The only certainty is bad grammar

i remember Feb. 14, 1993 vividly. i wore pink tights and a red shirt and a red sweater and a pink plaid skirt and because it was valentine’s day — it totally matched. i remember it was a sunday. i remember thinking i NEEDED tradition and sans a school party (with its mass-produced perforated cards and cheap red suckers) the clothes were the best i could to. i remember going to the Addison Public Library and thinking wishing i looked totally AWESOME in my outfit as i browsed the young adult paperback book rack. i remember knowing (in my valentine’s day appropriate heart of hearts) that my outfit totally didn’t match. i remember wishing it were a school day so i could give SOMEONE a freaking mass-produced perforated card.

i think it was the first valentine’s day that didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

valentine’s day eve 2008: i’m about to go to sleep in my white pajama pants, with red and pink stripes and a red tank top, because it’s a holiday and i NEED tradition. and YES, we got a mass-produced perforated card at our company pep rally today ( i know i thought we left the pep rallies in high school too), but the company love just felt so one-dimensional. i need more. 

and yes, i do sort of kind of like this one boy, but our relationship would be classified as ‘it’s complicated’ on facebook, if i was the kind of girl who updated that sort of thing. so it’s not like he and i will be getting married any time soon. despite that, this boy and i WERE supposed to see each other tomorrow (on this stupid holiday) but because Snow hates me, Snow ruined our plans.

and he (the boy, not my mortal enemy Snow) even got me a card (from what i understand it wasn’t even perforated) and i REALLY wanted to read it in person, but instead i had to settle for him reading it to me over a bad connection between my verizon phone and his u.s. cellular field phone.

so this year it looks like i’ll be spending this stupid holiday with Laundry Detergent, Dish Soap( and if i feel like donating $38 to our state highways) the Wisconsin DMV.

it’s cool. whatever. i’ll probably just wear pink or something.

UPDATE: for the two of you who might notice, I’m not sure why this is posting in times new roman font, but im tired, so i’ll address it in the morning. if any of you wordpress* know-it-alls (meant in a good way) can tell me how to change that, let me know. * fixed it. 

*note: wordpress spell check doesn’t recognize wordpress. and it’s not a capitalization issue. i checked.

So, I went home this weekend. Super fun, but driving back yesterday in -347 degree(ish) temperatures kind of sucked. I had to let my car warm up for like 2 hours(ish) before the heat would even turn on. That’s right! the heat wouldn’t even TURN ON in my car for about 2 hours and then it still blew out cold air. Jebus. (Note: just in case my sarcasm was lost in print, the heat actually turned on in like 20 minutes and it pretty much blew out warm air at that point and the temperature was actually about -1 degree.)

It’s about three hours from my mom’s house to my apartment and I came back in morning because I didn’t have to work until noon. I had planned to wake up at at the last minute (8 a.m.) and then drive back and take a shower in my apartment. but instead, I had togot to drive my little sister to school. and she WAS SO EXCITED about it, that she disregard the fact that she didn’t have to be to school until 8 and woke up at 6 a.m. — then she stared at me until i woke up too. I got up, got all my stuff together and realized we still had an hour to kill, so i defied my sister and went back to sleep.

Eventually, i dropped her at school and then hit the road back to oshkosh. I was really tired, so I stopped at a McDonald’s drive through and got as much unhealthy food as I could for $5, figuring that would wake me up. it didn’t. Then about an hour later, I stopped at a gas station figuring the cold air and the bathroom break would wake me up. it didn’t. I tried listening to a variety of music, but country and pop and even christian music all just put me to sleep. I also a put in a book on tape, but the soothing sound of someone reading made me want to get tucked in. Don’t fret though, i made it to my apartment awake and sans any accidents. and i carried all my crap up to the second floor and unlocked my door and a weird thing happened — even though I had just GONE HOME, I was so happy TO BE HOME.

I haven’t really been thinking of my apartment as home until now. It’s been more a place where I unpack after going to another home every weekend. I’m thinking having a bed is helping with that whole home feeling , but it’s more than that. The place is starting to smell like me. and there is a spot for all my stuff. and the bathroom has definitely started to reflect me. (both literally and figuratively.)

one of the hardest parts of a move is that you give up your home. and your home is the one thing that can make you feel OK at the end of a long crappy day. and when you first move, most days are long and crappy but you don’t get to feel ok, because the place you go to hang your hat isn’t really your home. your home is that place you left, say, in South Dakota.

I’m thinking I’m going to be ok in America’s Dairyland now though, because I can finally go home at the end of each day. 

I didn’t have to go to work until noon today (don’t worry, I worked late tonight) so i stayed up late to watch the returns and then got up early to find out what the heck happened in California. Then, around 10 a.m. I started getting ready for my lovely job. Because I’m an idiotaddicted to my phone I brought it in the bathroom and set in on the medicine cabinet while I took a shower (in my defence work COULD have called with some sort of editing emergency). 

well, work never called, but the steam from my shower did get into my phone — which rebelled against getting wet by deciding to stop picking up my voice. I could hear everything clear as day, but nobody could hear me. I felt like a screaming ghost. I found this out first calling my friend, who couldn’t hear me, then calling my friend six more times, then calling my sister. She said ‘crystal, I can’t hear you,’ and hung up, without any concern for my situation. and YES, she’s only 8, but a little sympathy would have been nice.

FRIK!!

I have a full-blown addiction to my phone, so I freaked out. to

I immediately drove to the Verizon store, while visions of spending $150 on a new phone danced in my head fighting with the visions of my bank account balance. 

I stormed in to the store, slammed my phone on the counter and said ‘you probably can’t fix it, but it’s broken.’ I kind of left out the part about probable water damage, which my warranty doesn’t cover.

For some reason, every person who works at a cell phone store is a cute guys with too much ax body spray. This person was no exception. He tried to calm me down by asking how long my phone had been acting up.

‘Five minutes. I brought it in right away because I’m crazy,’ I calmly said back. I think he thought i was joking.

He explained that the microphone probably just was broken and he just needed to check my account. sigh. my account is classified as “employee” because my mom (who awesomely pays my bill each month) is the holder and she works for Verizon. Because Verizon probably doesn’t want employees giving themselves free ring-tones and extra minutes, only “special” employees can access employee accounts. This guy was not special.

But he was nice. So he said he could replace my phone for free anyway. THAT’S RIGHT! THEY REPLACED IT FREE’ and now I have a crush on Verizon and everyone should go get a verizon phone. right now. tell them i sent you.

i got my new phone, went to work, did some reporting, covered an event and the made my next mistake of the day. I came back to the office and realized 20 minutes later that I had left my notebook at the event. 

FRIK AGAIN!

I needed this notebook. I mean, they tell me it’s not ethical to make up quotes for stories, so without the notebook I was either going to be totally unethical or not have a story. I ran to tell the copy desk boys that I had to go back and get my notebook. They laughed at me. I didn’t laugh with them.

I ran to my car, attempting not kill myself by falling on black ice. I sped over to where the event was and tried to not to kill myself by spinning out on black ice. I ran through the building, up the stairs and down the hall. then i realized my calves are SUPER out of shape. I turned the corner. and there it was. covered in an angelic light, my yellow notebook was sitting on the table. I said a ‘thank you God’ prayer, grabbed it and ran back to the office and filed my story.

In conclusion, some notes to self: 1. don’t take your cell phone into bathrooms under any circumstances (and if you do, don’t tell anyone that it broke because of water damage). 2. always remember your notebook.