February 2009 – Page 5 – The only certainty is bad grammar

fan-tastic

Published: February 9, 2009 / Updated: February 11, 2009 Crystal humor, im cool

if i ever actually meet my friend SCVegan, i’m pretty sure i’d have to fall in love with him on the spot.

the other day, he read all my blog posts dating back to early november – an accomplishment in and of itself — and THEN he left me a comment.

on nearly every.single.post.

the dude managed to blow-up my crackberry for about three hours as i continued to get little notifications alerting me to new comments. i just looked back through my email and it seems he commented about 40 times.

40 TIMES’!

I don’t even know what he looks like. And I’m only about 85 percent sure that he, is an umm, a he. As far as I can tell he found my blog during that whole vegan thing i did, decided i didn’t suck and has been a fan ever since. We’ve chated a few times online and whatnot, and there was a drunk email incident in there somewhere, but other than that, we just communicate via my blog. once, when he hadn’t commented for awhile, my mom actually asked about him. and i find myself awaiting his thoughts on my posts like im 8 years old again and Ray Johnson is deciding if he will circle “yes” or”maybe” on that note i passed his way. and then, when SCVegan does comment, they’re usually so brilliant that i share them with my friends while laughing.

and it’s nice to have fans. or fan. because even if he’s the only one out there reading this thing, at least i know i don’t suck.

my friend april is kind of like a 3-d version of SCVegan. she’s my fan in real life. and when i feeling like maybe im not so good at navigating the world, she always comes through and yells “CRYSTAL DON’T GIVE UP!” and i’d like to think i do the same for her.

and when we first became each others fans, it was all “hey, don’t worry, people at college will like you” and now it’s more “don’t worry, you’ll find a way to pay all your bills this month” so it goes. we stick it out. together.

and one time she came to visit at Western Illinois University when i was an undergrad there and we went to a party so i could point out the boy i was pretty much in love with, but who had been treating me like crap pretty much since i had met his drunk-behind at a party the second week of my sophomore year.

april took one look at him and said “i do believe that is the ugliest guy you’ve ever made out with. you can do SO much better” and even if i had know those things before then, it took my friend, a true crystal fan, to point them out. and i dropped him like a penny in the street and moved on with my life.

well, i eventually moved on my life. people, im not a saint. but without april there to point me toward bigger and better boys, i might have been stuck with him still. just living my life, thinking that i couldn’t do any better.

lucky for me i had fans. or at least fan.

relatively small problems

Published: February 7, 2009 / Updated: February 7, 2009 Crystal long

my aunt and uncle sent me some money in the mail today, which obviously proves God exists.

let me sum up how broke i am — I’ve been telling people I had $12 to last until Friday, Feb. 13 because I figured if i told people that i only had $2.33 – which is what i DID have – even MORE people would tell me to leave journalism. and i do not need ANY more people to tell me that im on a sinking ship. and i guess part of it was my own fault, because you know, i like to pay my rent, my car payment and eat, so i suppose i did “blow” my money on those things.

irregardless, i was pretty worried about having just $2.33, seeing as how there was a mighty good chance i would need to drive to work and back for the next five days and what not, and gas isn’t free. my plan was to live on generic Cheetos and the rest of the chocolate chip cookies i bought that tasted like cardboard with fake chocolate chips in them and tap water for the next six days and hope that a 1/2 tank of gas would last the week. and after a good cry in my car and then another in my bedroom closet i pulled myself together and proceeded to fake that i had everything under control with a strong sigh.

i had kind of figured id be in this position seeing as how the bills are the most reliable things in my life, but that didn’t stop me from writing another $5 check to God last week at church. and i was semi-considering writing a $1 check tomorrow, but was worried that having a bank account balance of $1.33 was a little on the risky side. after i spent my saturday morning weighing the pros and cons of this, i decided i was STARVING enough to each another generic Cheeto, and went downstairs to the kitchen. on the way, i looked through the mail so i could see all my lovely medical bills.

and there it was.

in all it’s golden-envelope glory. the letter from my aunt and uncle was just sitting there on the dining room table, like it wasn’t the MOST amazing thing to happen to me in the last five months. and inside was enough cash to get me through my week. the sight of it sucked my breath right out of my lungs and out the window. and my eyes teared up because i was so moved, and relieved, and grateful to my aunt and uncle, and happy, and it felt like God had come down through my ceiling and pulled 18 pounds off my shoulders.

and sometimes i do doubt that God will have the time to deal with my relatively small problems. alas, he did though. he came through. and i was so happy.

i remember another time i knew god existed. it was when my friend april was arrested on the side of highway somewhere in the middle of the 7,692 cornfields that make up southern Illinois. she had unknowingly been driving without a license because a few months prior she was driving some teen-age boy’s car and got pulled over and the teen-age boy didn’t have insurance. and even though a judge told her everything was cleared up, due to a clerical error her license was suspended after the incident. only nobody told her, so here she was driving all over southern illinois illegally for months.

and she had almost been pulled over a few weeks before that amongst those same cornfields because she was going like 20 miles per hour over the limit on her way to a very important place. but, just before she would have sped past the cop hidden around a corner, someone pulled in front of her and slowed her down to legal speeds. thereby avoiding the time it would have taken for her to be arrested.

see, we were on our way to my brother’s house because he had threatened to kill himself that night. and neither of us had much experience with suicide, but we were pretty freaked out and decided this was one of those times it was better to be safe than to risk death and whatnot.

and when we got there, my brother had already taken WAY more boxes of cold medicine than any stores should even carry, much less allow one person to walk out with. ( in the stores’ defense, i believe my brother stole the medicine. but STILL). and so, shortly after we got there and saw my brother’s eyes glazed over, we realized he was not so much alert as he was slowly fading away. and we called 911 so medical professionals could save his life — which they did. thank. GOD.

and i really do believe that if that cop had pulled her over on the way there, we would have been late for the only thing in my entire life that i have actually needed to be on time for.

and i also really do believe that God was the reason she didn’t get pulled over. and maybe it was even Him in that car in front of us that slowed us down, so that april wouldn’t be arrested and instead we could get to my brother on time. because even though i sometimes doubt that God has time to deal with my relatively small problems, he always comes through. and that makes me so happy.

i’ll stop writing about money when i finally get some

February 5, 2009 Crystal humor, sh*tty things that happen to me, short

the thing about being broke that nobody ever tells you is that it makes it really, really hard to do the right thing.

today i got one of those headaches that feels like i have a blue and green mass growing above my left eye. and i tried to take some tylenol, which my lovely co-worker gave me for free, but that crap didn’t do a darn thing to ease my pain. i knew when i took it though that the only thing that was going to work was advil. except i didn’t have any freaking advil.

so i was going to try and ignore the problem by relying on my old stand-by – praying that God and/or magic will fix it. however, neither came through for me today, so i had to drive over to wal-greens and buy some stupid advil.

and im ashamed to admit this, but for the first time in my life the thought of stealing the medicine actually crossed my mind. i just did NOT have the $3.98 it was going to cost me for the generic ibuprofen. i mean i had it, but it had already been allocated for gas money.

of course, i did not steal the medicine. but the thought fluttered over my brain and past what felt like a blue and green mass above my left eye for at least a solid half of a second.

and my 12-year-old self, who never got headaches that felt like a blue and green mass was growing above her left eye, and who never had to understand money, would have never, for even a half a second, ever considered stealing something. in fact, one time, when i was about 12, i walked to the dominick’s grocery down the street from my house with some friends. and they decided to each steal one grape from the produce bins, and i refused to partake. PEOPLE I WOULDN’T EVEN STEAL A GRAPE.

now look at my moral-less self. im one step away from stealing drugs. not illegal drugs, mind you. but those can’t be too far off.