*i don't mention my kitten even once. 2001-06-03 9:29 p.m.*

i wanted to start this with the scene from almost famous where penny lane tells him that he's too sweet to be famous or cool or to have that kind of life or whatever, because i saw that movie tonight with my mom and we both really liked it -- her more because she graduated that same year and it brought back all these memories -- and because i just really liked what was said.

and then i was going to copy out part of the hotel new hampshire by john irving, because it cracked me up:

And the fourth-floor bathroom equipment was a surprise to him. My mother should have remembered: years before her time at the Thompson Female Seminary, the toilets and sinks for the top floor had been misordered. Instead of outfitting bathrooms for high school-sized students, the toilet and sink people delivered and installed miniatures -- they were meant for a kindergarten in the north of the state. Since the mistake cost less than the original order, the Thompson Female Seminary had let it pass. And so generations of high school girls had stooped and cracked their knees while trying to pee and wash -- the tiny child-sized toilets breaking the girls' backs if they sat down too fast, the little sinks hitting them at knee level, the mirrors staring straight at their breasts.

"Jesus God," Father said. "It's an outhouse for elves." He had hoped simply to disperse the old bathroom equipment throughout the hotel; he had enough sense to know that the guests wouldn't want to share communal bathrooms, but he thought he could save a lot of money by using the toilets and sinks that were already there. After all, there wasn't much equipment that a high school and a hotel had in common.

"We can use the mirrors, anyway," Mother said. "We'll just mount them higher on the walls."

"And we can use the sinks and toilets, too," Father insisted.

"Who can use them?" Mother asked.

"Dwarfs?" said Coach Bob.

"Lilly and Egg, anyway," Franny said. "At least for a few more years.

Then there were the screwed-down desk chairs that had matched the desks. Father wouldn't throw them out, either.

"They're perfectly good chairs," Father said. "They're very comfortable."

"It's sort of quaint how they have names carved in them," Frank said.

"Quaint, Frank?" Franny said.

"But they have to be screwed down to the floor," Mother said. "People won't be able to move them around."

"Why should people have to move hotel furniture around?" Father asked. "I mean, we set the rooms they should be, right? I don't want people moving the chairs, anyway," he said. "This way, they can't."

"Even in the restaurant?" Mother asked.

"People like to shove back their chairs after a big meal," said Iowa Bob.

"Well, they can't -- that's all," Father said. "We'll let them push the tables away from them instead."

"Why not screw down the tables, too?" Frank suggested.

"That's a quaint idea," Franny said. She would say, later, that Franks' insecurity was so fast that he would have preferred all of life to be screwed down to the floor."

i heart john irving! i love how he captures things so well. and he has these ridiculous things happen, but they're so believable.

i went through a box of old photos tonight, and took out the ones i wanted. there was this one that made me laugh so hard it hurt. it was of my dad with the mumps. he's probably five in it, and he's wearing this shirt that SO needs a bow-tie, and he has this big, proud smile on his face. "no wonder he's disturbed," mom said. it's the weirdest picture. my stomach, my mouth, and even my shoulders still ache from that. and i had to clean my glasses because they got all teary. i had to shove the picture back in the box upside down, because it was becoming dangerous to look at. but now i've got pictures of me with all sorts of members of the family, and johnny and crystal and isaac, my best friends until i was about seven years old, and different pets, and pictures of my parents' wedding, and one of my mom's senior pictures with its intense blue eyeshadow, and a picture of the girls in the pretty dresses at cypress gardens, because that's what i wanted to be when i grew up, and a picture of me with this character at epcot, they don't have them anymore but they used to have characters from all the different countries, basically like it's a small world characters, except big like mickey mouse, and i thought the girls were all so pretty, and the picture of the ceramic emmet kelly my mom glazed with the picture of dad's dad in his army uniform, and a picture of my dad holding the painting my mom did of me on a carousel (there are so many photos of that painting, including it and the scary clown doll), and a picture i took of my barbies with their boobs all out of their dresses, and pictures from preschool christmas pageants, and me dancing and me rolling in the grass and me with dolls, and some clothes from my mom's business, and me with the chicken pocks and me on a slide and me showing off my dirty feet and me with big sunglasses on eating an apple fritter and me in the stroller, and my dad playing drums, and the dolls at the fair, and halloween costumes, and my cabbage patch dolls, and this really weird picture of a plastic airplane and toast, and the last supper painting with my mom's salt and pepper shaker collection, and a picture of my foot, and me in the noodles shirt, and a beautiful picture of my mom's back in her favorite coat the suede one with the fringe, and the picture lisha took of me that's only my middle section... yeah... i'm a memory freak.

i read pixiegurl's mention of the survey thing she got from alongcamea, so i asked alongcamea for one, and i filled it out, and sent it to a bunch of other people to fill it out and i just got it back from pixiegurl (she was the first person to get it back to me). it's really exciting what she said. part of me wonders how much of it is with a grain of salt, but hey, it's flattering, so i will not complain. it was so exciting to read in the email and in the my guestbook that she thinks i'm genuine, which is what i'm going for. *laughs* i'm glad i'm pulling it off. hee! no really... i like that i'm real and that people recognize and appreciate that. and i really like what she said about my future career being "something where you are a mentor, a leader, and a comforter," which you know is the minister thing right there... but maybe she knew that and was trying to describe it... i also think it's interesting that she thinks of me as a leader and never a follower, because i think of myself as more of a follower than a leader. i'm getting better at leading, but it's not something that comes natural to me. i usually find myself really admiring other people's ideas, strength, courage, etc., and thinking that they would be the best people to lead. but maybe that's a leadership skill... recognizing other's strengths? i dunno. but yeah... i really appreciated getting it back. maybe i shouldn't have written about it here, because i don't want it to inform other people's responses to it, because most of the people i sent it to read this. i want to know your genuine opinions, not just things you know i'd like to hear.

oh i laughed too hard. i have such a headache!

*listening to: *
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