It's not all stupid

Have you seen Armageddon? You know the space scene where the nuclear bomb is being detonated from Earth and the people on the spacecraft have, like, five minutes to figure out which wires to cut before they’re blown to bits and the world ends because of the asteroid they were originally on their way to destroy? Not to exaggerate or anything, but I feel like that scene pretty much equaled my life from last August until last December. When this hellacious stretch of time (I will refrain from boring you with the details but know this: I am lucky to be alive. I am also super dramatic, so there’s that) finally came to a close, I collapsed on the couch for several days in a row and alternated between napping, watching The Big Bang Theory, napping some more, and watching Armageddon (hence the above reference). Taylor, who for some time only saw me as I left in the morning and then when I collapsed into bed at night, began circling the couch occasionally, either asking who I was, asking if I was going to shower eventually, or making fun of me for crying every time I watched Bruce Willis say goodbye to his daughter before hand-detonating the bomb that saved the world. What a brave, brave man (that sentence could apply to both Bruce Willis for saving the world and to Taylor for daring to interrupt my movie with inferences about my hygiene). After surviving these crazy months, I think I can say that I know what Bruce was feeling in those last moments. Except for the actually being in space part. And the fate of the entire planet depending on me part. And the stone-faced acceptance of death part…actually no, I did experience that. The point is we both had our troubles. The other point is that I’m back, for a moment at least, to chat about how things are going over here in the land of the east.

As you may have inferred from the tone of my first few post-move blogs, my semi-permanent departure from home reduced me to a heartbroken blob of jelly for some time. I was a desperate, lonely woman – lonely enough that I may have considered befriending the homeless guys outside of Dunkin Doughnuts who called me a bitch one day and then asked me to buy them a sandwich. Now that I’ve just about made it through 1 year, 5 months, and 19 days over here, I find myself feeling slightly adjusted (read: nightly weeping is no longer the norm) and I think the time has come to give face to some of the positive things that have been creeping in the background with barely a nod from yours truly. I’m starting small since a blog that is not a tirade against the bitter injustices of the world is kind of a new thing for me…

One of my best post-move moments may very well have been discovering the wonders of the headphones that came with my Galaxy SIII. I bought it a while ago and tossed the accompanying headphones into a junk drawer, thinking they were cheesy and something I would have no use for. Somehow, they made it to Delaware with me and made themselves useful the other day when my sweet pink headphones sputtered out their last musical note. Once out of the package, I noticed they had some sort of volume control button on the wires and, forgetting they had come with my phone, I tried them out with my Ipod. This led to some weird fast forward/rewind phenomenon that just ended up pissing me off. I relayed this information to Taylor, who suggested I plug them into my phone and pretend like I lived in the 21^st century. I did this when he wasn’t looking and decided they were still useless because I never listen to music on my phone. Then Taylor, who must have known what I was doing, called me from the other room. I pushed the little square on the headphone wire and it instantly paused my music and answered the call. “Oh my god!!” I yelled, “It answered the phone!!” to which Taylor responded, sounding annoyed, that I didn’t have to scream. I informed him that I needed to be louder since I didn’t have the phone up to my mouth. He said, “Babe. It doesn’t have to be near your mouth”. I was astounded by this until I figured that it must just turn on the speaker phone when it answers, so I decided to test how powerful the speaker phone was by putting the phone as far away from me as possible and asking whispered questions. I suddenly realized what was happening when Taylor was able to answer the questions I whispered even when I was laying on the floor with the phone stretched as far away from me as the headphone wires would allow. I jumped up and burst out of the bedroom door, yelling that I was pretty sure these headphone wires had a microphone in them somewhere. Taylor looked flabbergasted and yelled “Holy shit!”

 I only realized later that he was being facetious, so I had an hour or so of genuine wonder that I thought he was sharing with me. Apparently, you can be in your twenties in the 21^st century and be completely unaware of basic technological advances. Regardless, I’ve been taking all my calls with my headphones in, and feeling pretty cool about it. 

While it is true that this could have happened just as easily in Idaho, points go to the east by simple virtue of the fact that it happened here when everything else was stupid. Well, almost everything else; I’ll be back later with other non-stupid stuff happening outside of Idaho borders, because while I still can’t say that I love it here, I guess I'm okay with admitting that it’s not all stupid.