I hate this.

I've begun to realize that I say the phrase "I hate" far too much. I think I've always said it a little too often, using it to denote things that annoyed me, rather than things I truly hated. And that's still the way I use it, but I hear it coming from my mouth with alarming frequency, and, as an addendum to my New Year's Resolution to be less angry, would like to curb it.

So, in an effort to direct my attention away from the things that I hate, allow me to list some things that I love:

• My husband
• My family
• My friends
• My pets
• The Office
• The new Kanye West CD, which I know I gave only a middling grade to before, but with which I am now totally obsessed. As a side note, I would love to be as confident as Kanye, with lines like "I think it's time you should get behind me but my head's so big you can't sit behind me."
• LeBron James
• Ric Flair (yes, I still love Ric Flair)
• Winter
• Cake (the band, not the food-- I don't actually really like cake very much)
• Bacon bits
• Babies
• David Sedaris
• Sloppy Joes
• Target
• Mix CDs
• Post Secret

And many more!

So there's still a lot of love to go around, even if I kind of hate the way I've been feeling lately...

You won't like me when I'm angry.

When I was in graduate school (which is a phrase I very much enjoy saying, because it reminds me of a time when I was actually a writer, as opposed to an auditor, which is still fine, but not quite as impressive), I went to a counselor named Etta who diagnosed me with an anger problem, which fucking pissed me off.

Because at the time, I did not see myself as particularly angry. It would make me mad, yes, when I would go to visit Etta and tell her I was doing very well that particular week, and she would say, "Okay, great! Let's talk about when you were nine and you were ugly and no one liked you." So maybe she got a skewed view of the situation. But that was more of an Etta problem than an anger problem.

But now I'm starting to wonder if maybe I really sort of do have an anger problem, at least lately.

At first I was just taking it out on passing traffic. Normally, I am a very friendly driver, and don't get stressed much if I'm running late or the traffic flow is moving slowly. But lately, I find myself leaning forward in my seat, kept in place only by my strap, ready to leap through my windshield and throttle those people who do not feel it necessary to abide by the speed limit, or who turn without their signals on. I also get angry at cute license plates and cars with ribbon magnets on them, because I feel if they really cared about their particular causes, they would man up and put a sticker on their car, rather than a removable magnet.

I've also become more of an angry person at work-- that person that you don't really want to go near, because they might launch into a diatribe about how it might be wise to give employees more than four days' notice that they're going to change the health insurance.

And Ashley got an earful of something I was angry about the other day-- I don't remember what it was, but I was pretty super pissed.

So one of my New Years' Resolutions this year (and I do make them early, in order to get used to the idea of sticking to them) is to become less of an angry person. Since I don't know how I got angry in the first place, this might be sort of difficult, but I'm definitely going to try, because I don't particularly enjoy it, and it certainly doesn't make me the best party guest for the holidays.

Perhaps I should call Etta and find out what she thinks about it. But she'd probably just refer me to her feeling wheel and then tell me to buy myself something nice, which generally seemed to be her approach to mental healing.

See this cat? She shat in three separate places in my car on the way to my parents' house tonight. Now my nose if full of cat crap smell, and my head hurts, and my hands are all itchy from upholstery cleaner.

I must find something more pleasant to be thankful for.

Tuffy love

I am not generally the kind of person who mopes about being "old"-- in fact, I find this behavior irksome in anyone under the age of 67, which is the age I have officially deemed as being the start of actual oldness. But I went to visit my college campus yesterday with my friends Denise and Melinda, and if anything can make you feel old, it's that.

Because it really still feels like I just left college. I still know all the words to the fight song and the alma mater and everything (which I realize is actually more of an old person thing to do, considering a young, cooler person than myself would have forgotten the words to those songs immediately, or, more likely, would never have learned them in the first place). I even remember the combination to my mailbox (so watch your back, box 678).

But I found myself, while checking out the campus, noting with disapproval all the changes that had been made. How dare they build a new gym? The old gym was perfectly fine, except for that one part over the pool that was caving in a little. And as Melinda pointed out, the new education building looks a little Hogwarts-y, which again, I do not condone.

At least my old building, the Arts and Humanities building, remains blockily stolid and antiseptic (the perfect setting for all creative writing workshops!). Of course, I didn't go inside, because my student ID is long gone, and something tells me they might not honor one that was issued in the previous millennium, so the whole building might be reconfigured in there, with rocket jet packs on the chairs and walls made of spun sugar candy.

All in all, even with the weird unsettled feeling of maybe not quite belonging as much as I once did, it was a highly satisfactory trip to good old Ashland University (up on the hill above the town/seen from miles around). And whenever I start to feel bad about my college days receding in the mirror behind me, I can at least console myself with the fact that I am way hotter now.

Dig my tiara and creepy Geisha-esque too-light foundation, yall!

This week in reviews

For some reason, perhaps pity, or perhaps just to shut my whining maw, the fates visited me with loads of free awesomeness-- a friend from work gave me tickets to an advance preview of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and I was able to find both Britney Spears' Blackout AND Kanye West's Graduation at the award-winning Euclid Public Library (gooooo, library!). And so, in an effort to pay it forward, I will provide you all with my reviews of each, something I know you've been waiting for, because no one buys a Britney Spears album without checking with me first.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium: This movie got a scathingly horrible review from Entertainment Weekly, which is pretty much the bible by which I live my daily life, but we went anyway, because it was free, and because my arm was sore from Wii-overuse and I needed a break. But actually, I really, really enjoyed this movie a lot-- I thought it was funny, and smart, and it made me cry, which was super embarassing because the aforementioned friend from work is super grossed out by human emotion. I would very much recommend this movie, and not just because I have a weird Arrested Development crush on Jason Bateman (I love your cutie nose freckles, Teen Wolf Too!).

Thumbs down, however, to the crazy woman in the row in front of us who, after buying one of those industrial-sized tubs of popcorn that were designed solely in the off-chance that an actual elephant decided to spend $8.50 to watch In the Valley of Elah, dumped the entire thing into a plastic grocery bag and sent her five-year-old son out to the lobby to get it refilled (because apparently, if you have the tenacity to plow through one of those tubs, they reward you by giving you another tub). She repeated this action no less than three times, all the time smugly and loudly proclaiming how she slipped popcorn's stranglehold on the US economy. She also passed out ten cans of soda to the busload of children she had brought (which I am totally baffled by, because upon entrance to the advance screening, my purse was searched AND I had to walk through a metal detector), and produced a bag of candy as large as Brazil. Way to go, Lady Cheapington! You brought the movie theater snack industry to its knees.

Blackout: Conversely, Blackout got pretty good reviews, which is really the only reason I picked it up, and not because I still secretly enjoy listening to "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and pretending to slam my locker in a coy, come-hither fashion. However, I found this album shockingly unlistenable-- the last third of it might be totally awesome, but I will never know, as I had to turn it off somewhere in the middle of a song called "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)."

Graduation: I ain't saying it's a bad stinker/I'm just saying it's no "Golddigger." (Yes! I am an awesome rapper. Someone bring me some Louis Vuitton clothes now.) My favorite song on it so far is "Can't Tell Me Nothing," but "Stronger" is also fun. I was a bit perplexed by "Drunk and Hot Girls," but see an awesome opportunity for a collabo between he and Spears on "Drunk and Hot Girls Get Naked (I Got a Plan)."

Birdman Speaks

I hope you enjoy this footage of the Birdman, the super fanscot of the Philadelphia Eagles. Please note that I know this guy personally, and that makes me super mega awesome.

Kiim and Benjamiin get a Wii

In what will likely prove to be the stupidest idea ever in terms of ever getting our thank you notes out, Ben and I purchased a Nintendo Wii last night, and I must say, without qualifiers, that it is the coolest video game system ever. So far, I have defeated Ben at Wii Baseball, Wii Golf, Wii Bowling and Wii Shooting Range, thus proving once and for all that, at least on some level, I am good at sports.

The only major side effect has been that my Wii arm is very sore, and tends to pulse with muscle tics. This, after only one night of play, is slightly alarming. Alhtough I must admit that we repeatedly ignored the Wii's warnings that we should probably take a break and relax for a minute (That Wii, always thinking of our well-being!).

I will attempt not to let the Wii curtail my blogging habits, but it's really hard, knowing that every second that passes is a second that I am not working on my Wii backhand for Wii tennis, or further improving me Wii avatar, which looks a lot like me, only with this weird Rastafarian haircut, as apparently the Wii creators do not believe in offering curly hair as a hairstyle option.

WIBD?

Increasingly, I find myself asking the question, "What is Britney Spears doing right now?" I have kind of become obsessed with this-- I think, perhaps, because at work we are forced to watch Fox News during our lunch hour, and Fox News appears to be about 80% dedicated to the comings and goings of Ms. Spears. I generally know what she is wearing each day, what she looks like when she's sobbing uncontrollably, how she changes her hats to fit her moods, and what shapes the acne on her face is making from one day to the next.

But, I wonder, what is Britney doing during the hours of her day that are not covered by Fox News (which, weirdly, seems to have inked a deal with TMZ.com, which seems sort of odd for a news channel whose only other extensive coverage appears to be on Why the President Is Doing a Super Awesome Job!).

I mean, think about it-- it's 9:29 p.m. here in Cleveland right now, and I am wearing a big gray sweater and typing on my blog. That means it is 6:29 p.m. where Britney is (presumably) right now-- and what is she doing? Right now? Is she eating? Is she in some sort of yoga class? Right this minute, is she scratching her ass?

This concept can also be applied to pretty much anyone-- somewhere out in the world right now, the Pope is doing something. My mom is doing something. It's actually kind of mind-boggling, if you think about it-- all around the world, people that you know in real life and in TMZ life are doing things that you're not a part of, that you can only conjecture about.

This is, really, a concept that sometimes tends to overload my synapses, which is why I choose to focus more on the Britney situation.

So, if you had to hazard a guess, what would you think Britney is doing right now? My guess: buying a new hat. With a lollipop in her mouth. Holding a small dog. Without her children.

I'm willing to bet I'm right.

Okay, so clearly I haven't exactly done anything to make this writing group happen yet. I think I was hoping that I would wake up one day and be some sort of writing group starting guru, or that woodland creatures would have just set the whole thing up for me, so I could just log on and look like a hero. Lest I appear to be an Indian-giver of writing group promises, I will get this thing up and running. I just need to overcome some general malaise, which mainly seems to stem from the fact that, now that the wedding is over, I have so much free time that I literally don't know what to do with it, so I do absolutely nothing.

This is not strictly true; Ben was out of town this weekend, so on my first weekend of alone time since long before the wedding, I accomplished the following things:

1. Bought speakers for my laptop, whose own internal speakers had died long ago.

2. Listened to the shitty music I have on my laptop through my new speakers (for instance, right this very second I am listening to the "Strongbad Techno" song from Homestar Runner, and I just got done listening to "P.I.M.P." Oh, and Genesis' "No Son of Mine" just came on, so I'm going to have to skip it so that I don't fall to the ground in a gelatinous goo of total gaywadness).

3. Packed away my summer clothes, so my closet is now capri-free.

4. Thought about writing thank you cards, a little.

5. Watched season 7 of The Simpsons, arguably among the best of the seasons. Actually, I like season 7 of the season better than I like the actual, real-life season of spring. So that's saying a lot.

6. Pretended like I was going to work on my craptastic novel that I've been working on since high school, but didn't fool anyone, so went and watched reruns of I Love New York II.

7. Made the best Chex Mix, like, fucking, ever.

Oh, and, Becki's boyfriend Joe, who just happens to be the Philadelphia Eagles Birdman, was in a promo spot during the third quarter of the Eagles game yesterday, so I watched that about seventeen times. God, I wish he had been at the wedding, so he could have done that squawk.

(Note: I forgot to skip "No Son of Mine," and I just noticed it's still playing. Why do I have this? Of all the Genesis songs I could have, why this one? I wonder if I have that one about the homeless people that was on this same album. God, I was obsessed with this album when I was in the fifth grade. That's why I grew up to be such a lameass.)

So this week, Ben and I are rededicating ourselves to doing post-wedding wrap-up stuff (which is not nearly as much fun as pre-wedding stuff, because I know there's not going to be a big party after I finally buy the stamps for the as-yet-unwritten thank you cards), and then maybe I'll be ready to start the writing group. Those of you who expressed interest, do not despair! I promise it is just over the horizon.

Although it appears I'm going to have to go through and delete some of my mp3s first.