Lauren

I am in Olympia, living with my parents. I'm working in Tacoma (basically) at McChord AFB, where they put me in a job that doesn't exactly exist, and they shoo me away at 1pm, telling me I should go home and spend time with my dad, cause "that's what the Air Force sent [you] here for."

I'm basically having an all right time.

Oh, I'm going to Europe in 6 weeks!!!! But I'm nervous because it seems I'm the ringleader in the Greece portion of it, and I don't think I'm as good of a travel agent as other people trust I am.

But I'm having another quarter-life crisis where I keep feeling, if I don't decide what to do with my life right now--if I don't decide RIGHT FUCKING NOW to pursue one of my passions very vigorously and vociferously--I will end up stranded behind a desk in a cubicle, maybe multiple desks in different cubicles with different staplers and copy machines that don't work, for the rest of my life. I already feel like a failure for not deciding this shit earlier in life. Parents and I were watching a special on fucking 9-11, and one of the firemen, I swear, was just so excited recalling it all it looked like he was going to wet himself. My mother commented on how some people just are born with a Hero Complex, and I commented how I would much rather be stuck with a Hero Complex than what I have, which I think is something like a Mozart Complex..only understandable if you've seen Amadeus, I guess, but really it just means that I want to be the absolute best at something and recognized as such without any effort on my part except my natural talent. Anyway, I think the Hero Complex is preferable to the Mozart Complex because it is fulfillable. You run into a burning building to save someone, and you either a) die a martyr for your cause or b) save someone and fulfill your dream and get instant glory. It's like a win-win situation. My complex is just impossible. How do you change your own fucking complex??

And that's all I have for now.

I'm bored. I'm sitting in a cafe in Cheyenne waiting for my friend to show up and play guitar. This cafe is the only cool thing Cheyenne has going for it, and it's closing in two weeks! Sad. Not that I even live here anymore--life in Fort Collins is definitely more interesting--but I was up here for work this morning, and thought I may as well hang out. I bet Cheyenne will explode within the next couple of years. It has hippie-town potential, even with the existence of F. E. Warren AFB.

Some people might disagree with me and say that Cheyenne also has "Cheyenne Frontier Days" going for it. But, unless you enjoy watching bull-riding, drinking cheap nasty beer, and listening to lots (lots) of country music and being around every fat hick in town and from the neighboring one-horse towns spanning a 300-mile radius (approximately, and skipping over the cool towns like Fort Collins, CO, which will have NOTHING to do with Frontier Days), you will agree with me that Cheyenne Frontier Days is nothing more than Cowboy Fest Debacle. Nevertheless, I came to work this morning to march in the parade alongside my fellow men and women in uniform, and got horse poop all over my new boots. I would have taken leave to avoid being voluntold into this nonsense, but I'm currently saving every crumb of leave I have for my upcoming trip to Germany/Greece in October. Which, yes, I have mentioned lightly every LJ entry since like, April, and which I will continue to bring up until I get on the plane to Europe and forget that social networking and blogging exists (for the record, I will never be one of those kids who updates facebook status every day when on vacation abroad. I've seen this happen way too many times this summer on the minifeed, and it's dispicable. It's ok for me to log onto FB twice a day, every day, but that's because I'm here, and not there.)

Also...sigh...my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He has about 3-6 months to live, probably, and I'm feverishly trying to get a reassignment to McChord AFB (near Tacoma). It'll probably (hopefully) come through next week, and I'll probably (hopefully) be moved out by August.

...Does anyone want to rent a nice condo in Fort Collins, CO?

Good lord, I haven't been here in forever. Well, I have, just see what you guys have been up to every now and then...I talk to Sonya and Erin enough anyway...Darcy, talked to you just the other day...and Anna seems to be crazy busy as usual...and Emma, I know what you've been up to, hope you're ok...hmmm, was that just really tacky, addressing all my LJ friends in one go? I don't have a lot, and you're all close, so I don't think it's tacky. So, what have I been up to...well, I officially moved in to my condo last month in Fort Collins, CO. I got my bike stolen last night. We just wrapped up an inspection at work (the world's not blowing up yet, you should know). I'm at the Denver airport right now--my dad's getting brain surgery tomorrow, and I'm going home for a week and a half to be with family. I'm trying to take care of myself by exercising (mostly consists of yoga) and eating healthy. Or at least eating healthy things first, followed by junk food. It evens out.

I have a ticket booked for Germany in October! Erin and I are on the same flight to Duesseldorf! Or did I say that already? And then we're going to Greece with this tall, skinny, stuffy British guy we both used to know.

I feel like a pretty boring person today. I was looking through some of my old LJ entries the other night from like, a year and two years ago, and they were pretty entertaining! I think I used to be pretty witty, if I do say so myself, but not so much these days. I'm beginning to worry that I'm sinking into becoming a boring adult who only talks about gas prices and how much sleep I got last night. OK, so I haven't talked of either of those things. But I feel tempted to. Two years ago I could have composed an entire essay out of the paragraph that precedes this one. There's some hidden good material in that one. But I lack the motivation.

I don't even know how to end this.

?

O. M. G.

I made friends this weekend who are not in the Air Force. Unbelievable.

1. Kaarin, 43, just moved to Fort Collins from Vermont, physicist at Colorado State, does yoga every day, and feels fine when she wakes up after two shots of tequila, two beers, and four martinis. Her birthday is the day after mine. She has lots of tattoos. I'm going to live at her house for the first week in April to cat/housesit.

2. Herman, 24, physics grad student at CSU, Mexican, from L.A., and very funny. Likes hugs and high fives a lot. Reminds me of Tomas. Addicted to Bikram yoga as of yesterday, when Kaarin and I dragged him.

I have a good feeling about these two. They make me feel like a real person again.

What the hell. You people aren't posting anymore. Fine, I guess I will.

Umm...my life is all right. I''m still doing an adequate job safeguarding you all from nuclear war, so be thankful.

Last night, I got together with some of my other WMD-tamer cohorts, and we watched Lady and the Tramp. Some things we noticed:

-The siamese cats are a non-PC representation of Japanese people
-One of the girl dogs (the one in the pound that sings) is definitely a former prostitute/stripper
-The chihuahua in the pound is a non-PC representation of Mexican people

I'm actually sad that you wouldn't get away with these things in a 21st century version of L&T.

However.

You can get away with THIS: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

And you know...so much of it is true about me, so who am I to be offended? But it makes fun of white folks in a "they're so silly, they think they're cultured but all they do is spend money and trick themselves into having a certain opinion about themselves."

Oh, and for the record--I watched Wizard of Oz recently, and noticed

-Tinman is totally gay. Both actor and character. There is no question about this.
-Wicked Witch of the West is totally Jewish.

I figure that if Anna AND Erin can post, so can I.

Hmm. We had a four-day weekend, which I went home to Olympia for without telling anybody (I should have taken leave, since I was out of the area). I don't regret it one bit. My mom made an elaborate valentine's dinner. My dad did my taxes for me. My mom and I went to a pow-wow on Saturday, bought lots of turquoise jewelry and mini handwoven baskets, and stood in line for an hour for some authentic Navajo frybread. I learned to knit! I'm working on my first scarf. We went up to Seattle for cupcakes, flowers, and an expensive dinner at Cafe Flora. I went for a walk yesterday morning, and the neighbor's white lab followed me all around the neighborhood. It was so cute.

Tonight, I am back in Shitsville, Wyoming. I hear Taps playing from the base. Blegh, I don't want to go to work tomorrow!!! Lately I've been worried that all my worrying and dissatisfaction will make me wrinkly and grey before I know it...so I've been obsessed with expensive hair-thickening sprays and face moisturizers to keep it all away. I like the knitting. It's very meditative. I'll keep that part of seeming like an old lady.

I saw a cellist on the street in front of Cupcake Royale in Ballard. He was really good. Like, fantastic. He could even play the cello sideways in his lap, like it was an electric guitar. Sometimes I wish I hadn't indulged in so many interests and hobbies when I was younger...because now when I see someone who's a virtuoso, I think, "And that's what I could have been. But I'm not." And I get so insanely jealous.

Bleggghhhh.

Lately I've been remembering lots of dreams lately. A couple memorable ones from the past week or so include:

-Two shower heads that talk and give me advice on life--one from my father's perspective, one from my mother's

-I eloped with some blonde, blue-eyed air force guy I didn't know. We were in full wedding garb at my high school reunion, and everyone else was dressed for prom. People stared at me incredulously, and I knew I had made a mistake. I had to get the marriage anulled and pretend it had been a joke...but then I thought, "but I don't want to be that loser who gets a divorce as quickly as she gets married"

-A pair of middle-aged twin men conjoined at the hip wore cowboy clothes and sat staring at me from inside of a television set. I stared back at them and asked them what they were doing. They said it was an experiment, and they called themselves "The Two Stuck Cowboys"


I don't usually remember my dreams. I wanted to know what it meant, so I googled "those who remember dreams", but didn't get much insight into my possibly changing character...but I did get this:

"Dream recall might be enhanced by increasing the channel capacity of short-term memory and increasing imaginal life through activities such as introspection, daydreaming, and meditation."

Which might be true of me, but I've always done shit like that. Does anyone else have wacky dreams or interpretations to share?