My best "that's what she said" or It's your belt that's supposed to buckle, not your chair

Since I can’t write a research paper about Marina Warner’s use of Romanticism to empower the unheard voices of women in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (still awake? that makes one of us…) I have decided to write here instead. 

I love Thanksgiving. I love the buzzing, bustling, flustered, red faced cooks clucking in the kitchen, knocking elbows and spilling and basting and stirring and dicing. I love the masses of cousins and babies and toddlers tumbling around the backyard, tripping over each other to get to “base” before the seeker tags them. I love the yelling and hugging and reuniting and the permanent smiles that everyone seems to have plastered onto their faces, whether they know it or not because they’re so completely happy. I love the noise, and the Macy’s Day Parade in the background, I love the sounds of everyone catching up and telling stories, desperately trying to get every detail in because it’s so good to have someone listen for once. I love family. I love how big my family is.

I love pie. My God, I love pie. I want to live in a pie. I want to die eating a pie. If I am ever excecuted, I want to be baked into a pie. PIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. 

I’m sweating pie. Cranberry Apple. My aunt decided to pull a “Brangelina” and call it “Crapple Pie” but thank goodness I was there to advise her against it. 

I love the feeling of being so so so full and warm and tired and how delicious it is to finally crawl between the sheets and fall into the best sleep of your life. 

And waking up to a billion people that do nothing but love you. 

Thanksgiving is such the best. 

Got yelled at for eating the crunchy French Onion crust off the top of the Green Bean Casserole. Got yelled at for eating a hole out of the pumpkin pie and filling the hole with whipped cream. I’m four, whatever. Now you have more fridge space. Ingrates. 

This dumb baby wanted me to pick him up while I was eating pie. I tried to toss him some of the crust to make him go away but it just kind of bounced off. I hope no one saw me. I think that would be awful to witness if the viewer wasn’t aware of just how much I love crapple pie. 

Some of my nerdier cousins wanted to watch Star Wars: A New Hope and I got my BEST THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID. EVER. Two in one night. My first one I had used before, but none of these people were there. 

Young Sarah was drinking gatorade and said ‘Is it in you?’ reading the label. TTWS#1

However, during Star Wars, which I wasn’t watching, I overheard parts and one was “You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought.”

TTWS. HAHAHA. I’m still laughing. Oh my.

They say when you’re fluent in a language, you dream in it. I think I’m fluent in Harry Potter. No complaints here. If I can’t live it, I can dream it. Sigh. 

I would most definitely be a Slytherin. Sad to say, or a Ravenclaw. 

Do you know what I love? The sound of keys. Not the jangly hipster janitor keys. Keyboard keys, typewriter keys. The machine gun barrage click click click incessantly pounding in my ears and nothing else. I love not knowing what I’m typing at all. Not having the slightest idea but the intense feeling of something flowing through inside me and out of my fingers and knowing it means something. It’s like a swelling, like a pressure, it’s like pouring something overflowing into a vat. And then when I’m done and I read it, I know exactly what I need. It feels like breathing. I love that too. 

Another thing I love is watching people sleep. Creepy? Very much. But hear me out, when people sleep they are so unguarded and vulnerable and gentle. They breathe slower and no matter what horrible turmoils they might be facing, for those few hours those troubles fade away. Sleep is so universal and so soft and gentle and quiet. 

I’m creepy. 

Sleepers are cute. 

Pretty sure every candid family picture of me from T’giving 2010 has me eating. 

Pretty sure every posed family picture of me from T’giving 2010 has me eating.

Pretty sure I’m still eating. Right now.

My metabolism is something I am SO thankful for. 

Also J.K. Rowling.

And toothpaste.

And YOU! 

Did you read the incessant ramblings of a silly little procrastinating lady? 

You need something to do more than me.

I suggest you do my paper. 

Love always,
Uzma Chowdhury, esquire.  

Get Low

This happened a while ago, but I have only very recently come to terms with this awful, awful embarassment.
It involves the bathroom and the classic Lil Jon rap known as "Get Low."

I have a horrible 8 AM class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Therefore I have to shower at 7 AM. It's bad. It's early. It's ungodly.
It's really hard to wake up in the morning. Especially with a horrible lofted bed that you have to climb down. And then trip over things on your floor and try not to wake your roommate and all you want to do is sleep. And it's COLD. The sun isn't even up. Luckily, no one is in the bathrooms so the good shower is free for the taking! It stays hot, has great water pressure, and doesn't spew brown liquid which is always a huge plus, for me anyway. I don't know about you. It even has a cute pink shower curtain!

Anyway, I get to the bathroom (somehow) and I blearily stumble into shower number five, the best one there is, and proceed with my shower in the foulest of morning moods. I'm standing under the stream of water, confused about everything, wondering where my umbrella is, forgetting I am showering, just having a bad morning....
 BUT THEN,
on the radio comes the deliciously familiar dance hit sounds of ba da dum dum dum da da dum da dum dum...THREE SIX NINE....STANDING REAL FINE...and at that moment I know that I will have a beautiful and wonderful day.

So of course it's really early and no one is in the bathroom so I decide to sing along. Really loudly.
Really profanely.
Screaming, quite literally, all of the bad words. I was having the time of my life, man...
TO THE WINDOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
And I'm singing and dancing and flailing...
TO THE WALLLLLLLLLL!
I'm pretty much screaming
TO THE SWEAT DRIP DOWN MY BALLLLLS!!!!
And leaping around in the shower...
ALL THESE B****S CRAWLLLLL!!!!
And in my furious dancing, I lose my footing....
and in the middle of:
AWWWW SKEET SKEET SKEET MOTHA F*****A!!!!!
I trip.
Out.
Naked.
You'd think it'd be ok because it's so early that no one can see.
It's not ok.
There are three girls in there brushing their teeth.
And they can see....
They can see...EVERYTHING.

So I just....walked back in.
And I waited till they were gone before I got out again.

Shorty crunk, so fresh, so clean...right?

Sigh. My life is a running sitcom.

Endings

At the end of everything, I like to thing that things always end up how they were supposed to end up and everyone is as happy as can be and we all get what we want, even if we didn't know what we wanted to begin with.

Even if it's different from what we thought we wanted. I like to think that things always work out the way they were supposed to and everyone keeps doing what he has to and life keeps going on and it's all just ok, and the light at the end of the tunnel stays bright because that's the only chance anyone has for real happiness, isn't it? The idea that things will get better, so it's ok if they go wrong for a little while? I think this is all called hope. I hope that I am right. I think, really, hope is all you need. It's reassuring. 

You just have to keep calm and carry on and know that things will be ok, eventually, even if they aren't right now.

You have to chin up, buttercup. 

At the end of the day, you suddenly realize that, really, your life is absolutely perfect and beautiful and you have no regrets, just decisions you have to live with and things you have to change. But that's ok because you can change things. That's why life is great. Because you can do it. Because it's graceful. Because it gives you chances. 

And when it's all said and done, no one grows old or gets hurt or gets sad or heartbroken or angry or selfish because everything that happens transforms you into who you were supposed to be. And that person is happy and alive and whole and immortal. 

I believe in all of these things completely, but that tiny, whiny, nagging someone deep inside me is always telling me I'm wrong and that sometimes you are sad and it lasts forever. 

I'm too young to know about any of this really. So we'll see how this all turns out. 

November is beautiful. It's a beautiful word. No vember. I think maybe 'vember' means all sad things. This is the month of no sad things. I don't do sadness. I love November.