OH. MY. GOSH.

our bunks, originally uploaded by pinprick.

the fisherman calls me yesterday while i'm at lunch and tells me we "need to to talk" and then gets me all nervous by saying he was missing me so much the other night he did something stupid, and the next thing you know he's telling me he'll be in town wednesday! as in, tomorrow! my fisherman! he bought a plane ticket and didn't make out with some naknek ho!

it's been three months. sometimes it doesn't feel that long because we're both busy working and we still get to talk pretty often, but once i realized he was going to be here soon it's like i finally felt how long it's been. we haven't seen each other for as long as we were on the boat, which seemed like a million years when i was there.

i am so excited to see him. i hope he still thinks i'm cute, obviously, and i hope he likes my people, but even though i'm a tiny bit nervous (in a good way) i have a feeling we're going to have a good time. he's going to get to go to portland with me and meet my people there, i'm going to get to show him all the things in town i love, we're going to get to pick out a bed together (i would try to make that not sound cheesy, but dammit, i'm too stoked), i'm going to get to take him out to eat and to movies and we're going to spend some serious time just sucking face like teenagers. awesome!

hooray for thanksgiving and hooray for awesome fisherman and hooray counting down the hours. i'm positively spazz-tastic right now, and i don't care who knows it.

blah

birthday hearse 1, originally uploaded by pinprick.

the apartment hunting is sucking. as in, sucking away my will to live, sucking seriously, sucking out my brain. the co-signer we got did not pass, and my parents don't want to do it. i'm not going to go into any details about that, but let me sum it up: suck. at this point i feel like no matter how much i like josh, no matter how badly i want out of this house, it's just not going to work out. i'm not going to throw good money after bad. i'm tentatively arm-wrestling my sister into looking at local places and resigning myself to the fact that i will be broke for a while and living here for a while longer as well. it's all a big downer, let me tell you. so i'm going to dump on you a little, then get over it.

i feel like making a t-shirt that says "razor blades are your friends!"

yummy yum yum

sausage finger 1, originally uploaded by pinprick.

meat and cheese and wine are awesome. you really can't go wrong there; it's like a holy food trifecta. here is photographic evidence that my fingers do indeed look an awful lot like cocktail wieners. the only real difference is that my fingers are longer and wieners are boneless. you also can't chew on my fingers in lieu of a snack, much as i might try.

i bought a giant hunk of brie tonight and my sister came home with two fun cheeses, a cotswald and mozzarella/prosciutto roll-thing. baby stood in the kitchen clapping and saying "yay! cheeeese!" we got our dairy on and baby tried to sneak sips of wine, which i think is as good a way as any to have dinner. i love that my sister thinks it's perfectly okay to just have cheese and nibbles for dinner. i love that baby is already excited about cheese and will eat hunks of real parmesan as well as onion-y cheeses with abandon. i'm going to miss living with them. my new roommate is a nice guy, but he's not nearly as charming as baby and i think seeing him shake his booty won't be as fun.

i'm pretty sure the apartment is a go, but i think i won't be able to move in until next weekend. that's fine with me because i have a whole lot of work to do this week and not having to pay rent one more week will be helpful. i had to take out a loan from the fisherman which made me both nervous and relieved. money has a tendency to fuck shit up, but the fact that he was so gracious and unperturbed makes me think this will be the exception. i'd rather owe him money right now than my parent's and truth be told no matter when i go i'm going to need some help to get out. from now on, i'm totally investing in my savings account. seat-of-your-pants living is fine for a while, but i think i might actually be over it. could this be growing up? oh dear.

this week marks my first full-time week of only being the cheese specialist. i got to do it for a whole day last week and it was crazy fun. i've always known i like cheese, but i had no idea i knew so much and would get so geekily excited about explaining to dorks that you can indeed eat the rind of brie and camembert and cambezola. i got to say "gorgonzola" a million times and help people pronounce "jarlsburg." i cut up tiny cubes of cheese and poked party frill toothpicks through them and made signs that said silly things like "pepperjack adds 'pep' to just about everything!" it's fun work. i'm sure it's going to be annoying too, like when i get in three pallets of cheese that i need to squish into one case or when i spend the day cutting up wheels of blue and wrapping them, but for the most part i think this job was just waiting for me to show up. in short, i totally love it. i can't stop saying "awesome!" when talking about it, and i can't stop thinking about all the rad stuff i'm going to do. it's a cheesy dorkout.

your daily dose of awesome

awesome sparkly, originally uploaded by pinprick.

man, i did not mean to sound so snarky earlier. i think about once a month we all get tired of bumping elbows and there always being someone in the bathroom and then we bitch and piss and moan and get on with shit. it's just that, unfortunately for you, you get to hear me thinking out loud about it. awesome!

no, not awesome. to make up for my pissy mood, here is a shot of a delicious dessert i ate the other day. i love how it's sparkly, and i can attest to the fact that it was just as good to eat as it was to look at.

i made a to-do list and have already crossed three things off it. i rule!

how do you spell amanda? a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g

seriously. if you polled the three people i live with, they would tell you stories. none of them would be good. if you asked baby, she wouldn't have a problem with me at all since i represent her favorite playmate and give her candy and hugs, but everyone else is less than thrilled with me. why? because lately i am apathetic to a fault, and have taken to responding to every question or concern with "dude, it's not a big deal," or an entirely unconvincing "ok." pop is beyond annoyed with the fact that i refuse to open my mail. i know what it all says and nine times out of ten it's "hey, give us money" and money i do not have so why read that shit? it's just a downer. mom is annoyed that i don't do much cleaning and my room is an unholy mess, and my sister is annoyed that mom doesn't actually tell me this but instead dumps it all on her. in general my sister and i are getting along quite well, but she is sick to death of hearing about how awful i am all the time, while no one actually says a thing to me. of if they do, it's after telling her all about it.

really, though, i can totally understand why everyone is less than pleased with me. i'm not loving myself that much right now, and i'm sick to death of living out in the middle of nowhere with no money, the longest drive to work on earth, and people who fret about my mail. i can't stand sleeping on a couch anymore, and even i hate the unholy mess my room has become. there's no room for me here, emotionally or physically. we're all going through some stuff and i think our physical closeness is just amplifying that. if we had our own spaces, our own addresses, we'd have some perspective. i don't think it's going to fix everything (i've given up on quick fixes, i think at thirty i finally understand that they are bullshit), but i think it would help. not having to see my mess and deal with my inability to do dishes before the sink is entirely full would make me a more sympathetic figure. my nest simply doesn't belong here, and as much as i love my family and am grateful for the chance to be here with them i think it's time to move on. i should hear back about that apartment today, cross your fingers.

the awesome list

mustache ham, originally uploaded by pinprick.

things i am totally loving right now:

1. mustaches. on hams, on milk, and even on men. bring back the 'stache!
2. the word awesome. i can't stop saying it. my sister made fun of me for a few days, but now she's saying it constantly too. awesome!
3. the new britney spears album. i know! crazy shit. my sister downloaded it and we've been listening to it pretty much all the time. it sounds like an older madonna album, you know, right after she discovered vocoders and electronica. it's not as much about britney because she doesn't do much, but the songs are all dance-y and retarded and fun.
4. the new crop of scary movies coming out. first on my list to see: the mist. my boyfriend, tom jane, is in it.
5. counted cross stitch. i forgot how much i liked it until i got my subversive cross stitch patterns!
6. torchwood. is anyone else watching this? capt. jack reminds me a little of tom cruise, but he's starting to make his own character and i love the whole alien aspect of it. british sci fi rules, anyhow, what with dr. who and all, so i shouldn't be surprised but i am completely hooked on this show. i am also loving graham norton, which comes on afterward. i'm pretty sure graham is the funniest man on EARTH.

dirty thirty!

too hot for my beard, originally uploaded by pinprick.

i did nothing for my birthday. not entirely true: i did go out to eat with my mom, sister and the baby. that was all, though. my sister and i were broke and the baby didn't have a sitter, so we spent the day lounging around the house, reading and letting baby watch cars again. good times.

halloween was fun if uneventful. i loved my bearded lady costume, and am hoping to win one of the prizes up for grabs at work. another lady wore a beard as part of her biker costume, and even i admit she looked amazing. she better win 1st, but i would be happy with second!

today i dropped off a rental application and looked at some other potential apartments. the rental process stresses me out, and it makes me a little crabby. the fisherman might be here in a week, which is also stressing me out. no matter how happy i am to see him there's just been a lot going on this past month and i wish i were a hell of a lot more prepared. and by "prepared" i mean "wish we had a place to live." there isn't much more i can do, though, so i'm trying to work with what i've got and get us at least someplace to camp out for a little while. nothing says "i love you baby" like state park reservations, right? right?!

ah, thirty. so far, so good. if i had an extra $500 it would be going much better, but what can you do? maybe i'll run into a winning lotto ticket or something.