Whee.

I left home at 6 am to get to my 8 am class.
I was late, but it was okay because History of Consciousness has been cancelled. They sent emails to our school accounts but mine isn't functional and I haven't got the internet anyway. Now I have 10 units instead of 15, and trying to add anything is hard because everything is
A) Full
B) on a day I don't have to bus to Santa Cruz
C) Too late in the day for me to get home before 10
D) scheduled at the same time as my remaining 2 classes
E) Impossible to add because I've missed the entrance exam
or
F) Dead boring.

So I guess I am going to sign up for philosophy or poetry, but someday I will take an art class. (all art classes were A or D)

In conclusion: I need a laptop and I need a car.
This is a phenomenal amount of effort- and I haven't attended a single class.

Alright.

Someone is not having a good Welcome Week. Someone with zero planning skills and a new out of town address and no car. Someone with zero planning skills hasn't got a major and signed up for classes using absolutely no criteria, apparently. History of Consciousness? It has history right in the title! And linguistics because one time in community college a girl said she'd taken and liked it.

And has there ever been a smaller college town than Santa Cruz? I can walk across it in an hour and a half. At one point I accidentally walked into the wilderness that is conveniently located down town. My first class is still 2 days away, I don't know why.

Moving

I always sort things into good and useless, I think it's called "wheat from the chaff" but I am not sure because like 98 percent of Americans, I am not a farmer. Anyway, I find this process very satisfying and orderly. These are my attractive coworkers, and these are my unattractive coworkers, and these are the bills that are shabby and going to the bank and these are the crisp ones to give as change, and that is the BART rider I would save if the train was on fire, and these are the destinations I would rather go to Iceland than and these are the destinations I would rather go to than Iceland.

It is really more satisfying than I expected to sort my things into things I am bringing to college and things I am abandoning to the attic. Sitting in my bedroom filled with odds and ends and old projects and seasonal clothes and just detritus of modern life is so sad, but standing in the spare room filled with those items that are essential or wonderful and just relevant to my new life is very satisfying. But my mattress is in the old broken things room and the catbox is in the new life room, so one guess where I still hang out.

Things

I was reading The Simple Dollar, which is a blog written by a man who is not very funny, but I don't mind because I am having the first biologically motivated (as opposed to deadline motivated) all-nighter of my life. Anyway, he says that as a cleansing excercise he examined every item in his office and got rid of it if it didn't truly bring value to his life.

And obviously I have had detachment phases in my life but lifestyle transitions like I am in right now are apparently conducive to hoarding. I got into a fight with Nick about an apron. Because it is my apron, and he has an identical one that he refuses to use because he has gotten it dirty and wants to look professional but not badly enough to actually clean his apron. Further discussion revealed that he believes laundering does not clean garments.

Then I went to Wellsfargo.com and checked that my balance was comfortably high, and then I went to amazon.com and bought only things that will truly bring value to my life, as I have somehow used up or lost all but 4 pairs of panties and can not do laundry every 3 days in Santa Cruz because I hate the laundromat so very much and also will be too busy. Also I bought a jacket that will truly bring value to my life and would bring even more value to my life if I had a massive pair of black sunglasses with brown frames, but I have a pair of massive blue sunglasses with silver frames and they will have to do, because I am poor.

Then I looked at many items in my room to decide whether they truly add value to my life and because of the hoarding mentality every item seems vital. Well, not my books, since the internet came into its own (instead of being composed of poorly punctuated teal text in comic sans, with grey buttons and page update times and visitor counters and moving clip art, oh it was sad.) books are much, much less essential. Are books designed for the juvenile mind? Am I just reading the wrong ones? I am so spoiled by the internet that at the library I will pick up a book and try to read it but I will want more detail about something and want to wikipedia it, or I will be done thinking about oppression or welfare. I want to have conclusions up front and then research them myself.

The pacing of a book is so slow! And in nonfiction books the writers really end up talking down to their audience and sounding patronizing, with their careful interpretation and presentation of endless background information. Very nice hypocrisy Naiomi Watts, stating that women's issues should not be trivialized and then having incredibly one dimensional rhetoric, rivaling any 8th grader's persuasive essay. Perhaps I am reading a book about Wales because I have heard of Wales, not because I have come out of a coma with no memory of my prior life and headed to the library to get my bearings. Maybe if you have to mention the continent and climate and ethnicity you could work it in more subtly.

I am paranoid about being late to my grocery store job so I go to Alameda a little early and sit in the library for 15 or 20 minutes and then head over to the shop, but it's not a very good plan, obviously. The other day I found the upstairs so I guess I can read amgazines, but actually those also assume that the reader is a new transplant to the civilization and has not heard of eggs, or shampoo, or knitting.

The conclusion I take from all of this is that people are not very talented, and writing is too hard for them, and events go by too fast for them to think of timely responses. Or possibly my soul is dead or something and I can't identify with humanity.

School

When I was little I decided not to have children, because there is so much else to be done, but having met people and parents and children I have revised my plan because I think I would be insanely good at parenting.

What I'm trying to say is my Dad is going to homeschool my brother. And I won't be here to help and I know I don't have a very normally structured family but I am the tiniest bit convinced that I was (unknowingly) the anchor that was keeping us from disintegrating (it's a special anchor, okay?) into something unrecognizable and chaotic. So in my last 2 weeks here I am trying really hard to get this one big thing, the homeschooling, into gear, because someone has to. It is mid-September but the homeschooling has yet to begin. Mid September!

To my way of thinking, this homeschool has got to be maximally structured! With deadlines and assignments and curricula and reports! Because as lazy as I am, that child is four times lazier. For example: at work I use a little bucket when I'm mopping instead of rolling the big smelly wringer bucket; Nick doesn't work.

I am a first year university student so this little issue doesn't involve me at all really, but that doesn't stop me from doing my little research and compilation and nagging.
Me: It's September now. School time! Go!
Dad: First we're working to get you settled, then we'll figure things out with Nick.
Me: What are you doing to get me settled?
Dad: I've... delegated that to your mom.

When I was researching educative models I found the multiple intelligences, which my middle school academy was obsessed with. I was always visual but at the moment (by which I mean for the last few years) I feel very, very logical. Comparatively speaking.

Do I have to?

The more I think about what I like the less college seems like a good idea. Degree, yes, proper life on hold for FOUR YEARS (Longer than I have spent on anything in my life!), no. I think that I would like to spend all of my young adulthood working job after entry level job, trying everything and being an insider at everything! The advantage of college is the whole future earnings thing and also learning a thousand things, neither of which is the specialty of a certain liberal arts college.

I think what I'm trying to say is I have enough money to fly to Wales, and back. And presumably stay somewhere unless Wales prices things higher than America does. And also maybe get coffee and a postcard. Or whatever. It's also one quarter's tuition. Oh my God, Wales. And Welsh people! With the Welsh voices!!!!

What I am trying not to say is that today at work I saw the back of someone's head, and it looked like the headback of someone I knew once, someone rather attractive but nonetheless quite rude. It probably wasn't him, but if it was at least I look good in my workshirt, which is green with orange writing, and my hair looked good and I was wearing my favorite pants, not khaki pants, and actually come to think of it even my shoes were cute, so I think I'm okay. I wonder why all my cuteness came together today, and also why only crazy people asked me out:

Crazy man: Hey! *something else but I have my headphones on* real pretty today.
Me: Polite smile.
Crazy man: Naw, I'm not SCARY!
Me: No, of course n-
Crazy man: It's cause I'm not FROM here!
At that point I gave up and turned down my song.
Me: Wow. Really.
Crazy man: I mean I'm not FROM here.
Me: Oh, where are you from?
Crazy man: Pennsylvania. Do you like snow?
Me: Uh, no, it's pretty but I wouldn't want to shovel a walk or anything.
Crazy man: Well, I'd have you shovelin my walk! No, I'm just playin. Ima catch the bus and see a MOVIE! Gonna go to the MOVIES! You catchin the bus? What's your name?
Me: Uh, that's not important.

And I gave up again and put the volume up. But if he had had a Welsh voice, like crazy men in Wales presumably do, it would have been excellent.