jaime[alyse]green

It all started when I put ketchup in my leftover tsimmes.

(Marissa also started it last night, without either of us realizing.)

Happy Rosh Hashanah, nonbelievers! Ketchup in tsimmes is surprisingly good!

Two of my best friends are back from three weeks away and we went to the bar where the old man waiter brings you free bad tapas for as long as you keep drinking, and then I came home to send work emails and sober up with coconut water and ice cream.

And Tanner is re-watching The League for work and it is AWESOME.

awesomeringerud replied to your post: Eggs, frozen spinach, homemade basil/garlic…

I didn’t know you also had Pepsi Max in the fridge. It’s funny, cause I know I have a bottle in there, but I didn’t see yours. Must have just missed it.

Okay so it’s the dinner of grad schoolers who used to be decent human beings and also steal their boyfriends’ sodas.

Also the butter itself was not homemade - my doing was the compounding it with stuff. (I did that over the summer.)

Eggs, frozen spinach, homemade basil/garlic compound butter, Pepsi Max: the dinner of grad school students who, like even a month ago, used to be respectable people.

Baby dinosaur kale, canned tuna, feta, mint, greenmarket grapes.

Be bold with random shit you have on hand, and you may end up with something impressive.

I am writing at a cafe, for the price of an espresso. (I found an outlet!)

I am super hungry, but lunch here is not in my budget.

I have in my bag: the end of a bar of chocolate, a larabar, a can of tuna, watermelon and feta, some kale. (This wasn’t where I quite meant to be at lunchtime.)

Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadschool lyfe.

I’m reading Henry Miller self-indulge about Greece. 200 pages worth. How many mint Tofuti Cuties am I allowed to get myself through?

You know, I thought leaving an international aid organization for grad school would mean *less* reading about al-Shabaab and the famine in Somalia.

Silly Jaime.

Doing homework while heating-padding the stress knot that grad school has implanted in my neck. I think that all works out to even, right?

I have to stop this cross-stitch every two rows to rethread. This is UNTENABLE. I do not have enough ice cream sandwiches to cope.

Problem: You want to order in dinner, but you haven’t eaten a single vegetable all day.

Solution 1: Cook dinner. You have kale and broccoli and other lovely things.

Solution 2: Order Chinese food. Lots of broccoli. Inhale that shit. Feel awesome.*

*not awesome

I have read 70 pages of Persuasion today. There are about 130 left. I should get back to that.

But my desk is clean and some other stuff and I had coffee with Allison and in what I was reading just now in the book I remembered her and James making fun of some “Catch me!” bullshit that some bint pulls in this book, I don’t even remember when, maybe ten years ago I heard them say that, and have I mentioned that grad school has driven me to keep wine on hand in the apartment?

Me: Have a good day at work!
Tanner: Have a good day off!

I guess this is the sort of day off I get in school. Errands, pajamas, laundry, cleaning off my desk to make it a functional book depository. And hopefully 100 pages of Persuasion.

I recognize that the above list describes a lovely Saturday for many people. Including at least two of my best friends (and one of their mothers).

And check out these pajamas! This hoodie is warm and comfortable and is never worn outside the house. And I get to eat my meals not out of an insulated bag.

So Delicious Neapolitan Sandwiches < < < Tofuti Cuties

It is probably my fault for documenting the weirdnesses of my reception job via tumblr and nowhere else, but good god I wish the search function on this fucking thing worked. 

It thinks I never wrote the word “Somalia.” “Go fuck yourself” - also zero results. LIES LIES LIES.

ALSO BECAUSE I AM WRITING AGAIN TOO MUCH CAFFEINE.

adiprose:

synecdoche:

what if, as a nation, we took all of our hatred for zooey deschanel and put it towards our hatred for whitney cummings

PREACH. I see her signs in NYC saying “When we say we’re fine we are going to secretly stab you” I want to punch something. IT’S SO RETRO HORRIBLE. 

I think the concept for Zooey Deschanel’s new show is dumb, but the ads for Whitney are up there with protesters at abortion clinics among things that make me angry as a woman.

It’s not rational or fair, but it’s true.

And just an hour or two after writing paragraphs singing the praises of to-do lists, I am clinging to mine like a drowning lady to a lifesaver. It is a very one foot in front of the other, just go to the next thing on the list, don’t panic, don’t panic, sort of thing.

So now I am going to write a paragraph in the style of James Agee, good luck with that.

bookavore:

I wrote everything down.

That’s basically all I did.

There’s a lot more to the Getting Things Done method than that, most of it very helpful, but this was at the core of it all, for me. I wrote things down when I thought about them, and then when I realized I’d forgotten to do something, I took it as a reminder that I wasn’t writing everything down. Sometimes I sat down and tried to think of everything I had to do and had ever wanted to do, and wrote it all down. Unless it was something I could literally do at the second I thought of it, I wrote it down. Sometimes I wrote it down on scrap paper, sometimes I sent myself an email. Eventually I came to use Remember The Milk for everything. David Allen calls this “capturing,” and if you’ve ever felt like your brain is full of birds that would like to kill you, you will understand why.

Read More

Preach it.

This is the only thing getting me through these mad weeks of adjusting to grad school, wildly fluctuating tutoring work, and a billion other things. I use the Epic Win app on my phone - maybe not the sleekest or richest to-do list app, but it has a cute RPG interface, and my character is a skeleton named Bonerface - and EVERYTHING is on there. I’ve even started adding time estimates (“mock test google doc filing 9:30-10,” “grade essays 10-10:30,” “read In Patagonia 12-1”) this week because the structure of my days is new and messy, and I need to make sure I have time for all the things I’m thinking of.

I also track my spending with an app (Ace Budget, I love it), and my bigger-scale budget in an excel sheet. This doesn’t mean I’m good with money. It means I’m *not* good with money but I’m trying not to fail at life (ie overdraw my bank account, go back into credit card debt). I need the list because my brain doesn’t naturally do this. (And because my life is in a million different piles.) I procrastinate. I’m late for everything. But I really want to get my homework done and not forget emails (or texts) from my students parents and have vegetables to eat, so this is how I manage.

Top Gear, Doritos, a glass from a bottle of wine that’s been in the fridge, recorked, for at least six weeks.

This week’s Doctor Who did not get me to Amelie levels of crying, but probably only because I was not in a darkened theatre. At one point I did pull my sweatshirt hood over my head, though, for privacy.

I blame grad school.

And Tanner’s family. The whole state of Minnesota, really.

glittermixed:

popquizkid:

Can “princess” stop being a thing we encourage little girls to aspire to?

It’s so unattainable.

And usually “princesses” grow up to be “assholes.”

When I was little I never wanted to be a princess, I wanted to be the queen. The queen had actual power- all the princess was is the King and Queen’s daughter and who cares about that?

And then she grew up to love RuPaul and Mama Duggar. No big surprises, really.

can survive many hours just cooled by an ice pack

don’t require reheating (or preparation) to be enjoyed

are pretty cheap

have lots of vegetables and protein and healthiness

and are otherwise appropriate for my grad school itinerant life?

My undergrad college library had one big Absolute Quiet Room. Grad school seems to have like fifteen small ones, on several floors of library. The walls are lined with books, and color-coded zones tell you if/what you can eat or drink.

I am the weird girl sitting at the far end in the one upholstered chair, trying to be sneaky about having her feet out of her wet shoes, killing time before her First Class of Grad School sending emails from her phone. The other five people working in this room are guys.

I have paper towels in my bag that I’m not bold enough to scrunch into my shoes.

I just put a book in my lap to seem more legit.