I am so sadly not on top of any shit. I think my friend just called me because her friend who works for the Tyra Banks show needs...someone...for...something...and it has something to do with me.

Every time I try to start writing a post it winds up making no sense and I have to delete it. This one is no different, except it's obviously not deleted.

I learned how to knit a few weeks ago and it turns out I'm really good at it. I also turned 22. And lost the ability to write anything sense-making.

I got a kitten!! And then I got another kitten!! That makes TWO kittens!!!

They are beyond adorable. They're brother and sister, both all black. Their names are Esme and Jack and I love them more than I could ever love any child. I'd post a picture, but they're impossible to photograph because they never hold still.

Seriously though. Kittens.

I guesssssss it's time for an update. So here's an update. (Like you care.*)

1. Am working at Kari's Cafe (at least she doesn't spell cafe with a K, okay?!) in Maplewood. It's actually really wonderful. Kari is awesome, I can wear whatever I want, if people are rude to me I am allowed to tell them to fuck off, and I get paid $10 an hour. It has been brought to my attention that I am being a slacker because I'm not looking for a "real" job, but...I don't really care.

2. Speaking of jobs and real jobs, Scott the Baker who makes the pastries for Kari's came in the other day and I was talking to him about my cupcake infatuation (I have one...I make them all the time. Right now I'm perfecting lemon-maple, my own invention). He told me to make my very best cupcake and decorate it my very best, and he might give me a job as a cake decorator!!

3. Yes, I am living at home. The goal is to move out by November. Yes, my parents are driving me insane and I'm not sure how much longer I can handle it.

*4. I have no idea who reads this. Leave a comment if you do, even if you don't know me, or I don't know you, or you're skulking around in secret (cause I do that too).

Sometimes I really think I could be happy with just a high-powered blender, a kitchenaid mixer, and an infinite amount of paper.

A few things:

1. Will everyone please SHUT the fuck UP about swine flu. It's a slow news week. I'm aware that bitching about it is just asking to catch it. I'm sorry, but I refuse to wear a surgical mask in the subway. YOU ALL LOOK FUCKING RETARDED.

2. Internships are great and all, but being an intern can sort of suck, especially when you have to do really demeaning things like re-shelve books all over the office just in case anyone wasn't totally sure you were the Resident Bitch. I am currently compiling a list of all the comic book stores in the country. The COUNTRY. So far I have 2,161. I can't wait to be able to tell someone what to do. I'm vindictive. I've come to accept that about myself.

3. I say it every year: I fucking hate this time of year. BUT--yesterday I did some research and it turns out some people have REVERSE seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D., as the clever ones like to call it). I am not the only one who is made miserable by the coming of spring!! They haven't done too much research on it because, like, 6 people have it, but they're pretty sure some people can't biologically handle too much sunlight. When the days get longer, there are more hours of sunlight and it's too much for us creepy, creepy people.

You know when you're really happy for a long time and then something only mildly bad happens and you totally crash? I hate that.

Plus, I keep having dreams where I get poisoned.

"What never feared--haunting the trappings of time till toward the end of present eternal the damn curse appeared the legacy. For an everlasting demise, this day had begun sinister.

I had flown as a fiend down the old settler's path cross the southernmost outskirts of the big town, halting against the limestone bridges that had formed the slope like the meatless ribs of death. Lurking behind the loblolly pines, I struggled, at this moment still expecting my climax to be a shapeless horror. Shifting, a mindless brute whose depths never had I until now begged, my ill-defined assault foretold madness and death. Ever fallen prey to an unchained past as ghastly as turn after turn of helplessness?"

That is the beginning of an actual manuscript submitted to Tor. Doesn't it kind of sound like someone wrote something that made sense, put it in a translator, translated it to Russian and back and this is what came out? Interpretations are welcome.

The other day, we got a manuscript called "Squirrel Wars." It is described by its author as "a Cain and Abel-like epic tale of formidable adventure and enduring love." It is about....squirrels. There's even a squirrel sex scene (which makes very little sense, spatially (how can two squirrels be "belly to belly, back to back, side to side" all at the same time??). The best line (also the last line) of the squirrel sex: "He pressed his commitment to her."

I really like my job.

What is it about spring that makes all boys go crazy? No, seriously. I really want to know.

I have to write a 20 page paper but all I really want to do is bake about 4000 cupcakes.

There are people playing some kind of sport outside my window. I guess it's spring. Weird, weird, weird.

I graduate in 6 weeks and then OH MY GOD I will be a college graduate and never have to go to school or do homework EVER AGAIN. It's going to be so good. Right now I should be writing about what Alexander Murray thought about Confession before 1215, but obviously, I am too consumed with thoughts of what life post-college will be like.

Last night I saw Mitch in the city and we went to the rooftop bar of the Peninsula hotel (so classy you could barf) and had cocktails and daydreamed out loud about how our apartment will have a balcony or rooftop access and we'll be able to sit up there and have cocktails EVERY DAY. 24-hour cocktail hour. I'm really into Amaretto and milk. You should try it, it tastes like candy.

I can't find my mood ring and I'm really upset about it.

Working life is really good. In addition to Tor/Forge I also work for Langton International Agency, which is one woman in her apartment on the upper west side (on the 42nd floor...full of windows...so jealous). She has a fluffy white poodle named...wait for it...Princess. Everything you'd assume about this woman based on that is true.

Thank god I don't really have to wear "business clothes" at either job. I feel totally ridiculous in slacks. I feel like everyone can tell what a poser I am and I cannot find a pair of nice shoes (at this point, I'm just settling for clean) that don't give me blisters. I have been expressly forbidden from wearing my ancient, filthy oxfords. In fact, my mom even offered to foot the bill for a new pair of Docs (I've yet to see any money) and I went out on a limb and tried a new style (double t-strap mary janes) (like you care) and..they give me blisters.

Fortunately, I've happened upon a new business venture: foot fetishists. It seems that plenty of 30 to 40-something dudes with expendable income will pay me for the privilege of sucking my toes and giving me foot massages. One of them even wants to take me shoe shopping. In fact, he actually wants to be my personal slave and I can't TELL you how badly I wish I had an apartment for him to clean. I like to fantasize about having a houseboy. I'd never do laundry again. It'd be like having a personal assistant you could abuse.

EDIT: I found my mood ring!! It fell behind the radiator. Life has improved by 62%.

Well, the interviewing paid off, and now I have TWO internships. I started one this week, I start the other next week. Monday, I had my actual first day in the Real World, at a Real Job where my mom wasn't in the office next door for me to bitch to about the retardedness of making 5th graders define "basketball" and "sports" as vocabulary words.

I got to read the unsolicited "paranormal - romance" manuscripts and send out rejection letters. It makes me feel very powerful. I'm not sure I've earned this power yet. I will try my best not to let it corrupt me.

Having spent a day sending out rejection letters, I feel it is my duty to impart some of the things I have learned:

1. When the guidelines tell you to include a self addressed stamped envelope (SASE), DO IT, or the intern reading your manuscript might reject it out of spite.
2. Spell check. For god's sake, fucking spell check.
3. Do not send weird shit like certificates for awards you won in high school.
4. If you live in Australia, send your manuscript to a publisher in AUSTRALIA because we are not going to mess around with those weird Australian mailing coupons.
5. Do not go overboard with the packing tape. There's a difference between sealing something securely, and making it WATERPROOF. If you wrap the whole thing in 3 layers of tape, the intern forced to spend half an hour trying to get the damn thing open will not be inclined to read your manuscript with a forgiving eye....or AT ALL.

I fucking hate job interviews. I've done 7 in the past month and I hate hate hate hate it, especially when it's 3 people interviewing you, and they're all on one side of the table and you're totally outnumbered, and they all have a copy of your resume in their hands and they're looking at it and looking at each other and every single thing you say goes into the pot for them to judge you by. It's like you're a semi-expensive appliance they're trying to decide whether they really need or not. I wish someone would fucking hire me already so I can feel like a human again.

The world is a crazy, weird, and fucked up place.

EDIT: To qualify the above statement, I was eating dinner with my family a few days ago and my dad stuck two shrimp up his nose and did a little dance. Provoked ONLY because I was arguing with my mom about how she always called nostrils "nose holes" and I didn't know what a nostril was until I was like 12. I STILL say "nose holes".

So my dad's website (my conference project) is starting to look like a semi-decent, non-cracked-out kind of thing. (It's true, I did make some poor, cracked-out 3 am CSS decisions, but they are fixed.)

An excellent last-weekend-of-the-semester: two nights in a row nude, covered in baby oil. Vastly different reasons each time. My skin is like dew-damp rose petals on a July morning. I'm serious.

Oh, PS - after the conference website is finished, the new plan is to make a super excellent, CSS-ified blog. Fuck livejournal, I just can't look at this website without feeling like I'm 14 years old.

You know what makes me very sad?

I bet there are people in the world who haven't seen their handwriting in weeks. I think it's easily possible to get through life without writing anything by hand, and that makes me worried because I think handwriting is one of the more interesting phenomena. I got sort of into handwriting analysis. The people in my writing classes don't know I'm secretly analyzing the notes they make on my stuff. I'm creepy.

Turns out I'm "of the eveningness chronotype". That's the scientific term for being a night person and therefore unable to function during the day. I discovered this while looking up the symptoms for chronic fatigue syndrome because I've been sleeping such an obscene amount. In order to be chronically fatigue syndromed, you have to have dementia. I don't think I'm demented.

I have to learn CSS by tomorrow and I'm very, very tired.

Sorry if you were expecting something interesting.

I have officially completed the final rite of passage into the world of adulthood: I went to the DMV and made them give me a horizontally printed driver's license. NOWHERE ON IT does it say "Under 21 until...".

I CAN'T WAIT to get carded.

Outside of college, I am a fully functional human being. I walk, talk, go outside, go inside. Sometimes I wink back at truckers and bums who make kissy-faces at me because I have a "Sense of Humor". Inside of college, I am a great big bumbling mess of awkward.

I'm one of those people who dislikes everyone until they prove themselves worthy of like. Most people seem to have it the other way around. How do I fix it? I can fix my reactions to things, but how do I get rid of innate dislike?

It's cold! I'm typing with one hand so that I can hold one of those microwavable soup things to keep the other one warm! My feet haven't been warm in days! I shut my window for the first time since I moved in! I LOVE it!

Also, I got another tattoo!

At the beginning of every year I say "this year, I am going to have my shit together." And every year, I do not have my shit together. In fact, I think my shit is less and less together every year.