random, tired thoughts.

you don't have to read this if you don't want to. i honestly just felt like typing. so if you have the time, here are some random, tired thoughts.

I cant help but feel left behind sometimes. Left alone. Left behind. It’s almost the same thing, to me at least. I’m trying to think of a good example of this, and there are actually so many instances of this running through my head right now. Especially today. Right now. My head hurts. I think to myself, that I need more time to mull it over. But my brain literally hurts. Not enough sleep. Not enough water. I’m suddenly thirsty. Water suddenly tastes good. We cooked veal in class today. I’ve never had it before, but I’m so glad that this was the first time I’ve had it. Soo good. It tasted like it was good for the soul too. Why does everything “good” have to have a consequence?! Veal is “tortured baby cow,” as South Park so eloquently put it. Tuesdays are basically all-meat classes. The vegetarian girl wasn’t in class today. I no longer see the vegan guy as well. My stomach is growling. I need to stop starving myself during the day. That’s probably another reason my head hurts. I’m downing another bottle of water. There are at least three empty bottles of water on my car floor right now. I’m sitting at home and drinking another bottle, and I begin to wonder how much trash I’ve produced because I was too lazy to walk into the kitchen and get a glass of water. I stopped typing for a while because my rabbit was beckoning for attention. I suddenly miss laura. There’s still 50 minutes left until midnight, but this is the most tired I’ve felt in a really long time. It’s now 11:11 pm. I wish for a few things, but now I’m sad at the realization that what I wish for is something that I don’t think I can get on my own. As if the only way it can come true is through some sort of miracle. It’s so close I can feel it, but taking chances puts me at risk, and I’ve been feeling a lot like a coward lately. My rabbit sits at my feet and asks for attention again. He stomps his foot and stares at me. I spend about an hour every night watching him hop and run around the garage. I wish I was this consistent with my sleeping. I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow morning. I think it’s time for sleep.

sudden realization

today i realized it was only week 5 in the semester. WEEK 5 OUT OF 16. i am wayy to tired for my own good. sometimes i wish i had a job, but then i remember how tired i am just after class. every week: english, contemporary ethnic america, culinary principles 2 lecture, culinary principles 2 lab, english, horticultural science, contemporary ethnic america, principles of baking 1 lab, principles of baking 1 lecture, in that order.

this morning was a big ball of nothing. my first class is usually scheduled to begin at 9:35, so after dealing with all the morning traffic and whatnot, i came to class, and lo and behold, class is cancelled. my next class didn't start until 1pm. i wish i didn't have to wake up at 6:30 for that class :(

after a long, but calming, day at the gardens, i finally got home around 6:45. now that i think of it, nevermind that "big ball of nothing" comment. it turns out it's way more calming at school than it is at home. i spent the morning getting some homework done and flipping through fashion magazines in the library, and the afternoon was spent planting more veggies in the garden. sigh. i had to come home to screaming little boys running around the house, and now that i've mulled it over i think it's worth driving over there sometimes, just because it's so much more quiet. i think the only thing i don't really appreciate this semester is having to pay for gas so often and having to dig up worms for hort (ewww).

also, the lack of eating. you would think a culinary arts major would at least try to make time to eat, but today i didn't eat anything until i got home around 7, and most of my week is basically like that.

now to prepare for baking class tomorrow. this tends to be one of the classes that i enjoy coming to school for :)

principals of baking 1: my new favorite class

and here are my reasons why (in no particular order):

1. every day i have the lab i feel like a kid in a candy store :) by the end of the class it is always a free-for-all grab for whatever we baked, and i always end up taking home a big bag of something. today it was biscuits and scones! :p

2. i like baking, obviously...

3. keeping myself busy in classes like this help me forget about the stupid annoying things that happened earlier in the day, and believe me, there was plenty to forget about.

4. even though the lab always ends around rush hour, being able to take home stuff totally compensates for it. example: today it took me an hour and twenty minutes to get home, but it was totally awesome because i was basically just chillin' in the car, munchin' on some jalepeno cheddar biscuits, and blastin' the music (let's just forget that i wasted a lot of gas, because i do that every day anyway).

5. people just seem to be a lot easier to talk to here!! :)


baking aside, i'm also starting to like my horticulture class. yesterday was gardening day, and we all started our garden plots for the semester. even though right now i'm just praying that the plants will actually grow and then somehow manage to stay alive, it was still pretty cool getting down and diirrty yesterday in the cool weather just digging and whatnot. except for worms. eww. hopefully i'll do a lot better in the actual class though; the first quiz we had i got a 4 out of 10!!! WHYYY?!!! anyway, here's hopin' for a plentiful harvest by the end of the semester :)

i can't

i can't take subtle hints. it takes me forever just to figure these things out, and when i think i've got it right i still feel a little hesitant about it.

i rarely ever have dreams, but when i do there is always one thing that they have in common; i can never seem to find what i need. i can't find my shoes. i can't find the key. i can't find my room. i can't find the exit on the gate. something is always missing.

i can't find my way.

sometimes in these dreams i actually have the courage to ask for help. it's to no avail, of course. i still can't seem to get a hold of what's going on around me.

sometimes it's true in real life as well.

i hate having so much time available that i force myself to lay down and think about these things. i look at the ceiling, listen to the ticking clock on the wall, watch the light coming in from the window change positions as cars drive by. i can't seem to think about anything else. the laptop i use makes a whirring noise as i type, and the thoughts in my head seem to make a kind of whirring as well, and no amount of deep breathing will help it slow down.

i can't daydream like i used to.

it took me and hour and a half to drive home today

which actually wasn't the longest it's ever taken me to get home. i made sure to blast the music to keep me awake, a hard feat when i only had a few hours of sleep and hadn't eaten anything today. i found myself daydreaming a lot while i was driving, and for a second when i snapped out of it i thought i missed my exit. i looked around and none of my surroundings seemed familiar, but then i realized i didn't recognize any of it because usually i'd be speeding by all those trees and hills. sigh. another long day.

sometimes it feels like i play a different person every time i go to a new class. today i was the chill, sleepy elaine, just waiting till i could get home. yesterday during the lab i was the busy bee elaine, just trying to finish in time. so many other personalities to keep track of. today someone described me as "old soul." what the hell was that supposed to mean? not to say that it was a bad thing; now that i think about it it sounds pretty cool. but what is it? and which personality is my real one? i thought back to what i was like before all this. all last semester i was the shy quiet elaine; if i didn't have a designated seat i stayed in the corner, i had no friends, but i breezed through everything, albeit alone. this semester i have to work a great deal harder: two kitchen labs, classes that actually require me to think, and actually having to study for quizzes. what i am glad about is that i have some kind of friends this semester, even if a lot of them are just acquaintences, and that i have classes with people who are around my age rather than decades older. then i thought back to what i was like before college; i would joke around with my friends and could laugh as loud as i wanted, knowing i definitely would not be the loudest. i was comfortable with the friends i held on to for years and years. why do different surroundings always bring such an enormous turnaround in my personality? i can feel it rush through my head, and i need a lot more time to think about this.

i can't wait till friday :)

rantalicious: a couple of days ago i scratched my face and now i have a hugeass scar/scab right on top of my nose!!! hopefully it heals soon and goes away... it's kinda painful and it's not really something that i can just cover up with makeup :(

p.s. sorry about the whole identity crisis thing, but it was all i could think of today. hopefully it'll satiate your appetite for a look inside my head...

for a second i wanted to be a vegetarian.

actually, more like 45 minutes, or an hour, or however long the chef's demonstration took last night. he tore away at the huge section of cow carcass laying on the counter as he so gently described how male cows are castrated so that they can grow even bigger than nature would allow them. this section alone weighed about 90 pounds he said, and i thought about my friends that were close to the same weight. no wonder why i didn't see the vegan guy anywhere around that day. an entire semester on the cutting, fabricating, and manipulation of animals, and who could blame him for being absent?
as the chef described different parts of the cow, all i could think of is how i would achieve vegetarianism (is that a word?). at first people would think i was crazy, but i would convince them that i wasn't with the horrifying facts about meat. i can't even describe how i felt as he literally sawed through bones that were at least 2 inches in diameter. i never understood what a bone duster was for until then. i tried to tell myself this was just like anatomy class in high school, but i realized that even being in front of those cadavers did not make me as uneasy as this hunk of cow did. "this is where the cows head would be if he had one... MOOOO!!!" i held a sad expression on my face as the chef pretended there were some imaginary cow head attached to the carcass.

some time during the semester we will be working with veal. i have never eaten veal before, not because of choice, but just because the opportunity never presented itself to me. during the lecture the chef only said two or three sentences about veal, but just the idea of it and i started to get sad. a baby cow kept in captivity just for the sake of a tender steak?

what the hell was wrong with me? this is my job, or at least, it will be. i began to think about the dilemma i had before i decided to go into this industry. did i really want a job based entirely on gluttony? one of the seven deadly sins? when we began to cook though, it all came together. nothing seemed as bad as it did before, and even though this piece of meat was once a living being, it seems as if it does more as food than it would just grazing in the grass lazily. i continued to make my beef stew, enough to serve 5 or 6 people. now that we were rid of the carcass i could easily convince myself of the greatness that is meat.

no, i would not be vegetarian... meat tastes too good. for now, though, i'll probably still stay away from veal...

i need a butcher's scimitar.

class FINALLY started again last week. yep, that's right. i need to go out and get more materials, more books, more knives, more everything, and yet i'm having a hard time just leaving the house right now.

i've decided to start up this blog again, mainly because of grac3anat0my (hehehe) but also because i hate that i keep starting these things just to abandon them a few months later. i need to have more commitment, dammit!! okay okay. so there won't be as many entries about food i've made at home, mainly because i'll be actually going to school 5 days a week this semester (i need the credits!), but for sure there will be a lot of entries on my life. like this one!

ranting time!!!

children. right now there are 3 boys living with us, two of them age 8 and one of them age 12. as i'm typing this, they are screaming and playing around in the bathtub. um, excuse me? yeah. i'm not cleaning that up. they'll only stop fooling around in the tub when their parents come along. that's another thing: they are entirely too dependent on their parents. yes, i understand that they are still children, but every time their parents leave them here, all of a sudden they start running around and screaming because they say they're scared of ghosts. that's right. ghosts. joshua, if there were ghosts here, i'm sure they would have just the same chance of haunting you if you were running around as they would if you were just sitting quietly. is it too much to ask for? now, i can understand how it can be a world of difference if the children were my own, but that's just not the case, and it's beside the point. my point is, i am not cleaning that bathtub.