iwant itunes...

this summer i went to europe with a couple friends of mine.  i had a total blast, but (as happens when you go to a continent that essentially uses the US dollar as toilet paper) i came back broke. before going on this trip, i scrimped and saved for an entire year.  i rode my bike and walked to work...i ate an ungodly amount of leftovers...i never set foot within 100 yards of a mall.  but for all that hard work, i still came home in the hole.  kim and i had big plans for the first paycheck i would receive upon my return to the glorious life that is substitute teaching: we were gonna go to huntington beach an blow every dime on clothes and alcohol.  we might be drunk and broke again, but it would remind us of being in madrid together and at least we'd look hella good...

my other friend, sara, knew about my plan and a month ago asked if i ever went to california like i had planned...did i blow my first check like i had wanted to?  i told her yeah, on my health insurance.  the blue cross/blue shield got every last dime....them and the sprint company.  blew the entire wad in one shot.  it was almost as satisfying as taking a road trip...almost.

bright side: im finally operating in the black...a few hundred dollars in the black but hey....black is black and black is not red so i am no longer an incredibly stressed out individual.  owing people money sends me into a panic.  if i was buying a house, i'd rather sell my kidney on the black market than ask any bank for a loan to cover the down payment.  needless to say i have the most amazing credit score you've ever seen.  

so im in the black, but im living like im in the red....just for a few months until im not just a few hundred in the black, but a couple thousand.  a few hundred in the black is like being two thousand in the red as far as im concerned.  call me anal, but its how i roll.  

needless to say, i dont buy anything i dont have to.  i dont go out with friends, i dont go shopping, i live off whatever scraps my parents dont eat....even putting gas in my car (a necessary obligation that i should be ok with) hurts me inside.  especially since i just found out that my bike tire is leaking air and i cant ride it until i patch the hole...a task i have no idea how to do and probably have to buy something overpriced to complete.  

if money was an animated being with cognitive abilities and emotions, i would give it a big fat middle finger and tell it to go to hell...we dont need it...we could go back to the barter system and be just fine.  

this is especially true today because i am sitting at a frigidly cold coffee shop, writing and listening to my itunes and was overwhelmed with a mood-altering realization: i am completely sick of my music (exceptions made, obviously, for the dave matthews band, iron and wine, and sara mclachlan).  i want to buy the tegan and sara album ive put off buying for a year, everything ever produced by the frames, and the drastic fantastic album by kt tunstall.  but nooooo....i only have $400 in the bank and the bills will show up in my mailbox by the end of the month.  iwant itunes and i cant have them because the european economy's sole mission in life is to suck the joy out of america's youth by charging them 15 dollars for a crummy baguette and twice as much for a rubbish hostel room in the summer than in january.  

it's unethical and i'm thinking of writing a very strongly worded letter to the leader of the european union.

hot sauce...

i came home from volleyball practice today feeling like i hadn't eaten in a week.  last season, because we had a low number on the team, i would have to step in at practice and play to run the 6 on 6 drills we need to imitate game-like circumstances.  but this year, because we have 15 solid athletes, i have become the most amazing ball-tossing drill-facilitator you've ever seen.   i do a lot of standing and watching...i toss a ball from time to time...it's pretty amazing.  but today, my services were needed on the court and so i ran the set on my side of the net.  

no problem...i'm in decent shape...not decent "volleyball shape" mind you (being in shape and being in "volleyball shape" are two very different things, but that's another story for another blog)...but i could run around without feeling like i was going to die and actually put the ball where it needed to be most of the time.  but by the time practice was over i was soaked through....saturated in my own sweat. because of this year's budget cuts, the air in the gym is not turned on over the weekends.  so that means on any given saturday, in one gym there are three teams running around playing volleyball.  this roughly equates to 45 sweaty kids and one stand-in coach contributing their body heat to the already stifling conditions.  

i was sweaty and gross and starving.  i had eaten a bagel that morning, but had not anticipated playing volleyball for an hour and a half.  if i do anything that requires more energy than sitting in front of my computer, i need protein....lots of protein.  i burned through my bagel before the girls had even set up the net.  i was running on fumes by the time i had finished practice and hurried home to cook myself lunch.

if i'd had a 9 oz filet in my fridge, i'd have eaten that raw, but im broke so i ate the poor man's protein...eggs.  as i was finishing them up, i poured some hot sauce over top while they were still in the pan.  the salsa had been in the fridge and was cold...nothing puts a damper on having breakfast for lunch like cold salsa making hot eggs lukewarm.  so i thought i'd heat it up.  but as i lifted the pan to slide my salsa laden eggs onto the plate some of the sauce dripped off the top of the egg, slid onto the frying pan surface, and immediately shot into my eye.  i popped off some four letter words as the spicy projectile liquid singed my cornea and immediately rushed over to the sink to flush it out.  it burned something fierce and i wondered if my vision would finally be impaired...by hot sauce of all things. if it was, would i get to wear an eye patch?

the best part of this entire scenario was that my mom was 15 feet away, so engrossed in whatever she was doing on the computer that she never noticed that pace  picante had become airborne and was searing my retina.  i could be blinded right now and she'd have been reading her emails.