Saturday, March 29, 2003

Damn, i haven't written a REAL post since last Monday. Whoa. I'm surprised people are still stalking my tagboard. Or maybe that's why they're stalking my tagboard. I woulda given up long ago. hahahah. Anywayz, I know y'all missed me. I'm kinda psychic like that. It's all about the blogger brainwaves, yo. :-D And seeing as how I'm psychic and all, I might as well take a moment to warn y'all that this might be a LOOOOONG post. But you knew that already, right? Not that I even know what i'm gonna write about yet. But you know how it is with me...I'm sure I won't have any trouble thinking of something. :-D

In case you've missed out on all the excitement (then again, our tagboards are moving insanely fast these days), the biggest news in our household these days is: My Shereenay got accepted to Cal, masha'Allah!! :-D A round of never-ending Masha'Allahs for my favorite commencement speaker extraordinaire who will insha'Allah be heading to UC Berkeley this fall! ;)

And now for my oh-so-short spring break… *sniffle* The darn week went by soooo fast, man. I drove up to campus early Wednesday morning…got there at about 8. Was gone all day, and finally got home at 9-ish in the evening. Loooong day, yeah, but fun too. It was the first time I’d gone more than 5 miles beyond my home since break began, so I gotta admit I enjoyed that. I know this is majorly lame, but I actually missed driving. Shut up, stop laughing, yo. I’m telling you, I have discovered there is seriously a such thing as “driving withdrawals.” I should know, because I’ve been afflicted with this strange and rare disease for a week now. lol. How sad is that?? I always laugh at people who gleefully proclaim that they’re going on a “road trip,” and then head over to the next town for lunch or dinner. My 120-mile roundtrip commute to school is like a walk in the park by now, so my idea of a road tip is much more elaborate than that, obviously. Anywayz, my point was that I spent almost a week with minimal driving anywhere, so driving up to campus and back actually felt like a real, honest-to-goodness road trip for once. It was me and my car, my radio and discman, a full tank of gas and 60 miles of open freeway. Pretty fun stuff, dude.

Speaking of cars…my old car is baaaaack! I’m so happy; you don’t even know. It’s been in the shop, waiting to be repaired since last November when the timing belt snapped while I was driving on the freeway. And it wasn’t a nice, polite snap either…instead, the damn thing decided to snap with such force that it jacked up the engine and some other parts as well. *sigh* So I left my car in Sacramento with the cool kat cousins and entrusted them with the monumental task of finding a reliable (read: cheap. LOL) mechanic and overseeing repairs. Needless to say, they did an awesome job, masha’Allah. Yaser drove my car down to the Bay last Sunday, handed me the keys, and listed all the repairs: New engine. New radio antenna. The lighter thingie finally slides out, so I can plug in my discman-with-the-car-kit. Plus, the boys washed and cleaned my car, inside and out. Beautiful. :) The only thing that annoyed me was when genius child Yaser decided to give me some advice (read: lecture) on proper car maintenance. “Don’t forget to check oil,” he says. Then the freak of nature has the audacity to smirk, “You do know how to check oil, right??” Of course I know how to check oil. I’ve been driving this car for 2 ½ years, ever since I started college. I’ve added 78,000 miles through commuting to the already-existing mileage (yes, that’s a lot of miles. Can you blame me if stuff breaks down? It’s called “wear and tear,” yo). And because I’m obsessive-compulsive and paranoid like that, I check the oil level in my car every other day. Jackass. :-p Actually, I lied though…Looks like my car isn’t back for good just yet. My dad drove it back up to Sacramento this morning, cuz he says it needs a wheel alignment. And here I thought that crazy strange growling noise was a result of the new engine. Pshhhhh. What do I know. lol. I miss my Yazmobile though, dammit! *cries* okok, I’m sure you’re all rolling your eyes. Stop already. But obviously you wouldn’t understand, so forget you. Pshhhhh. LOL. Just watch, you’ll finally understand my attachment when you get a car of your own and fall in love with it and rely on it for EVERYTHING and put 78,000 miles on it. Replacement cars are just not the same. We have 4 cars in my family and regularly shuffle them around whenever something or other happens to one of ‘em, but my car has been MY CAR for 2 ½ years, so I can’t help it if I’ve been missing it since November. So there! LOL @ “4 cars in my family” though…that sounds like the cars are family too. HAHAHA. But they are!! :-D

Speaking of Yaser, he suggested last week that since Shereen is on spring break this coming week, I bring her up to school with me and the two of us plus Soms and Yaser can go out to lunch. Sounds like a plan to me. Shereen was discussing it with Somayya this morning, and the crackhead child is all suspicious: “WHY???” she says. Hahahaha. “Cuz he wanted to and said so,” replied Shereen. “Good!” says Somayya, “that way, he can pay too!” HAHAHAH. Shoot, maybe it'll give me a good opportunity to figure out once and for all if Yaser really IS a college student. Nerd child supposedly attends the same college I do, yet I haven’t seen him on campus since first quarter of freshman year, when he used to be all nice and buy me and Soms lunch. I like it when people buy me lunch. :-D

Hmmm, what else, what else…Went to the daycare on Thursday morning. Hilariously fun as usual, what can I say. Little kids are soooo adorable, masha’Allah. Right after I got there, this little girl presented me with a sheet of construction paper dripping with Elmer’s glue (and I do mean literally DRIPPINGGGG everywhere: onto the floor, the books, the other kids, and ME), which she had used to attach the gazillions of cotton balls, plastic flowers, leaves, beads and random other things onto the paper. “I made this for you!” she announced. I was like, awwwwww. But when I was about to leave, she came up to me and asked, very seriously, “Can I have the thing I made for you back? Cuz I want to give it to my mommy.” I was like, Whaaaaat?? You can't do that! I gave it back though. But talk about rejection, man! :( Then this other kid kept getting up in the middle of story-time. First, he went over to a table and came back with 3 sheets of light blue construction paper artfully taped together with red masking tape. “Look what I made for you!” he proudly exclaimed, laying his creation in my lap, throwing his arms around my neck, and blocking the other kids’ view of the story with his head. I was like, awwww. What more can I say?? Soooo cute, masha’Allah. So he sat still for a while. Five minutes later, he suddenly left the circle again, returned with a paper cup full of cold water, smiled beatifically at me, and announced, “Here you go!” The third time, he came back with a random book he had pulled off the shelves, placed it in my lap, and interrupted me in the middle of story-time to ask, “Can you read this to me?” Obviously all the other kids were getting aggravated and antsy, but he was just sooo adorable that I couldn’t help smiling everytime. Major cuteness.

I saw this adorable little boy while dropping by the post office this morning. He was about 3 years old, tagging along with his dad and hugging a cute toy truck. While they stood in line, the little boy clambered up onto the low bookcase that ran the length of the line and immersed himself in pushing the toy truck back-and-forth and making loud growling truck sounds. The dad said, “Try to keep it down, son.” The little boy replied, “Why?” When it came their turn to be helped at the front, the dad held out his arms to pick up the boy and warned, “Hold tight to your truck now!” The boy replied, “Why?” When they were done with mailing their packages and turned to leave, the dad took the boy’s hand and said, “Let’s go now.” The boy replied, “Why?” Soooo funny. Reminds me of how my dad always admonishes me for “questioning everything too much.” hahaha. Speaking of my daddy-o, he proudly declared over breakfast this morning, “I am a contrarian. I do things the opposite of how other people do them!” Shereen laughed, “Oh, so that's where Apaji gets it from!” :-D:-D:-D

I was just rereading the birthday card Deval gave me. It’s another “Wow—You’re 6!!” card, and it’s sooo mushy. I pretend I can’t handle overloads of mushiness, but my friends and family and I are all mushy with each other, so it’s cool. ;) Anywayz, Deval wrote at the end, “Yazzie Yaz, thanks for always being there for me, whether I need help with English papers or my personal life or a ride to get somewhere. I know I can always count on you for good advice and brutal honesty.” The “brutal honesty” part is underlined 3 times, and made me wince when I first read it. haha. But I tell it like it is, so if you can’t handle that, just go away. That’s my new philosophy. :-D