What does that MEAN?!?!

Last night, I had a dream where I quite literally had to jump ship and I've been thinking about it all day.

I was on a big ship, kind of like I was in Titanic, but not ON Titanic...it was more like a Carnival Cruise ship. It was evening, it was dark-ish and there was something wrong with the ship that caused it to go full speed ahead and even though there was nothing out ahead of the ship but open ocean, people were jumping off the back into the wake as though that was clearly the safest thing to do. They're treading water and yelling at me, "Dana! You HAVE TO JUMP! JUST JUMP! QUICKLY!!" and I'm yelling back, "I HAVE TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE ELSE IS OFF THE SHIP" so I do a lap around the top deck and there's no one else there so I go to the back of the ship and the last thing I remember is standing on the back, looking at the ocean, littered with people who are safe in the water, telling me to jump, and realizing that I'm actually gonna have to do this. I have to jump.

And then, I woke up.

Four words ...... WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

Irritation on top of irritation followed by irritation

I have to start this by saying this whole thing I'm about to complain about is something I shouldn't even be whining about because it starts with me taking for granted that my mom usually does at least part of my laundry for me. But I'm gonna complain anyway because I'm mad.

I started a big load of laundry at home and put it in the dryer before I left for the afternoon, assuming that because it happens every. other. time., that my mom would at least take my clothes out when the dryer buzzed and then I would fold them when I came back to get them later. So I go down to get my clothes when I get home again, hours after putting them in the dryer, and everything is still wet. Annoyed. It's already 7 and after being out all day, I just wanna get back to my apartment, like immediately. It's just what I want. So, I put the clothes back in, start it up again and go to the Chinese restaurant to get myself dinner since obviously, I have another hour to wait at home before I can get my clothes. Tonight, the food was not good. It was like... you know you're gonna get sick as you eat it... so I stopped eating and threw it out. Annoyed again. Finally, I hear the buzz of the dryer and go back downstairs to get my stuff. IT IS STILL WET. WHY??? WHY TONIGHT?? Why right now when all I wanna do is go home? WHY??? Oh, because the belt on the drum snapped and is therefore unfixable tonight. FanFREAKINGtastic.

The thing that makes me really mad is that I have to hang up all my clothes at 8 at night on the clothesline in the basement and ergo cannot take them home and hang them up in my closet in rainbow order like I do EVERY Sunday night and feel ready for the week. Instead, I have to go back to the house tomorrow at 4:30 when cheerleading is over and take them down and fold them and probably let Racer out because he'll have to go and that will take an extra 10 minutes and then bring my clothes home and scramble to put them away and do everything else I need to do before the plans I have at night and I don't like that. I hate having to scramble.

Here's where I don't have a right to complain but that is not going to stop me. ALL of this could have been avoided if my mom had just checked the dryer when she came home like she does every. single. other. time I do laundry at home. She would have checked them, felt they were still wet, tried them again, realized something was wrong with the dryer and probably hung them up on the line hours before I did it and they probably would have been dry enough for me to take home tonight. It's not that I expect her to do it FOR me so that I don't have to, it's that if someone else had checked earlier, it all could have been avoided and I couldn't be that person because I wasn't there. If I had been, I WOULD have done it myself.

SO irritated and I don't care if it's wrong.

Maybe it only happens in the movies...

Someday, I would love to come home from somewhere and have someone waiting for me at my apartment...sitting on the stairs, just waiting for me to come home. I very rarely get surprised in general and the times that someone really pulled one over on me, it was amazing. I wish it happened more. I wish it would happen like that. Maybe it's an unrealistic hope, like something out of a movie, but a girl can dream.

"Did you hear a plane crashed into the World Trade Center?"

When I was junior in high school, third period English had just started, the bell had just rung, when Matt Dietz said aloud to my class - Did you hear a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center? Half the class looked at him in disgust... Dude, that's not funny. Why in the hell would you say that? Not five minutes later, the principal came over the loudspeaker and said "Stop what you're doing, and put on the TV in your classroom. If students need to make phone calls, let them."

It would be a lie to say the rest of the day was a blur, I remember every, single second of it. I remember watching the news in 3rd period as the second plane hit and not knowing if it was a new plane hitting or a replay of the first plane. I remember panicking about where my dad was that day because I knew sometimes he went to New York for deliveries and finally talking to my mom and her saying, "Dana, he's okay. He's not there." - I remember sitting in the dark, in Mr. Patrina's room, my 4th period AP U.S. History class combining with another, to watch as the Towers fell. I remember sitting next to Cara and her whispering to me that she was scared about the Sears Tower in Chicago because that's where her family was. I remember answering a room phone because my teacher wasn't there to a request for another kid in my class to go to the office immediately. His dad made it out alive. I remember being afraid to go outside for lunch that day.

Even after 9 years, there's not a single second of that day that isn't scorched into my brain. I spent most of today watching 9/11 documentaries on the History Channel, more out of respect because I don't know how else to honor that day. It seems silly to me that I feel like I'm doing something in honor of it and all I'm doing is watching TV but I've been thinking about it all day long. How can I ever complain about anything after remembering that day?

I can't believe I ever let it get like that

WHO IS THAT???? Lately, as I've lost more and more weight, I've been looking at pictures of me from college, mostly senior year and I truly don't recognize myself. It makes me sad. I really do think of college as one of the happiest times in my life but I look at myself in these pictures and think, "How could I have been happy looking like that?" I'm not doing this to show off. I don't really consider it something that deserves congratulations...it feels more like.. a wrong that I righted. It's embarrassing. I just can't believe the difference. That doesn't even look like me. Who IS that girl? She's smiling, she's surrounded by people, but she can't really be happy in that body, that face. After all this work, allllll those pounds, I'm happy now - as an ex-fatty.

I don't think it's a good thing when...

--My dentist calls me juicy. That is bad. It's a very polite way of saying, "Damn, girl. You drool a LOT."

"Cujo" is on tv tonight. Part of me is wondering if it's really as scary as I've heard it is so I'm recording it but I'm by myself tonight so I'm thinking it's probably not the best idea to try and watch it alone. I think I'd watch a lot more scary movies if there was someone next to me for me to burrow into when things got rough.

There are pregnant people EVERYWHERE. Seriously, you're taking over the world.

As the novocaine is wearing off and half of my mouth is pins and needles, I'm wondering what it would be like to kiss when your mouth feels this way. I kinda feel like it might be a little sloppy because you can't necessarily feel what you're doing but I also think it'd be kind of awesome.

I'm disappointed in the Red Sox. It doesn't seem like they've been trying very hard lately and that pisses me off. I would LOVE to know how many bases-loaded walks they've given out between Sunday, Monday and Tuesday's games. It's gotta be close to, if not more than, ten. Fight for it, you bastards. This is not impossible. It's highly unlikely, yes, but so was coming back down 3 games to the Yankees in 2004. I would say this is less impossible than that. At least LOOK like you're trying.

There is no flow to this at all. That only slightly bothers me tonight. I turned the edit button in my brain off... well the 'edit for content" button at least.

At least I can make a damn good pie.

Sometimes, I feel like I could count on one hand the things I do really well.

I know, realistically, that this isn't the case but there's no accounting for feelings or their sometimes unknown origins. One thing that is always among those things I count myself good at is making apple pie. So today, that's what I did. And yes, it is delicious.