my new room (or do I? are window hangings overdoing it? Will it make my room look too...Martha? will I even have windows?) And I want a bathroom that matches (as I've mentioned before.) With a cute...no, wait...sophisticated....no, too hoighty-toighty...a simple, yet stylish shower curtain. (I have been resisting the urge to buy those ones with ducks on them. I *love* rubber duckie shower curtains...) Anyway.

But what to do? Buy everything I need in a ready-made set? Like a bed-in-a-bag? Most of those are so...soulless. I want everything to fit together, seamlessly. But I want to make it look like I did something to earn this. I didn't just pull a bunch of well-matching (maybe *too* well-matching) articles out of a bag and suddenly turn my bed into a spotless model of home decor. Like in a catalogue. Or a cheesy hotel room. No! I want my own little spaces to say, "Look! We are very well put together! We are pleasant, and comfortable, and were assembled after hours of scanning bed & bath websites for good deals and walking around in various department stores and garage sales. We are a testament to our decorator's thrift, good eye for color, creative spirit, and, well...magic. Simple as that."

Is that so hard? I don't think I'm asking for much here, people.

:::sigh:::

More:

1. I do not know why, but my mother thinks soy will kill you. She is very bothered that so much everyday food contains soy. I have tried pointing out that millions of people on the planet consume soy everyday, and are wandering around leading completely healthy lives. I have also pointed out that too much of ANYTHING can kill you. My mother does not like when I bring these things up. Of all the things to fight about, really....

2. Southern California, I'd like to introduce you to a little lever on the left-hand side of your steering wheel that activates your turn signal. Every time you move your car, are stopped at an intersection and want to turn to the right or left, or want to change lanes, you are required to make use of this lever. That's just how it is. No complaining.

3. "Beverly Hills" is not such a great song. At least, nothing compared to anything on the Blue album- the album that we all scurried out to buy in 7th grade, the album that we put on to help us reminisce during our senior year of high school, the album that we listen to when we want something that we can all sing to because all of us know all the words. And I REALLY don't like how I'm not allowed to say that. Weezer can do no wrong. Weezer is untouchable.


That's it. For now.

Another list of things:

1. Just got back from houseboating on Lake Shasta for a week with the boyfriend's family. (Hi Boyfriend!!!) Super fun. And, after four years of fruitless attempts, I FINALLY wakeboarded. For like, 5 seconds total. My impression of me, wakeboarding:

Boat: Revs up, starts pulls slowly.
Me: Okay, relax. Sit in the chair. At the dinner table. Vizualize popping out of the water. Visualize. Breathe. Hold on. Grip okay? Good. Sit in the chair. Sit in the chair. GO!!!!
Boat: nnnrrrrrmmmmm...nnnnRRRRRMMMM....RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Me: Ohgodohgod, hold on! holdonholdon! sitinthechair!!! hold on! ohmygod I'm up! I'm up!! Haaahaaa! :::smack:::

The smack, of course, being the sound made by my face as it hits the water. I also have blistered lines across my palms that make it look as if I did something naughty in class and got rapped across the palms repeatedly for it. gah. why was this sport invented?

2. Have finally started to read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Am now constantly anxious that family members may start dying, randomly. Am heartened that there is someone crazier than me out there, and that he has made a stunning career for himself nonetheless. Do not plan on letting my parents out into the world where they could harm themselves in any way (car accident, meteorites...) for the next week. Am sure my father will deem this unacceptable, and until he learns to weild his height and weight advantage over me, I do not care.

3. Fear of moving on steadily taking hold of my being. I need to move into a new apartment. I need to figure out what new things I need for the kitchen, need a new comforter, want a bathroom set that matches. What if I get a roomate, and she's mean? What if I don't get a roomate, and I'm lonely? What if I can't afford food? What if I keep gaining weight because I can't run and I feel fat and self-conscious and have a hard time making friends? What if school is too much? What if my computer finally breaks down and I need to figure out how to buy a new one? What if my phone plan doesn't work out right and I go for months, unable to talk to my friends and my boyfriend, who is going to Hawaii where he may, in some sort of freak accident, get caught on some newly-formed remote volcanic island- just him and lava, the rage of nature- where he has to keep close to the water for days on end to avoid being burnt to a crisp by the lava flow of the newly forming island and goes for days without shelter while waiting for a rescue team to come and get him, surviving only off of his one water bottle of glacier ice gatorade and the occasional minnows that he catches while keeping close to shore?!?!

4. I NEED to switch back to decaf. Once and for all.