What is the opposite sentiment of "hot-diggity"?

Today I woke up to the usual squirrel chatter outside my window. They only scratch and squawk at my window on weekends when I try to sleep in. I tried, somewhat successfully, to scare them away by banging on the window and yelling foul curses at them. Then I went back to my sheets instead of going for the run that I'd promised myself the night before.

An hour later, in which hour I did not sleep, it began to rain. Oh well, so much for the run, I thought. No sense in getting soaked for a little exercise. Actually, I thought, hot-diggity! I don't have to run!!

So, I made a lazy morning, eventually making coffee and eating breakfast. I braved the rain to go out in search of hard white whole wheat flour, which is apparently somewhat scarce. And on the way to Rainbow Whole Foods (the only place I've been able to find it) through the pouring rain what should I see but some punk girl out . . . running! AUGH! If one person can do run in the rain, I can no longer claim that excuse.

And then I was unable to think up a counter-phrase to "hot-diggity" which only furthered my frustration.

Don't worry, though, whoever you are (I'm sure you were very concerned). I've had a mostly productive morning despite that bad decision and the loss of my perfectly good excuse. Except for I must have left something out of that bread recipe when I copied it down because it came out way too dry. Sigh.

The Going Home Phenomenon

It never fails. I plan a trip to Mom and Dad's. I pack . . . carefully and (sometimes) sparsely. I return laden with a trunk full of . . . what?

I have no idea what my trunk is full of or where all this stuff keeps coming from. I've been trying to unravel this phenomenon for years now, but it never fails to occur, and I always fail to realize what's happening before it's too late.

This Christmas I was determined that it wouldn't happen. As a matter of fact, there was no way it could happen. I went home loaded up with Christmas gifts. Surely I would finally return to Jackson with less stuff than I had when I left.

HA!

I could barely close my trunk and filled up the backseat, too. ARG!

My current theory is that my parents are better at giving/ gilting stuff away than I am at saying no.

In other news: Aunt Melinda's chocolate truffles are the best, and at least if I bring them back with me, I can eat them up. Of course, then they stay with me in a quite different way . . . hmmm.

Please no

A tell-tale tickle and scratchiness in the throat. . .

A slight feeling of befuddlement and heaviness in the head. . .

Oh! Please spare me and by no means develop further! While despondently acknowledging your foul intentions to curse me with your presence, I beg you, Evil Head Cold, leave me alone!

Bacteria are such jerks. Ug.

Or, who knows. . .

Viruses are such jerks. Ick.

Ahh, Christmas! That magical time of year when a young man's fancy turns to. . . no, that's not it. Ahhh, Christmas! That magical time of year when people, overcome with goodwill toward all men, give gifts of food to each other because we all have so much stuff that there isn't anything left to give (unless it costs over $200).

I am fat.

This will be our first Christmas in Mom and Dad's new house. It's a bit smaller than their old house, but in many ways I like it more. It seems to fit them: Dad has his computer/engineering room; Mom has her sewing room and multiple reading areas; they both have a cozy yet adequately spaced kitchen for all their health food; and they have three beds, one for each of the kids.

I'm reading Madeline L'Engle's book A Wind in the Door and enjoying it, though it's a bit strange. I keep wavering between enjoying the story and wondering what point she's trying to make, if any. Who knows, maybe my worldview is warping and I'm not even aware! I've got to be on my guard or I could end up believing something I don't even believe!! Ack!

In other news: I'm exploring graduate programs. At the moment I'm researching humanities programs for one major reason. The most memorable, exciting, and profitable class I took in my whole undergraduate career was a Great Books class on the modern world. I learned more in that class than in all my upper level English classes combined. If I started a grad program in literature, I guarantee that after two months I would start shooting my toes off one day at a time. Literature is fine and dandy, but it is much richer when studied in conjunction with history, philosophy, science, psychology, and all the other parts of life that make it rich. I may be ignorant (part of the reason I am posting this: please, all you wise people, shower your knowledge on me!), but a general humanities degree seems to address all those areas. Plus U of Chicago has a program AND a University Press, which would hopefully mean that I could continue working in academic publishing. . . hopefully, hopefully on the editorial side.

And now it's time to end this post. I feel like I just wrote an email to a friend I haven't communicated with in a long time.

Grrrr.

Amazon super-saver shipping is fantastic.

UPS ground service stinks.

In a moment of weakness, I ordered some books from Amazon. Yes, I have spent more on my Christmas presents than on any I've bought for others. But discussing that further simply opens the floor to my problems with sin, self-infatuation, greed, and gluttony, which digresses from the point of this post.

The point of this post is to complain (yes, Uncle Jim, to complain). I love super-saver shipping because it always says it will be three weeks before you receive your package, and you've usually received it within five days. It sets your expectations low for you so that you can only be pleasantly surprised.

So I ordered these books and would track them occasionally from my computer. Within two days I saw an "arrival scan" for Jackson, MS. I expected to go home that night and find my terribly exciting new books waiting for me. They weren't. But that was fine. They were somewhere in Jackson, so I figured by the next day I'd see them.

The next day I checked the tracking site again, and it said something about "mis-sorted by carrier" in FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA.

?????

UG! Fine. So two days after they totally botched, shipping my package that was a matter of five miles from my house to some place five DAYS from my house, they finally have "departure scan" from Fargo.

If only machines ran the world, we wouldn't have mistakes like this. My life has just fallen to pieces with all this "mis-sorting" saga. How do they expect a girl to sleep at night when packages are randomly mis-sorted and sent to Fargo? It just removes all sense of peace and joy from my life. At this time of year that's just wrong.

I am disgruntled.