let it be known!

I, Sara Krafft Pino, have the best mother ever. No, really. The best one.

Not two weeks after helping us out massively with rent problems (a project that she is still undertaking, biweekly, to the tune of $100), she has purchased a computer for me that should arrive in — give or take — a week.

One week 'til computer time!

Not only that, it's a nice computer. In fact, it will be by far the best computer I have ever owned. Which means that I can start working. Which also means that I can not be bored and/or poor all the time. Which means that SQUEEEEEEE!!

I'm having trouble writing this coherently, but dudes: computer. I'm sure y'all will get plenty of updates later.

——-

Oh, and by popular demand: here is what the whole no-eyelash thing looks like. Here is what my hair looks like after vigorous use of a straightening iron (and a fairly accurate representation of how I feel about it). Here is a picture proving that Mama's not the only one with crazy hair in this family. Aaaaand… here is what the sky looked like a couple of weeks ago.

There, I think that rounds out this excuse for an entry quite nicely.

the spirit of nablopomo…

… is, as Schnozz pointed out, egomania. If I had a computer I'd be all over that for a month — but since I don't, you just get this one post about all the little things that have been bothering me lately. (Small wonders, people. Be grateful.)

1) The aforementioned lack of computer. I know, I know, I bitch about this about every ten seconds. It's just so… damn… irksome. My house is boring; we don't have cable TV (which means we don't have TV at all), we sold all the DVDs, new books are few and far between. A computer would fill the gaps quite nicely, but no! They are all eight million dollars and/or nonfunctional. I stare vacantly at the wall while drinking my morning coffee. I used to check email and read blogs during that time. I am bereft.

2) I really, really need a haircut. My stupid hair is too stupidly thick and curly to grow out of a short cut with any sort of grace. I have trapezoid head, y'all. It's not pretty, and it's impossible to style. What really burns is that I just obtained a metric asston of pricey hair products (for free!) that do no good, because my hair is ugly and lame and all funky over my ears. Physique straightening serum is all well and good… except when your own ear is the cause of bendiness.

3) Connor just spent three days throwing up. Fun! I don't think I need to say any more about that.

4) I'm on these silly hormones for three months that are supposed to smooth me out so that birth control will work. One of the side effects I was warned of was “mild hair loss.” I have not lost any hair, which I would welcome; instead, almost all of my eyelashes fell out. I don't even know how to begin to express how horrific (and horrifically ugly) this is. False lashes make me look even worse, because I don't have any real lashes to blend with them. Even more terrifying? So far, I see no signs that my lashes are or will be growing back. Shouldn't I at least have eye stubble?

You know what? I'm praying for eye stubble. I think this whole unfettered egomania thing is not for me.

a new theme.

I have a hard time following through on stuff here — mainly crises, and mainly because once I'm through them I kind of feel like an ass for whining all over the Internet. It's been brought to my attention, though, that y'all still mostly think I'm hovering on the brink of eviction and cancer and being kicked out of school, and none of that's true. Things are okay.

My brother and I came up with a solution to the money problem, and my mother's helping us implement it. It sort of puts us in more debt, but it's debt that can be paid in February after tax refunds are in. The landlord, while not thrilled, agreed to our solution, which involved paying all the back rent but then only paying him $200/month through the holidays. We just can't afford more than that right now. I have a couple of freelance jobs on the table for after I get a computer, but until then I am bringing in $0 per month. There simply are not jobs in my area right now; the holidays, and panic over the new military base, and the smoking ban… I don't know. There are a lot of houses up for sale and a lot of boarded-up business buildings.

So. My mom is sending me a computer for Christmas, and she's sending it early so that I can get cracking on some freelance stuff. I'm hoping for more luck with this than I've had over the past couple of years. There was a time when I supported myself perfectly well with plum editing or design gigs that just sort of fell on me, but now I've got to look and apply and beg and coax and drastically upgrade my design skills… but I think I'll be okay. I think we'll get through until tax time, at which point we will pay up ten months' worth of rent and just be flush for a year. I am so damn tired of being in this situation.

And next year, we're taking our tax money plus some savings from this year, and we're getting the hell out of Dodge. Enough is enough.

—-

And now for my uterine saga: It was not cancer. It was not even fibroids. It was a bunch of dead cells that accumulated due to some scar tissue and a very minor hormonal imbalance that can be corrected with plain old birth control. The mass needed to be removed, but I'm not at great risk of developing another. Having another kid should be okay as long as my doctors are aware that I could develop another of these things and that I'll need to be monitored.

I feel pretty stupid for all the catastrophizing and getting drunk I did over this, really. The doctors here made it sound much more dire (and possibly cancerous) than it actually was. On the other hand, all they had to go off of was a couple of ultrasounds and, strangely, an X-ray, so how were they to know the dark blob wasn't a tumor? I wish now that I'd had someone do a D&C here in Portales before I got shunted off to Albuquerque, but it was probably better to stick with the experts.

—-

We still don't know how we're going to pay for our classes, but we've decided that is an issue for after the holidays. It's likely that we'll ask CCC to let us set up a payment plan of so much per month for the next year, and it's likely that they'll let us do it. With rent worries removed for 2008, we should be able to manage small payments (say, $150) without breaking the bank. If not — eh, I'll stress about that after the holidays. Right now I need to be figuring out how we're going to buy Christmas presents for everyone and how I'm going to get the house clean and the turkey cooked by tomorrow morning. I shouldn't be here talking to you guys, but, well, here I am.

more cute than you can shake a stick at.

Don't you hate it when people use vaguely “artistic” photos to lure you into staring at

All right! Time to make a mess!

Wait — did she just say “shot”?

She has to be joking, right? Ha, ha! Good one, Ma!

… Heh? Ma?

No, YOU take the shot!

Okay, okay, okay… I'll take the shot. Fine.

A'ight, that wasn't so bad. Let's roll out.
?

Connor had to get a shot today, and I got some really good pictures of him with my brother while we waited. Surprise! You guys get the benefit of yet another lame nonoccurrence-cum-nonentry! My life is so damn exciting.

My kid really is cute, though. I mean, it's at least worth a look.

variationless.

“You know, I have every single possible permutation of the sex-ed talks pretty much flowcharted in my mind, adjusted for age and maturity level, but I never thought I would need to give coherent parental reasons for Why It's Not Nice To Steal Corpses. You have to teach kids to tie their shoes, share the toys, use the toilet, refrain from desecrating the dead, the teaching moments just never fucking end, oh the wonder of it all.”

Why aren't y'all reading Mimi Smartypants? And why aren't you listening to the Queers? You should go download “I Hate Everything” and “I'm OK, You're Fucked” the first chance you get.

I've realized that my random and pathetic pleas for help via LiveJournal are sort of annoying, but — surprise! — I really have nothing else to write about. However, Pamie is on strike, Sars did a tomato dance, and Amy has a really cute kid. See what I do for you? Only the best for my friends list.

variations on a theme: arrrrgh!

It is driving me absolutely batshit crazy that I am unable to watch the seventh season of Smallville. Reading the recaps over at TWoP is just not enough. I do not want to wait a year and a half for the DVD set. I'm missing all kinds of important things, like shirtless Tom Welling and hot bald Michael Rosenbaum!

I don't suppose any of you kind people watch the show and might have, I don't know, DVR'd it? Or maybe some of you kind people have a fast connection and knowledge of where to download the episodes? I mean, I'm willing to pay one of y'all to provide me with my fix. There's cash in it for you! And karma points! And maybe, um, brownies! Help a girl out, yo.

I can't come up with $2000 for rent and bills, but I can damn sure come up with $20 for some good old-fashioned crappy TV. This is pretty much the state of things.

variations on a theme: i am lame.

I have come to a very simple conclusion about myself. After years of (kind of) striving, after working (a little) hard to build a certain image, I have to admit it: I will never have hipster cool. Want an example? Of course you do. And I bet you want this example in poorly thought-out “realtime” with lots of direct quotations, too.

A few days ago, my friend Chris got a new mp3 player — a monster of a thing called, if I am not mistaken, a Zune. It rocks. It rocks so hard that he gave me his old player, a little 1GB Wal-Mart jobbie. I love it. I've been secretly drooling over mp3 players for years, to wit: “Honey, look! See that girl? She has ironic hair and a silver iPod! She must be jamming out and also have a post-punk, poetic boyfriend who adores her dramatic eyeliner and geometric shirts!”

The problem is, I can't seem to get used to this thing. Whereas cool kids pull out their players all, “Oh, I am so weary of the world, I must somehow block it out, what shall I do, I guess I'll listen to The Postal Service,” I go like this: “It's boring in here. Jeez, it's so quiet. What can I do? OH MY GOD! I HAVE AN MP3 PLAYER! I SHALL NOW LISTEN TO BON JOVI AT TOP VOLUME! ISN'T THIS JUST NIFTY!”

Help me, people. How do I become acquainted with technology? (I also recently got the world's BEST, CUTEST digital camera… and I always forget to either a) carry it or b) use it.) I still have no idea what to do with my (6-year-old, clunky) cell phone.

(Also, and as always, why don't y'all email me some damn music? Rumor has it that I could put mp3s from my email onto my player and carry little pieces of you around with me, like a serial killer but less gory.)

—————-

ETA: , what happened to your email? I've been trying to email you for days.

wisdom.

If your landlord is indeed threatening you with legal action, you should not under any circumstances follow [Bobby] McFerrin’s advice, which seems to involve chuckling at him and saying “Look at me, I’m ’appy” in a comical Jamaican voice.

Following Connor's sage advice, I am now going to die laughing.

(Quote from Blender's 50 Worst Songs of All Time, which you should really go read.)

variations on getting the last word.

A play in three acts.

Act I:

Me: “Honey, what is that?”
Michael: “It's a protein shake.”
Connor: “Shake-a shake-a boom boom!”

Act II:

Michael: “Are you all right?”
Me, flopping dramatically across the bed: “I think I'm going to die.”
Connor: “You have to die laughing.”

Act III:

Connor: “See my motor?”
Chris: “Er, what motor?”
Connor: “My motor is in my butt!”
Chris: “….”
Connor: [breaks wind, zooms away]

Fin.