Kate’s Rants

so this weekend i’m heading down to LA to visit with my grandparents who i haven’t seen since last summer, and also my aunts and uncles and cousins who i havent seen since last summer. crazy! also, the O’Haras are having a family reunion at the beach, which i will be going to on monday-wednesday. this is going to be fun because i hardly ever get to see the o’hara clan. unfortunately not everyone is coming, which is a bit sad. but i’m sure it will still be a good time. and it’s weird to have a lot of my cousins in high school and college now! to me they are all still little kids.

also, i have just found 4 of my cousins on facebook! oh, and brother brett who did NOT add me as a friend. brett, i am highly dissapointed in you. i mean, you added brendan and not me. jeez. (just kidding just kidding.) anyway, it’s fun to see all these cousins i havent seen for years! and now they’re all spread out all over the place going to different colleges. i might just have to make some trips to go visit them. muahaha.

anyway, it’s an exciting reunion time, and i’m looking forward to seeing everyone again! yay!

today is my birthday. i’m 24 years old.

never before in my life have i been more accomplished, but felt more unpreductive. after all, i am a college graduate. the first of all the grandchildren! i’ve lived in a foreign country. actually 2 foreign countries. i’ve held many jobs, gotten a lot done at them, and learned a lot from them. i’ve been everything from a janitor to a manager.

but now i’m at a place where i have no set future. no school path to follow. everything is open and waiting.

on the one hand, it’s really great. i have the freedom to choose to do whatever i want! i can do anything i feel like and move anywhere (in the US) i want to. i have so many options i dont know what to do with them all.

but on the other hand, without this set future, i sortof don’t know what to do with myself. i dont know what i want to “be when i grow up”. all the things i really like to do don’t really amount to a carreer. for instance, i really like making weird sculptures out of things, but let’s face it: artists are generally a poor group of people. and i don’t really want to live with my parents in tracy for the rest of my life, trying to make weird sculptures. i LIKE being successful. i LIKE moving up in the world, and i also like some material stuff, which requires money. and i can’t really do any of those things with the kind of art i like doing.

it’s ok, i’ve already come to close with the idea that my artwork can be a hobby.

i also like baking or i was thinking of going into candy making. how amazingly fun would that be?! but then again, maybe it’s more of a hobby type of thing.

right now i’m thinking i might go into the tourist industry. work with students who like to travel. after all, i feel like a student still, and i like to travel. i can relate to the customers, and hey, probably get a nice little travel discount while i’m at it. this way, i’ll be around laid back people most of the time (i like to think most students who want to travel are pretty laid back) AND satisfy my urge to see the world. what could be better? meanwhile, i can make weird sculptures and bake and make candy in my free time.

the only bad thing is, i dont have any money. i need a bit to start out a whole new life. i dont have a job. i have too many vacation plans that interfere with finding a job, and i dont WANT to find a job. i’m unmotivated right now, and i dont really like the feeling.

i need to start doing something. i think what i will do is read all the harry potter books again so i’ll be fresh when the new one comes out. accomplishment? i think so.

happy birthday to me.

i’ve had the blog for almost a year. it went by really fast. it’s weird to be back home sometimes, like i havent accomplished anything. but i’ve actually accomplished a lot. and i AM back in tracy, but in a house i’ve never actually lived in. so it feels sortof new.

at this crossroads of my life, i find myself looking toward a bunch of empty space. my future is totally unplanned, for the first real time ever. i’ve always been in school. always had that map of the school year to plan my life around. i still see the calendar in my head in a school year way. i’ve always pictured the calendar sortof like a boardgame. say you take a wall calendar and cut out all the pictures or frilly things. just leave the boxes with the numbers. then lay them flat on the ground, in a circle. well, more of an oval actually. and i guess as the year moves on, the little “me” gamepiece moves from square to square, jumping from month to month. i dont know why, but i’ve always pictured the calendar in my head this way. strange.

i would draw it for you, but i can’t draw on this.

speaking of….. sortof….. facebook, a networking website for all those not familiar with it: sortof like myspace… has upped the ante and is taking over! some say it’s gotten out of control. there are now “applications” that you can add to your profile. like… there’s the music application, and the movies application. so you can put what music you like or what movies you want to see. and they come with pretty pictures so it’s not just a bunch of writing. and you can share them with your friends, and compare who wants to see what.

i was against the applications until someone sent me the “fortune cookie” application, which i had to check out. pretty much you can get a new fortune whenever you feel like it! you don’t get to eat the cookie though. but THEN i stumbled upon the greatest application yet! the graffiti application! you can actually color on people’s “walls” as they are called, and they can color on yours. it’s amazing and i love it.

anywhooooo.

back to the original topic: it’s been almost a year since i started this blog. in that year i have:

-gone to live in scotland
-gotten a job in scotland (yay!)
-moved over to ireland
-got a job in ireland (boo)
-broke up with significant other (boo)
-moved back home in pit of despair (haha just kidding)
-painted room in parent’s home in attempt to make it my own
-got rejected from consulting job
-was given false hope at a temp agency
-got a kitten (yay!)

that’s pretty much up to date. and now i sit here without really much to do. soon i will go to sleep, which i seem to be doing a lot of these days (stinkin benadryl makes me tired). then tomorrow mom and i will get up and sort out things for the garage sale, and then tommy will come, and then we will all go out to dinner for my birthday! (even though my birthday is on monday.) and then saturday we must wake up super duper early for the garage sale, and then go to the baileys’ house for gerod’s graduation party. sunday is father’s day, but we’ll probably leave dad alone so he can study. and the rest of my week is open for interpretation.

i think it’s time for a list.

things i want to do on my roadtrip across america:
-wear wigs and pretend to be someone else
-go to diners
-camp in death valley (scary!)
-take modeling sunglasses pictures everywhere
-ride a rollar coaster (or more than one) in the mall of america
-see scranton
-hang out in new york city
-visit my apparently crazy family members
-see old faithful
-skip in washington DC
-check out new orleans
-thumbwrestle a stranger in texas (why texas? why NOT texas?! also, they have challenged me with the “don’t mess with texas” slogan. it’s ON.)
-go swimming in the atlantic ocean
-take a raft down the mississippi (or a boat…)
-sky dive in the great plains

i think that’s a pretty good list of things to do. i’ll think of more i’m sure. OH!

-visit hershey town USA!!! a town made of chocolate! wooooooo!!!

the end.

i think taking benadryl before bed has caused me to have some weird dreams. it’s the only explanation i can think of. because my dream had absolutely NOTHING to do with the movies i saw last night (dream girls and parts of notting hill). i guess it could have resembled pan’s labyrinth a little bit, but sortof not.

anyway, it was scary and intense.

i was camping or staying on this craggy mountain, with lots of crevices and rocks everywhere. it was an island, because the ocean was surrounding it, and there were some cool beaches. i was with a few other people my age. i think we had all our gear stashed by one of the beaches. the purpose for our stay is hazy in my mind, but i remember clearly explaining to someone later on in the dream that at a certain point all of us were making cakes. so we might have been there on some retreat making cakes. (like top chef that i saw yesterday.) anyway, it was all good until one of our assignments was not working out. we were supposed to be making “daisy cakes” for someone, and none of them were turning out well. they all looked pretty crappy actually. at that point i had gone somewhere else to hang out somewhere. i guess it was a just for fun competition, or not a competition at all. in any case, i did not HAVE to be with the others making daisy cakes.

anyway. there’s a bunch of bits missing, but at some point i came back to see the disaster that was the daisy cakes. so i offered to help. and we all decided we needed a break. so…. we needed to do something around the fire pit. now, earlier in the dream someone in our group had said some incantation and created fire from nothing. it was implied that we could all do it, and since we needed some fire in the pit, it was now my turn to try. so i went over to where the pit was. it wasn’t really a pit: just a rocky-type area with an indentation in the middle where a bunch of dry grass was growing. i said some word and pointed, and felt something sting the tip of my tongue and jump off and land into the pit: i had created fire from that special word. awed at my own power, i looked at the fire for a few seconds and realized it was dying so i put some more dry grass on it, and called for the other people. they all came running over, and started looking for wood. there was a point on the mountain where fire was always burning, but never spreading. one guy (who i think was my friend jessica’s boyfriend james) took a piece of burning wood from that area and came over and stuck it in the grass in my fire area. immediately it blazed up, and we all took a step back. i started to walk away to go find some more wood. i turned around and something compelled me to say another mysterious word. maybe it was the urge to keep the blaze going. anyway, i said something, and the stick of wood broke apart, and and arm and then a head and then a body came exploding up through the fire. it was a devlish woman, screaming at us and cursing and speaking the mysterious fire language. she pointed to the hill where the fire always burned, and screamed some more words. at this point everyone had started running away. i already had a head start, and i hid behind some rocks, peeking over the top to see what happened. the devil fire lady made the hill with the fire come crumbling down, causing a rock avalanche. everyone was able to run away, i think. when the rocks started falling, i just took off around the mountain.

it was the scariest thing i’ve ever seen. after that, the oceans started swelling up and rocks were falling everywhere. computers appeared out of nowhere and relief teams started showing up with people’s parents. my dad had heard what happened on the news and had sent me an email. i started emailing him back, but got sidetracked. my mom showed up and was joking around with her friends. brett was somehwere on the island, so i started looking for him. there was a whole gallery set up with a bunch of sculptures: since the “accident” (which to me had only happened minutes or maybe hours before and was still going on) the pieces were worth much more. people had rescued what they found on the island and put them on display, as if it were a museum. i saw my brother looking at one he had made. i told him all of my stuff was in my bag, and wondered out loud if it would be found in a million years and be considered special. my parents (yes my dad too) eventually found us and i tried to explain what happened, how it was my fault for starting the fire. how i said the magic word to bring the devil fire woman. my mom said she didnt believe me, and i told her i was a skeptic too, but i SAW it, created it! i told her she should ask the people i was with, but then i realized i didn’t even know if those people were still alive.

towards the end, we were lining up for something (probably for a plane/helicopter ride out of the area) and a girl next to me, who i think was mandy moore, said if i needed to show her video to people to counsel them, i could. i thanked her.

then i woke up.

it was actually a very scary, intense, weird dream. i need to stop taking benadryl before bed i think. but it’s the only thing that works!

today i:

- got up early
- drove to stockton for my interview with office team
- took 3 multiple choice tests and did ok
- bought a dress and a tank top for under $10
- ate lots of puffy cheetos
- ate corn dogs!
- did a mega sudoku puzzle
- watched a cheesy romeo+juliet spinoff that ended happily ever after and starred angelina jolie
- watched Oprah asking a woman if she held her own daughter’s decapatated head in her arms while watching her family pulled from a car accident. (yes, the woman did.)
- watched a little bit of law and order.
- checked out the dispatch rumor: it’s true, they ARE playing in new york on july 15th.
- mourned the fact that i can not possibly go to this concert
- checked ticket prices and availabilities anyway

and now this.

all in all….. i could have been a bit more productive today. but man, that sudoku puzzle was HARD! plus all the tv was so intriguing i had to watch it.

and tomorrow…. i might go bowling.