I think I don't like nights where there is pressure to do certain things. I always feel like I am doing the wrong thing.

I told my dad that my windshield wiper broke because I am in a bad mood and he told me that my windshield wiper broke because my windshield had too much ice build up.

I cannot decide who's right.

I'm feeling all sorts of foul today. Yoga didn't make me feel better. Getting a haircut didn't make me feel better. I want today to be better.

I feel like you are being unreasonable.
You feel like I am being unreasonable.
We're all being unreasonable.
There are no compromises.

Things I purchased today:
Shampoo
Conditioner
Razors
Mascara
Bras
Leggings
Tights

Seriously body? How did the upper half get so much bigger without my waist getting much bigger? At some point I remember wanting this.

Repeatedly it comes back to expectations of people. I don't like to not have expectations of people. It means I don't care. Colin said he expects respect. But what is respect? What is it that people do if they respect me? Does respect mean: I will call you when I say I will? Or is it more about gutteral feelings for a person? When I respect people I call them when I say I will. I compromise. I do things that they want to do. I have conversations with them that I find interesting. I tell them about my life and ask about theirs. Some people do this for me. Some people don't. But I don't want to discard the people that don't. Especially not when they are okay sometimes. I get so upset when people are disappointing to me.

But it evens out. I become satisfied so quickly with people. I like everyone so much.

However this speaks enormously about Knox at the moment. I don't think I've ever looked forward to seeing this many people when returned to school before.

I realized I like to be wherever it is that I like more people, which sadly isn't St. Paul right now.

Not to say I don't like you, negative feelings are just overwhelming the good ones at times.

I made a hat. Watched a show about Everest and decided I want to climb it. Was glad I had a new hat to wear on my trip. Went to work out at 10:30PM. Realized that I will never be in good enough shape to make it to base camp.

I am so tired.

(What do you want from me?)
(I want you to wake me up.)

I hate how much I hate Larry. I don't want to be such a resentful human being. Sometimes I wonder if I would hate him so much if my mom introduced him to the situation differently. Instead of "This is Larry and he's now living in our house," it might have been preferable if she started with dinner or something. Sadly, I don't think this is the case. I don't think there is any case where I would like Larry better.

I hate the feeling of staying in bed all day. My muscles feel atrophyed.

Christmas got better.

We got hungry and the hunger forced us to breakfast and from there to presents. Then I went to my dad's and watching a movie by myself with a giant glass of wine and knitting.

I am disappointed in my mother. The one thing I really really wanted for Christmas was to eat the meals at normal times and have things run smoothly and they didn't, not a single meal. Every meal has been several hours late thus far. It's a matter if principle I think. It's not about being hungry and annoyed, but rather it's a sign of things being not well, her inability to function as a normal human being. I guess really what I was saying was, "I want you to be a functional being for two days for Christmas." But it didn't happen.

Who knew I had such nice neighbors?

I woke up on Christmas morning, approximately half an hour ago in a panic because I forgot to move my car for the daytime plowroute and getting my car towed on Christmas would not be very merry.

I asked my brother to help me scrape the snow off my car as I was not dressed, but by the time he got his winter clothes on I was ready to go. He helped scraped the snow off my car, but as he cannot yet drive, he is not very adept at doing so. Of course, my snow got stuck in the foot on snow on the ground and I asked him to get the shovel. He asked why I couldn't get the shovel. I said because I was driving. He then continued to stand there while I tried to drive my car over the snow. So I asked him to get the shovel several more times. He couldn't find the snow shovel, so he brought me a normal shovel. Like for dirt. Then he went inside and sat on the couch leaving me stranded, unable to move outside. Luckily three of my neighbors came and helped me. I went inside, expecting him to have seen the neighbors come help, but in reality he just gave up and went inside. This did not make me happy and I told him so. That did not make him happy and he stormed off and now he refuses to see me because I'm bossy and mean and lazy because I insisted on driving my car while trying to move it. How ridiculous right?

So basically Christmas is ruined. I should feel worse, but I don't, because I don't feel like I was in the wrong. I think he is really irrationally upset and when Kevin is upset he just leaves. For example: he has lived at my dad's house for the past five years or so because he is upset with my mother. I mean he's 15. When I was 15 I got upset over things like this. I apologized several times and he insisted I was lying. Whatever. I'm not going to let it concern me.

Christmas was so much better before the narcolepsy got bad.

My dad bought a llama for a family in a third world country. I think this is my favorite present.

Merry Christmas Eve!

I went to see Avatar with my dad tonight. It was my dad's pick. I thought it was really awful. I will try to articulate my reasoning now:
1. The culture of the blue people was a culmination of stereotypes of lots of oppressed groups of people around the world. They acted like Native Americans act in Pocahantas. I was expecting them to start singing about the colors of the wind. They had braids in their hair, which connected them with black people. Yet they were animal-like, which equates all of these cultures with animals.
2. They were stupid. Yes, I know they call the white boy stupid repeatedly, but he's only stupid when he acts like one of them, kind of like how I would come off as stupid if I pretended to be black. He's stupid because he's pretending to be one of them, which really, the horrible white guy in the movie is right, he can never be one of them.
3. They needed white boy to come in and save them. Their knowledge simply wasn't enough. Not only did they need white boy to lead them, he had sex with the princess all the while knowing that he was betraying them. Way to be a jackass.
4. The message of the movie was really obvious: don't destroy other cultures. But white boy's presence was culture destroying. He was not an observer. He took over.
I spent the whole movie being ashamed of being white and watching white culture make a movie that was so terribly offensive. I don't think this is the way to approach race issues.

On the bright side, there's a blizzard! It looks so Christmasy outside.

Stupid thoughts on the ride home:
People changed in college.
I am vastly different from who I was at some point in time in the past.
The people around me are different/the same.
Things that once would have made me happy don't anymore.
I have different expectations.
I am not satisfied as easily.
When I am satisfied it's more satisfying.
I want to have a good time.
What is a good time?
When is the last time I had one?
I have the eery feeling that everyone I know has thought these exact things before.
I don't want to hurt anyones feelings and make them think I don't like them, because I do, but individually.
I like to do activities all the time.
I like to talk to people one on one.
I like to talk to people one on one that I don't know wholly.
I like to do things with people I know really well.
Also people I don't know really well.
How do I state that I've changed and they've changed without making it sound bad?
Because it isn't bad.
It just happens.
What's going to happen?
This is stupid.
It's annoying to think in cliches.
Do I normally think in cliches?
I think I might.
Oh no Larry is at my house.
My mom decorated the table all Christmasy.
I really love my mom right now.
I love Roald Dahl. I want to read.
I am going to write a blog post.

I do like my mother sometimes. I really do. I made scones this afternoon and she gave me a Christmas present early and it was a Japanese Tea Set with cute little tea cups that I've been saying that I wanted forever. Then she poured me some amaretto and we sat around talking. It was nice.

Sometimes doing yoga makes me hate my body. I think that means I am doing it wrong.

Other times I appreciate the lines it makes. I was painting several years ago and I overheard by boss say, "You aren't painting lines." But we are very full of lines, in a soft sort of way.

Today we were doing twists on the floor and I looked at my arm and it was so strange because it looked like my arm, but I had a hard time identifying at such. This happens with my legs sometimes too.

My body keeps telling me I should not go to yoga and I should stay in bed and knit. So tempting.

I can't sleep and so I figured I should post about something. Before I went to sleep last night I distinctly thought, "I'm tired." Tired both physically and mentally. I then thought, "Good thing I can sleep for a reasonably long time tonight." I woke up at 6:30 feeling highly disappointed.

I also spent a long time thinking about caring. What is caring? If I don't care what someone does, does that mean that I don't care about them? If I have to actively deny that I don't care about something does that mean I actually do care about it since I have to think about whether or not I care? It's just an odd emotion.

I'm always really hungry when I wake up in the morning.

My mother and I do puzzles together. By do puzzles together I mean that we have a puzzle in progress in the family room and we work on it at different times until it is finished. I really like doing puzzles. It's totally engulfing.

I have a resigned sort of confusion towards people right now. I don't understand, but it's okay. Either way things will be alright, because I was already expecting that. Now I just don't know. I think I might just say, "I don't understand."

I used to think I was exceptionally good at understanding people. I no longer think this.

I had this teacher in elementary school who always told us that we were pushing her buttons. She had a lot of buttons. We pushed them most days. Her husband also worked at my elementary school. He got mad at his math class and threw a bookshelf. He got fired and she left too because she didn't want to work without her husband. They were Hmong. There were a lot of Hmong students at my school, so it probably seemed like a good idea to hire them except they were awful teachers. Her favorite student was a boy named John. We made jokes about them kissing, not realizing the implications of this.

Last night I was thinking about what kind of girl I was and decided that I am convenience girl. I am a convenient person. I am there and am something to do or seem like the right thing to do and then convenient time ends. I think this stems from my desire to always be around people and thus accept what they need.


Also: The Walker last night was really good. They had a Dan Graham exhibit which I enjoyed in the manner that I always enjoy things with lots of reflective surfaces (i.e. mirrors). I also really enjoy the Benches & Binoculars exhibit where they got lots of pieces together and hung them on a wall and places benches with binoculars at different angles in the room. Quasi MB- "In the Middle of its Story" was interesting from a poetic aspect. There were a lot of poems about the rain and showers and other things and then he drenched the paper he wrote the poems on. So if anyone has a chance to go to the Walker soon, I would recommend going.

People turn into computers. Computers turn into people. Fuck you, computer people, for not be good enough, satisfying enough. For most of you I make excuses: real people don't act like this. But other computer people make me angry. Fuck your presence that is not presense.

Fuck six week breaks where everyone turns into nothing, but mostly I decompose. When I went to visit Perpich I told John that I spend all day doing yoga and knitting and he said, "But what could be better than that?" I need something to wind down from. I'm winding down from a down into a deeper down and now I'm stuck. I want to go up up up.

Do I fail and become an inadequate person just because those around me don't live up to my expectations? Are my expectations too high and that's what makes me inadequate? I don't really know what others expect of me. I know what I expect of others and don't always live up to that.

What do you expect out of a person?

Oh teary Tasha.

It really doesn't matter how much I dislike Larry. It doesn't. I can deal with it. But he leaves my dog outside for long periods of time when it's zero degrees out and doesn't let him in when he barks. That is not acceptable. Treat people however the fuck you want to, but be nice to my dog.

Do you ever feel inadequate as a human being? I just feel like I am lacking something. No, I feel like other people feel like I am lacking something. I am lacking something.

Good, I'm glad to be continuing my streak of ruining friendships.

I really need to stop this. I do.

My brother posted the hateful comment on my blog. I know because he just used the word "trifling." He said kids at his school say "trif."

I think I might not be thinking.

This has always been a dilemma for me: Stay home alone or go somewhere and do something I don't want to be doing. Most of the time I do what I don't want to do, as I don't really like stay at home by myself. However, I've been trying to be more assertive lately and not do things I don't want to do. I will probably do what I usually do, eat dinner, sit at home for awhile, and then go out of lack of better things to do. The real solution here is to find better things to do. I am working on it.

This break is about balance. A lot of literal balancing, which I've gotten significantly better at and a lot of metaphorical balancing. I'm not sure what I'm metaphorically balancing, but I'm pretty sure it's something.

I got my first negative comment on my blog after having it for more than a year. I'm not quite sure what to think about it. I do whine quite a bit, they aren't entirely wrong. It's part of my charm. I also like a lot of things a lot. I think it might be split between those. I started this blog because Colin and Martin had blogs they wrote in a lot and I was in Italy and I was lonely and I wanted somewhere to post my poetry. Colin stopped posting poetry on his blog incase he wanted to publish it somewhere, but the large majority of the things I post on here are not of a publishable sort of quality. When I am happy and occupied I write less. When I am happy and occupied I talk to people more. However, there are many times in my life where I do not have the people around to talk to about things that I need to say and so I say them to my blog instead. I think it would be better to disregard what anonymous had said instead of responding to it with their own blogpost, but I never do what I really should do. Yes, I whine on my blog, but my life is happier than it appears on a computer screen. This is everytihng that is left over from my day, that wasn't able to come out of my mouth. If you don't like it, don't read it.

I just cried about everything. Everything everything everything. But now I'm okay.

My old dog, Caramel, made paths in the backyard. One path for all three gates as if she needed to explore the limits of our yard. Tanner just runs around like crazy, leaving paw prints everywhere. This is very descriptive of their personalities.

I should not bake things that need to be refrigerated for 3-4 hours or overnight. I have no patience. It's not even an impatience to eat as much as an impatience to see. But oh geeze I love baking.

Sleeping Beauty

It was as if life
had been one long
commulative yawn,
peaking at the middle
with a little squeal
of exhaustion
and she collapsed
into slumber
with few thoughts
as to what had been.

This week has seemed so long.

I don't want to wear clothes.

I accidentally woke up an hour too early this morning. While I was trying to go back to sleep, I heard noises coming from what sounded like the corner of my room. I could only imagine that some giant rodent was in my room. I don't actually dislike giant rodents, I just prefer knowing when they are there. The noise grew so loud, eventually I went to look and saw something outside my window. At first it looked like two paws of a larger animal, but then a little bird head popped up and I realized that three little birds were sitting on my windowsill and the noise I heard was them fluttering and bumping against the glass.

It's nice to see animals in winter.

Okay okay okay.
I know what I want all right?
Time is always the problem.

I think perhaps everyone has the same problems.

You had problems and I had problems because of the problems your problems caused me which cause problems with the problems that other people have and thus we all have the same problems.

I want to be in one of those places where I really love everyone. It's not that I don't, it's that everyone is making me really nervous right now.

I've noticed that when people workout, they don't look at other people as much as they look at themselves. Secretely, we're all making sexy eyes at the mirror.

I hear it's going to snow on Tuesday. My first thoughts was, "However will I get to yoga class?" I hope it doesn't start until 11:45 when I get home. It's time for snowboots.

No one looks as good naked as they should. The really skinny girls are full of bones. The old women are saggy. Everyone else has odd areas of accumulated fat.

Except then I thought about most of the people I've seen naked in an intimate setting and I have found most of their bodies to look better naked than anyone should ever look.

Thinking about bodies always makes me lonely.

I'm going to go run.

I really need to get out of bed.

Every weekend I go see really wonderful things and fall in love with the people in them. Really deeply in love. The nice thing about music is that I can listen to it at home as well.

Haircut

When I came home I found my mother cooking chowder and was offered a slice of homemaid apple pie. It seemed so normal. Except it was 2:30 in the morning.

Yesterday:
Sniffly
runny nose, sneezing
Today:
Sore throat

Uh oh.

In order to jump up somewhere my cat stands on his hindlegs to gauge the height and then steps back and jumps and thus rarely fails unless his fat brings him down, which due to his size, happens occasionally.

I feel awful tonight, just awful.

After years of careful analysis
I've come to the conclusion that nouns
are the problem.
Proper nouns especially.
To say:
I tried to sit down on the chair
but it fell out from beneath me
and I hit the floor.
To say:
I tried to sit down on the -
but it fell out from beneath me
and I hit the-
It would be melodramatic to say
I lost you
but to say
I lost -

Oh geeze my muscles are sore.

Things found under bed:

Tea ball
Box of bandaids
Spool of thread
Red solo cup
More socks
Anthology of short stories by Alice Adams
Advice from the Happy Hippotamus by Cloud Cult
Skein of blue yarn
Cardigan knitting pattern
Brochure for the Florence 2008 program
Headband
Tye-dyed t-shirt
"Egmont" by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Box containing flashcards and bottle opener
Small German-English dictionary
"Life Before Man" by Margaret Atwood
Poorly knit hat
Condom wrapper
"Immensee" by Theodor Storm
"Bergkristall" by Adalbert Stifter
A clothes hanger
Post-it notes

Interesting things I have found while cleaning my room:

4 partially consumed wine bottles
High school year book
High Senior Thespian Society sweater shirt
500000000 knitting needles
600000000 partially used skeins of yarn
1 partially consumed bottle of margarita mix, which means we have to make guacamole and eat tacos soon.
500 badly knit hats
700 socks
Love letters.