my first taste of chaucer

I have of sorrow so great wound

That joy get I never none,

Now that I see my lady bright, 

That I have loved with all my might, 

Is from me dead, and is agone.

Alas, Death, what aileth thee,

That thou should'st not have taken me,

When thou took my lady sweet,

That was so fair, so fresh, so free,

So good, that men may well say

Of all goodness she had no meet!

Right on this same, as I have said

Was wholly all my love laid

For certes she was, that sweet wife,

My suffisaunce, my lust, my life,

Mine hap, mine health and all my bless,

My world's welfare and my goddess,

And I wholly hers, and everydel.

most beautifully written, sir geoffrey. I thank you.

rain

it's been thundering for the past thirty minutes and the first fat raindrops are hitting the skylights above me. it brings me back to old rag when that storm was approaching while we were starting down. it was windy and the cool air moved through the trees and along your skin as if it were alive. and if you closed your eyes, it would carry you away. from this angle, I can see the raindrops come down and land. it makes me think how many hundreds of feet they've fallen, how many states or oceans they've crossed. how many hands they've touched. the way they splat reminds of that picture book, the rainbabies. the old woman and her husband are childless so rain brings her rainbabies. 

songs I sang today

delicate and the professor and cannonball -- damien rice

the car. I was in a chill mood this morning. his lyrics are so nuanced, his voice so mesmerizing. it creates or reveals so many emotions in me.

annie waits -- ben folds

in the car with stephan. we went to wal-mart to order prints of his digital pictures. we ended up accidentally making an order that cost upwards of $70. skills. I got to see a bunch of his mission pics. it made me jealous. he berated me for not having the whole ben folds five album. I told him I actually buy my music and there's just too much good stuff to buy it all, especially when you're poor, like me and everyone else. 

oh no and 60 revolutions -- gogol bordello

rocking out in the car with the windows down, beating the steering wheel, dancing frenetically all over the living room. dancing is such good exercise. and gypsy punk is awesome. I think gregory enjoyed it, but I may have weirded him out a bit. seriously, I could dance to eugene's voice and accordion beats all night long.

where can I get me some skin-tight purple pants, eugene? hook me up.

trolley wood and one day I slowly floated away -- eisley

anywhere and everywhere. stephan thought the lyrics were weird. they are, but they don't seem like it to me. 

come come ye saints

opening hymn at institute. sister shreffler smiled at me as I came in and started singing, but I think she still doesn't know my name. I'm more inclined to ignore her deficiencies today, not sure why. talked to ryan baird, elizabeth lewis, stephan, and the missionaries. I think it's really funny that the missionaries, or one of them, talks to me. am I flirting? awesome. I am generally incapable of flirting. he has bad shoes, but good hands.

adam-ondi-ahman and I know my father lives

the chapel, practicing the organ and singing after institute because I'm playing on sunday for sister baird. spencer and jeff came in, I guess spencer was locking up the building. they came in and asked me about the organ. I showed them. they stayed and talked for quite a while. spencer's kind of cute and sweet. he asked if I was coming to movie night tomorrow and pushed for an affirmative. then he shook my hand as he left. oh returned missionaries, how cute and hopeless you are.

moses supposes erroneously

how do you pronounce these words? my take is in parentheses

irrevocably (ir-REV-okably)

tragedian (tra-GEE-dian)

atrium (aaaah like bat)

preferably (PREferably)

heinous (supposed to be haynous, I think)

machination (supposed to be mak-ination. news to me)

jaguar (I said jagwire, but apparently that's beastly. should be jag-whar)

vehement (supposed to be VEE-hement. also news to me)

warm (not w-are-m, but war-m)

feel (fEEl, exactly like it says)

if you just said "fill", you are from utah and need to learn how to speak correctly

much as I love you dooce, I like you much better when I can't hear you speak

worst day of work EVER and other things

I've written and told this story too many times already, so it's gonna be shorter here. numerous nigerians paid me in hundred dollar bills and a traveler's check. I had never done a check before and he paid with check and cash and then my drawer wouldn't open to give him his change. it was a fiasco. then I didn't have any change in my drawer and edwin went to get change from the safe in the back and who knows what he did. I was too busy freaking out. and margaret was telling me wrong things and then correcting herself and still managing to be condescending while being wrong. how is that possible? the register stopped working a couple of times on me. 

and then, my drawer was missing $54 and I was supposedly the only one who had rung cash on that drawer that day. traumatic day.

then later, it was me, brittney, josh, and edwin. they were messing around like usual. then josh gave us a pep talk and started us cleaning up the store. I did what I was supposed to because I'm an excellent worker. the other three stood in a cluster in the front of the store and talked while I bumped the entire store, tagged and straightened the shoes, windexed, cleaned the bathroom, helped customers, AND did register while they stood there and messed around with balloons and threw shoes at each other. because of course, they couldn't be bothered to actually do any work while working.

and the most frustrating thing is that I can't break the unwritten co-worker code of not ratting on them. and I can't tell dan anonymously what's going on because he'll tell everyone to work and they'll know it was me cause I'm the only one who works when there isn't a responsible manager in sight. and dan doesn't even know what an awesome employee I am cause all of this happens when he's not there. AND I lost $54!!! 

this sucks. except I just got my schedule for the next two weeks and I'm working 19 hours and then 24 hours, which seems a weird reaction to losing money and not knowing crap, especially when they're cutting hours. my only hope can be that everyone's out of town or dan watched the security tape or something. doubtful.

hatred.

thursday and friday, I felt like I was seriously starving to death. I didn't even feel like eating, I wasn't craving sweets, I was just absolutely starving like I hadn't eaten all day, even 10 minutes after I'd eat a full-blown meal. it was absolutely miserable and scary as hell because I didn't know what was going on with me. I swear, if I had a disease or cancer or something, it wouldn't be that bad if I knew what was going on, I could deal with it. but having issues and not knowing what's going on is terrifying to me, the unknown in all forms. the starvation thing finally went away, in fact went just to the opposite of feeling, so absolutely full I was going to be sick. something must have happened to my hypothalamus. quirking out.

but then my foot swelled up and I had chills and a headache and a backache. it was the weirdest thing. I felt like my body was falling apart, like I was separating into pieces that were disintegrating, slowly, doggedly. I felt better when I woke up on saturday though. I think I should just take vitamins and try to forget about it.

I went to see the dark knight, the new batman movie, in imax opening night midnight release with david and elizabeth. we sat on the third row, so I need to see it again to get the full visual detail, but the city scenes were so awesome. and the joker's face 50 feet tall was a sight to be seen. as was christian bale's. in a much more delightful way. I'm going to post a review after I see it again. but for now, all you need to know is that it's awesome and worth seeing, but don't expect a batman begins duplicate. it's different.

more names

girls:

afton

marit

seren

bryony

tegan

boys:

guthrie (favorite boy name in the world.)

foster

surnames:

darlington

underwood

marlow

dream blog 2

part 1

there's lots I can't remember

there's a store or restaurant? interior is a short rectangle, low-ceilinged, cozy. one of the longer walls has a wooden counter with the till (the word seems to fit for some reason). the shorter wall meeting it perpendicular has a rounded bar counter. round wooden tables, lots of people around them, but we don't seem to be doing anything. 

there are quotes hand-painted onto the walls and door. on the end wall where the door is, there is a quote from me, and another on the door. I don't know what they said. the large one on the wall was only two words and supposedly clever, but I looked up at them and didn't get it.  the manager/owner is a man who I should know but can't remember now. claire's friends adam and joe work mornings there, but it's evening, so I missed them.

a little girl with Heelys rolled into a wall and hit her head. she wasn't hurt and everyone, including her, laughed. she came to sit down at a table, but for some reason everyone vacated it. she put her head in her arms and cried. 

I have a black paper sack of stuff I'm buying but I'm going out one door to go through the real door to come back in. the doors are too close, though, and someone else I should know, a girl, is in the way of the two doors and tells me I can't take the sack of stuff out to come back in cause something will happen ?? because they'll be unpaid for when I take them out.

part 2

in my house, a rain storm. I'm on the phone with mom, sitting at the computer and looking out the window, but it's in the dining room where we used to keep the old IBM and later the compaq. I'm just talking away when she suddenly asks me if the storm is too serious? I look out and the house is moving! pushed 10 or 15 feet back. I run into the kitchen. it's hard to make out among the dark wall of clouds, but there's a tornado.

I call dad, he's in the shower, but our shower not his, but when he comes out, he's dry and his robe is on. I call gregory. is jeffrey not there? I don't call for him. dad grabs a huge package, 4 feet long, of multiple packs of hamburger buns. I ask him if that's all we need, incredulous, and he says yes. we go to the basement. right before I go down, the house feels flimsy. too much light is coming in. powerless. I wish we could board the windows or that the basement door was sturdier.

there is storage/survival stuff all over the rec room. gregory is listening to some music on a radio or something. I feel like there should be more freaking out, but there isn't. the pipes are making crazy sounds. there's a huge water pipe behind a walled, wooden contraption, latticed on the inside, where the TV usually is. the pipe starts to burst. dad goes to get a saw?? it starts to spurt water and he yells to me to turn off the water, but the handle, supposedly on the floor, is covered by food storage shelving. he turns it off somewhere else.

I go upstairs to see what's going on because nothing's happening. the tornado is gone, but there are 2 more to the right, one much closer. it rotates and approaches visibly faster as soon as I look at it. scared, I run back downstairs. I fancy I can start to hear the train sound, but only because I expect it. I half-realize that my ears are creating the sound out of nothing. 

gregory wakes me up.