NaBloPoMo: Day 5

I got homework at work today, which is fun because I don’t get homework anymore AND it involves very little effort on my end, which is my favorite kind of task.

My homework was to take this Myers Briggs personality test, something I’ve taken multiple times in the past, but took it again JUST IN CASE my personality had slightly shifted in the past couple of years. Or in case another personality had taken over, slowly and subtly, and I didn’t even notice. I was interested to see which Harry Potter character my new personality is.

As suspected, I am still Draco Malfoy, though percentage-wise I’m almost tied with Remus Lupin. I’ve taken a million and a half of these tests (thanks, Buzzfeed!) and am always either INTJ or INFJ. I like to say I’m an INTJ most of the time because fictional INTJs are always evil. Mr. Burns. Walter White. Tywin Lannister. Louise Belcher.

Yep.

INFJs are much nicer. Lisa Simpson. Kermit. Elizabeth Bennett. JK ROWLING. They’re also the rarest of personality types, unless you bring gender into the equation, in which case female INTJs are the rarest, tied with female ENTJ and male INFJ (going by my really extensive research that was basically Googling “rarest myers briggs types by gender”). SCIENCE.

GOB is an ESTP, apparently.

Why am I still talking about this? IDK BECAUSE I LOVE TALKING ABOUT MYSELF OK? Welcome to blogging.

Anyway. I think being tied between INTJ and INFJ means I get to pick whichever side I want. There are positives and negatives about both, but the INTJs have Mr. Darcy. So. I think you know who I’ll choose. Always.

Suck it, Cumberbatch.

NaBloPoMo: Day 4

Today I was singing in the shower, like you do, and, as is so often the case, my songs of choice hailed from the Joss Whedon oeuvre. I haven’t tested this theory officially but I’m pretty sure I could sing “Once More with Feeling” all the way through ALL BY MYSELF YES ALL THE PARTS ALL OF THEM.

I’m not really what one would call a “good singer,” but I do enjoy it, even if it’s just singing along to the radio or making up dumb songs to sing to my pets, or playing Rock Band a million years ago. Remember Rock Band? We have the entire set that sits in a closet in our house because it’s not fun to play just the two of us and we are hermit people who never invite anyone over to our house and the dogs haven’t learned how to play guitar OR drums yet. Slackers.

(Why doesn’t anyone play Rock Band anymore? We played it so much a few years ago and then just stopped but I don’t think anything took its place. Anyway. Whatever.)

I was in choir in school and I loved it, especially the time in fifth grade when we went to McDonald’s in our fancy robes to sing Christmas carols and I got to stand on a table and it was AWESOME until I went to the bathroom to take my robe off and one of the snaps on it got stuck in my hair and I for real thought I was going to have to shave my head to get it out. I didn’t, though. GOOD STORY.

The only thing I ever really miss about church is all the singing in unison. Which is weird because whenever I was the acolyte, I never wanted to sing along to the songs, I think because I was sitting in the front of the church, where everyone could see me, and the last thing I wanted was to be seen PARTICIPATING EARNESTLY in something. PERISH THE THOUGHT. 

(Did your church have children as acolytes? I don’t know if it’s just a Lutheran thing. I think maybe it’s like being a choirboy in the Catholic church. Basically, I lit the candles at the front of the church when the service started, staring at the flame as I carried it, hoping and praying (appropriate) that it wouldn’t go out because THEN WHAT WOULD I DO? Would I have to go to the back and start over? What would people think? What would GOD think? Anyway, I also was in charge of holding the dish where people put empty glasses when they were finished taking communion. It was really a lot of responsibility for a 12-year-old.)

If I wasn’t acolyting, though, I really enjoyed the singing part of the services. Especially at Christmas, because I actually knew those songs, except for the weird extra verses of songs like Silent Night that no one on solemn Christmas episodes of TV shows ever sings so why do they even exist?

 A couple of years ago (um, ok, four years ago, yikes), I went to a Sound of Music sing-a-long at the movie theater and it was magical. A couple years before THAT, Joe and I went to a Dr. Horrible sing-a-long at ANOTHER movie theater and THAT WAS ALSO MAGICAL. I haven’t really seen anything else like that around here recently, other than a Frozen sing-a-long last year that I was afraid to go to because I thought I might get irrationally angry at any kids butchering the words. So. I guess what I’m saying is, I really need a non-church, non-solo, adult outlet for singing. MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SECULAR SING-A-LONGS.

Until then, I guess I’ll just dig out Rock Band. How hard is it to teach a dog to hold some drum sticks, do you think?

NaBloPoMo: Day 3

I doubt anyone noticed, because this blog has become a bit like speaking into the void (I’m not complaining, it’s kind of nice, like it was when I first started it and just rambled on and on like I was writing in my diary), but I forgot to post yesterday.

Well. No, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t forget. I knew perfectly well I needed to write something, I just...didn’t. There were two reasons for this:

1. I spent much of yesterday preparing for our annual volunteer appreciation banquet.

2. I spent all my time not preparing for the banquet watching many, many episodes of Gilmore Girls with Joe.

And you know what? NO REGRETS.



I put pressure on myself a lot of the time for just SUPER dumb reasons. Like, I don’t even know, that I was five minutes late for work and now the day doesn’t count anymore? That’s a bad example. I can’t really be late because I can get there whenever I want. But we’re going with that right now because I can’t think of any other examples and it’s my blog and I do what I want.

My point is (and I do have one) that, even for something that means nothing to anyone but me, like National Blog Posting Month, I tend to be very hard on myself if I feel like I’m, I don’t know, “cheating.” So if I post a video instead of actual words or GOD FORBID don’t post one day, it negates anything else I’ve done for the month.

This is stupid, flawed logic and it’s something I hate about myself so I purposefully sabotaged myself early on in the month and now NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.



Anyway. Bye.

NaBloPoMo: Day 1

Willow: Carpe diem. You told me that once.
Buffy: Fish of the day?
Willow: Not carp. Carpe. It means “seize the day.”

Hey, so remember last year when I quit my nice HR job to work part-time at an animal shelter? And how most of my family (and probably my friends) thought I had lost my mind? At the time, I knew it was the right decision, even if others in my life didn’t understand it. Still. I’m not going to pretend it was always easy. Money was tight, my schedule was erratic, and I had no idea if this part-time position would ever lead to anything more.

A few months ago, while working with potential adopters, I met someone at the perfect time. Don’t you love how that happens? I’m sure it’s entirely coincidental, the pure happenstance of meeting someone who passes along a lesson you really need to hear, or it’s something our TV-addled brains just put together for us, wanting to turn our lives into a story with a satisfying narrative. But I don’t care. It’s the greatest feeling, meeting someone who turns out to be the exact person you were supposed to talk to that day.

It was a busy day at work, like always. I had been meeting with people all day, was in fact outside in one of the yards introducing some dogs to each other (you know, normal stuff), when someone came to tell me another person was waiting. I went inside to meet him and, through the course of his interview, realized I was talking to one of the nicest people I’d ever met. Like Heather Anne Hogan nice. (Psst, that’s really nice.)

He was there to meet a few dogs, as his dog had died a few months prior. He wasn’t sure he was ready to adopt another dog and was, in fact, still going to a grief support group for the loss of his pet. We talked a bit about Oak Tree Corner then, and how so many people are uncomfortable talking about grief, or even the idea of grief, and how certainly there are people out there who just don’t understand how hard it can be to lose a pet.

He didn’t end up adopting a dog that day, but during our conversation, he asked me how I ended up working there. I explained that I’d been working in HR for a long time but wanted a change, to do something where I felt like I was making a difference in the world.

In all honesty, in the days and weeks before I met this man, I’d begun to wonder if I’d made a mistake leaving HR. It hadn’t really been so bad, had it? It was a nice enough job. The money was better. The hours were better. I’d been thinking, you know, that maybe I should go back. I felt like I wasn’t contributing enough to the household. I wasn’t making as much money as I had been. My hours, I’m sure, were hard on Joe, since I worked most weekends, and often late-ish on Saturdays and, once I got home, I was usually exhausted. Good exhausted, but still exhausted.

Still, I couldn’t imagine going back to HR. It felt like giving up every time I thought about it. And when I mentioned it to this man, this near-stranger I’d met twenty or so minutes before, he said, “Oh, god, no, never go back.” You see, he, too, had once worked in HR, for more years than I had, and he also hated it, so he left and started his own business and never looked back.

“Don’t do it,” he said, looking me right in the eye. “You’ll regret it.”

I don’t know why I accepted this advice. Unsolicited advice usually makes me go homicidal and, in fact, want to do the exact opposite of whatever I’d been told, because apparently I’m still a child. But I think I was able to take it because it was exactly what I needed to hear, exactly when I needed to hear it. It’s what I knew to be true, deep down, under all the fear and doubt.

A month later, I interviewed for the job I currently hold, a full-time position (at the same company) that I love. The money and the schedule are better, much more in line with my previous full-time position. The difference now is, I’m so much happier when I’m at work. The days are so busy. There’s so much to do. But I’m EXCITED to be there. I love going to work and there are days when I accidentally stay late because I’ve gotten so distracted by whatever I’m working on that I didn’t realize how much time had passed. AND EVERYONE IS SO NICE. Plus, you know, if I ever need a break, there are plenty of fluffy animals around to distract me.

I used to come home from work full of complaints about the day. It was exhausting, and I’m sure not super fun for Joe to listen to. Now I come home and can’t wait to talk about the wonderful people I work with and the animals I work for. So Joe is still sick of hearing me babble, just for different reasons.

I guess my point is follow your dreams or whatever? Even if you’re scared? I don’t know. I still feel like I’m faking my way through this whole “being an adult” thing most of the time, but I think I’m getting better at it. So there’s hope for anyone, I suppose.

"I lost Ed Truck and it feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears."

This post contains spoilers for The Good Wife, How I Met Your Mother, The New Girl, and Hannibal. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. If you get spoiled and get mad about it, take it up with this guy:

If this doesn't scare the shit out of you, you're not watching Hannibal and you must remedy that immediately.

You guys. I'm having a problem. TV is betraying me and I'm not sure I can take part in it anymore. The TV. None of it. It's gotten so bad that I've taken refuge in old episodes of America's Next Top Model, over twelve seasons of which is on Hulu Plus, which is yet an other reason I should cancel both our Hulu and Netflix accounts because I'd get SO MUCH DONE. But we already got rid of cable, so I suppose Hulu and Netflix are acceptable vices. It's healthier than binge drinking, probably. I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

When I was in college, there came a point in my classes where I was reading the following three books at the same time: Moby Dick (for a class on transcendentalism), Hamlet (for my Brit Lit class), and Crime and Punishment (for Russian Lit). These are all...dark, depressing works, so much so that reading the three at one time began to affect my mood. That's how I feel about my favorite TV shows lately. Watching TV hasn't been the joy of all joys that it should be, and it's making me want to stop watching TV FULL STOP because why am I even watching TV if not to enjoy myself?

1. The Good Wife

I've already written about this but it's still SO DEPRESSING. Will Gardner died two episodes ago, and in the latest episode, we got to watch everyone hear the news and cry a lot. FUN. I mean, it was very well done but if the rest of the season is going to be like this, I don't really want to watch it. I wish regular TV shows would stop going all Game of Thrones on their characters.

GOOD BECAUSE IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT I NEED ONE

2. HIMYM

UGH. About 20 minutes into the finale, I realized I probably wasn't going to like how it ended. The internet has been speculating for months that A) the Mother is dead and B) Ted's going to end up with Robin anyway, even after realizing he wasn't the guy who was in love with her anymore and after both he and Robin had grown so much. I admired the time and thought put into the theories but brushed them off (much like I did when someone posited that Will might die on The Good Wife), because why would they do that? After all this time? After making us sit through that horrible scene where Robin freaking FLOATS AWAY ON THE WINDS OF UNREQUITED LOVE:

Seriously, what?

In the end, however, that's exactly the path the creators took, because that's the one they'd planned at the beginning of the show. And it was terrible and I hated it. Some clever person, however, cut together a new ending, one that will wash away (a bit) of the foul taste the finale may have left in your mouth.


3. The New Girl

Look, I haven't even watched the episode where Nick and Jess break up because A) it happened right after Will Gardner died and B) I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE IT. NO DON'T MAKE ME.

Me too, Jess.

4. Hannibal

Bev died. Bev! I loved Bev! And she died in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad way!

I screamed.

Sigh. I mean. I know I shouldn't get attached to people on this show. Everyone is going to die and be made into a fancy pies and Hannibal is going to eat it and maybe throw out some food-related puns and we'll all cringe-laugh into our wine, wondering why we continue to watch these shows when all they do is break our damn fool hearts.

THE END

PS: But don't worry, you can wash your tears away with Captain America: Winter Soldier because it was AWESOME. Seriously. It was this good:

The story was good, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

this contains spoilers for: The Good Wife, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and other shows that are so old I've decided they don't need spoiler warnings

I haven’t posted in almost two months and, of course, the thing that brings me back is TV feels. Last night’s episode of The Good Wife ripped out my heart and threw it on the ground and stomped on it with cleats and then scooped it up and threw it into a blender. THINGS ARE NOT OK.

Do any of you even watch that show? I hesitated at first, because it’s on CBS and it seemed like a total mom show (and maybe it is, because most of the moms I know watch it), but it’s actually really, really good. I KNOW. It shouldn’t be that surprising, really. It’s filled to the brim with talent: Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming, and, until last night, Josh Charles.

Because last night The Good Wife lost its damn fool mind and killed off Will Gardner.

I have two major problems with this (well, three, if you count the fact that I don’t get to see Josh Charles on my TV every week):

1. The Good Wife is not Grey’s Anatomy. Killing off your male lead? OK, I guess, if you absolutely must, but in a courtroom shooting? Really? 

2. No more Willicia. A major driving force of the show was the will-they-won’t-they thing between Alicia and Will (and whether or not she’d ever leave her dumb husband for him). So. Guess that’s over, unless Will comes back as a walker.

Earlier this week, my friend, Nancy, who keeps tabs on these things, brought to my attention that Josh Charles hadn’t yet signed his contract for next season. We briefly considered the idea that they might kill him off, but dismissed it for the above reasons. Because why would they do that? I’ve seen articles calling this a brave move and, yeah, I guess it is, but was it smart? I’m sure the show will continue to be well-written and well-acted. It will probably bring out some really fantastic acting from the other leads. But I can’t imagine I’ll enjoy it the way I used to. I told Nancy that I would stop watching the show if they killed Will. I still have that inclination, but am also curious to see how the rest of the season plays out. So I’ll watch, but I doubt my heart will be in it (except for the part of my heart that is HORRIBLY BROKEN BEYOND ALL REPAIR).

I don’t remember being this upset about a character’s death since I don’t know when. Which is a total lie, because I REMEMBER THEM ALL. And here they are, in order of feels:

Sybil, childbirth (Downton Abbey)

I was spoiled for this and it was still hard to watch. The show killing off the most likeable of the sisters was shocking enough but was especially nutso when you consider what happened later that season, which leads me to...

Honorable mention: Matthew Crawley, car accident. I was also spoiled for this but, even as I watched, was hoping I'd read it wrong? I read an article last night that compared Will’s death’s to the move they made with Matthew on Downton Abbey and couldn’t help but think, “oh, fantastic, that’s when I lost all interest in the show.”

Billy, brain tumor (Ally McBeal) 

I know, right? What? Ally McBeal? I don't remember a whole lot about this, other than it was really sudden and shocking because this was before the internet spoiled everything.

Melissa Scully, gunshot wound (The X-Files)

This was mostly sad because it made Scully cry a lot and Scully crying is the saddest thing ever.

Honorable Mention(s): Mulder, buried alive in the desert. And Mulder, gunshot wound to the head. And Mulder, alien...stuff.

Hank, shot in the desert (Breaking Bad)

I'M STILL UPSET ABOUT THIS.

The Red Wedding, EVERYBODY STAB NOW (Game of Thrones)

No, I HAVEN’T read the books, thanks for asking, and yes, I reacted exactly like these people did:

Boone, airplane crash, but not THAT airplane crash (Lost)

I wasn't all that attached to Boone, but this was the first main character death and the moment we learned this show wasn't playing around re: killing off favorites.

Honorable Mention: Sun/Jin, drownded (WHY BOTH WHYYY)

Honorable Mention #2: Charlie, also drownded (NO SERIOUSLY WHYYYYY)


Lucy Knight, stabbed (ER)

ER was one of the first shows I really, really loved, and so Lucy’s death was the first time I realized a show could break my heart.

Joyce Summers, Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

This one was just mean. Just...I hate you, Joss Whedon.

Honorable mention: Anya, killed as an afterthought, RIP.

Mrs. Landingham, car accident (The West Wing)

I don’t want to talk about this anymore.


Anyway, RIP Will Gardner.

At least Dan is still alive.

ROONEY MARA!

So, those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram (in other words, those tools I use to distract me from doing some actual blogging/writing), may already know this, but Joe and I got a new dog!

She is the weirdest dog ever and I love her.

(I’m sure most of my friends and family, upon hearing that we had some “big news,” expected it to be about a baby but nope. Sorry!)

Anyway. She's a year old, some sort of beagle mix, and her name is Mara but she already has some nicknames, including:

Marabelle
Crazy Eyes
Mad Eye Mara
SWEET GIRL PUPPY FACE

and, my favorite...ROONEY MARA.

(Thank you, Billy Eichner. I can’t find a video of Billy Eichner shouting ROONEY MARA but just trust me that it’s hilarious, OK?)

When I started working at an animal shelter, I figured it was only a matter of time before I fell in love with a dog and brought it home. In fact, I soon started coming home at least once a week, regaling Joe with tales of some new dog I was obsessed with. But he never took the bait. Which...in hindsight was a good thing because A) those dogs were awesome, but would have been a disaster in our house and B) then we wouldn’t have gotten Mara.

I met Mara when I took her to an adoption event about a month ago. The point of taking animals to these adoption events is to hopefully get someone to, you know, adopt them, or at least generate some interest in the dog, so maybe someone will see itand, like, go home and think about it for so long that they’ll suddenly realize they simply HAVE to go back and adopt it.

I guess this time, that someone was me. I actually called Joe and told him to come to the event so he could meet her, thinking that if I was being ridiculous (again), he’d talk me out of it, but then he knelt down in front of Mara and she perched her front paws on his knee and licked his hand and BOOM we were DONE. WE ARE SUCH SUCKERS.

Still, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to rush into anything, so we decided to wait and see if she was still available in a week. Plus also, you know, introduce her to Max and make sure she didn’t like to eat cats. She passed both tests with flying colors.

Phoebe doesn’t really like her, but then again, Phoebe doesn’t really like anyone. Unfortunately, Mara, so far, has not shown Phoebe the deference that Max does, so there’s been a lot of hissing and “NO MARA”-ing, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

We were prepared for a second dog. It’s something we’d been talking about since we moved into our house. There were things we knew, like that our expenses would double, the dogs might not get along at first, Phoebe might riot and puke and pee on all of our stuff, but we were pretty sure we could deal with it.

However. (There’s always a however.) There were things we did not consider. For instance, it turns out Mara is allergic to grain. So that’s been fun! There were a couple of nights where we didn’t sleep, because Mara was up hacking and LICKING THE DAMN FLOOR, which I don’t think is bad for her but it’s really, really unsettling. Also, there was one night where she was acting like she was going to throw up, so I let her outside and then went to the basement to look out the window at her and was climbing over the couch when I fell and ended up knocking over some water I’d left down there and so there was shattered glass just, everywhere, and I thought maybe Joe was going to murder me.

Anyway! Since that escapade didn’t end in divorce, I feel pretty good about the solidity of our marriage. Whew.

It’s been about two weeks now and I think things are finally starting to get to the new normal. Even Phoebe seems to have accepted yet another interloper in her world. Max was pretty perturbed the first few days that Mara was here, mostly, I think, because of two reasons. One was the aforementioned middle-of-the-night hacking, which disrupted his sleep, and the second is that she doesn’t seem to care if Max is lying somewhere she wants to be, she just jumps up and crowds right into him...which disrupts his sleep. He’s getting used to it, though, and has stopped giving us, “why did you do this to me,” looks.

That’s actually one of my favorite things that Mara does. She just makes herself comfortable, wherever she may be, which then causes her to do one of my other favorite things. She seems to hate falling asleep, I assume because she’s afraid she’ll miss something, so she holds her head up and her eyes just fall slowly closed, until she jerks her head and wakes herself up. IT’S ADORABLE YOU GUYS.

She lost.

I was sort of worried that there was no way I could ever love another dog as much as I love Max but it turns out I can and now I love Max even more? Love is so weird. I sometimes think of love as this exhaustible resource, like I should hoard it to myself because I might run out eventually, but duh, obviously this is not the case.