an elephant never forgets!

my head is fit to bursting with everything i want to say. this day, for some strange reason, has been one of those full days when there's never a quiet moment. i fear this post is going to be prodigiously long.

first, i woke to my alarm. on a saturday. maybe that's what started it. i had an appointment with the eye doctor at 10:00. lol, the fact that i had to set my alarm in the morning to get to an appointment at 10:00 is a clear indication of what kind of lifestyle i live. so. i go to the appointment, find that my eyes have gotten worse (of course), get a new prescription, then zoom outta there to get to work at 11:00. get to work and am busy for the day, which is a boon in disguise since the bookstore needs busy days like today. and i met an author named neal shusterman who wrote one of the funniest books i've read: The Schwa was Here. at first i didn't know who he was, only that he knew alex since he greeted her first. he had his four children with him, all of them dreadfully good-looking. then alex gave me an introduction and i felt surprisingly calm, even though the title of his book sort of ejected off my tongue rather fast. i didn't even say hello. just, "oh! the schwa was here." and he smiled and said that he was surprised i would have heard of it. then we had this really good discussion about books, authors, and things like that. i'm such a nerd, i know.

then they left, the store closed and i helped alex bring things down to the dungeons for storage. got in my car, and drove home. some old guy smoking a cigarette took the only empty parking space on the curb by my house, so i had to park a street away and walk to my front door. then he ended up leaving as i was walking by. unlocked the door, am greeted noisily by the birds and hear vacuuming upstairs. find that my room has been dusted and vacuumed for me, am grateful, then set to work balancing the checkbook and paying bills. finish that, and am in the middle of reorganizing my bookshelf (again, yes, i am a nerd) when i hear my mom calling from downstairs: "anak! will you vacuum the stairs?"

i loathe vacuuming the stairs. i hate it with the deepest part of my being. i think i've said it before, but i hate carpet. when i buy my first house, i will make sure there is no carpet. i don't care if the floor will be cold in the winter--rather that than carpet! well, that and linoleum (could you imagine an all linoleum house?).

ahem. i said yes only because she is my mother and carried my weight around for nine months so the least i could do is vacuum the stairs for her. i was so tired from work that it took me longer than usual. our stairs are divided into two small flights and a strange shaped landing. seven steps-landing-seven steps-livingroom. the very last step of the very last flight has a crevice between step and banister wherein a daddy-long legged spider usually stores his or her stash of dead ants. it is very disturbing to accidentally pass the nozel over that crevice and have a spider come scurrying out. in this case, the attachments weren't cooperating and i didn't even have the comfort of having carpet with no footprints.

explanation: there is one thing i like about vacuuming my room (of course, i didn't get to vacuum my room today, just the despised stairs). i start by my bookshelf, then to go to the right past my bed towards my desk. then to the right again, inside my closet by my other bookshelf and then behind the door. the threshold is the very last. when i am finished, the carpet is completely unmarked by a human, there are no footprints. this gives me a strange sort of satisfaction and i avoid stepping into my room for the rest of the afternoon just so that the carpet remains unmarked. i don't know why that is. i think it has something to do with looking at my room for the first time after it was finished being built. aside from the dead flies by the closet and by the window (died from paint fumes. isn't that horrible?) the room was completely empty and i noticed no footprints.

after the stairs, i went up to my room and apparently got sunburned by my desk lamp. of course i didn't realize this until my father asked me why my face was so red. "did you stay under the sun today?" to which i replied that i hadn't. "you look flushed" my mother admitted, so i told them how i'd been working at my desk and how the light from the desk lamp was rather warm. "oh, that was probably it," he says sagely, "that lamp emits uv rays." so now, the desk lamp that my father bought me from ikea is a household hazard. no one offered to buy me another or caution me against using it in the future. i'm not sure whether to believe it.

then we had breakfast for dinner--one of the best things in the world--and i had a cookie, tea, and pieces of a caramel apple afterwards. my stomach is very much contented. the birds took a bath in their drinking water, silly creatures.

then my mother--in a disturbingly business woman mood--tells me about her children's bookstore project that she plans to put into effect when she has retired from the corporate world. of course, i was the one to ask her about it in the first place. ahem, of course. i feel a little anxious about it and hope that she doesn't go through with the more eccentric details of her bookstore plan. after all, it should be about the books.

am made to do the dishes--which i don't mind as much as vacuuming. while i do this my father reads to me from the "publication of the Irvine Company that explores the elements of a balanced community". in a few words, they plan to pollute the avocado plantations from our house with estate homes and ranches.

what i love about my city:
1. the avocado plantations (the trees have been looking bushier lately. perhaps they are ripe)
2. the Lomas De Santiago Ridgeline (which is my own personal weathervane)
3. the deserted El Torro marine base (i once wrote an essay about it)
4. how funny it is that all the wide streets here have bike lanes.
5. the smell of ripe strawberries midsummer.
6. the vast tracts of undeveloped land
7. the weather
8. its proximity to the beach.
9. the parks
10. the windrows of eucalyptus trees

what i don't love about my city:
1. the smell of fertilizer in the winter (it really is disgusting)
2. the drivers (so rude!)
3. the irvine company wanting to build homes where they would be most invasive
4. the snobby rich families
5. how everyone runs in the morning
6. how some people wanted to demolish El Torro and build either a prison or airport
7. how some people consider others outside of our city inferior

needless to say, i want those avocado plantations left alone. besides, those lands are wild. we get coyotes howling late on summer nights and there are insects like you won't believe. not to mention the landfill and the rattlesnake reservoir. that's another thing i don't like about my city: the landfill. the bunnies and hawks are alright.

and having writ this, i am exhausted. there was so much more i wanted to mention (not that you would have wanted to read it anyway), but i still need to clean up before i collapse onto the mattress that is getting increasingly more uncomfortable for me to sleep on. its...ten years old, i think. i'm sure i left something out and will wake up annoying early tomorrow morning because i'll suddenly remember what it is.

but i'm...

*yawns*

...so tired.

goodnight.