Alive and kicking

I've returned from whatever abyss I was sucked into, and ready to blog. This week, I was down in North Carolina at a friend's beach house. It involved a lot of salt water, tanning and Marco Polo showdowns with her 13-year-old brother and his posse.

My life so far this summer has been pretty tame, rather boring, really. I've lazed around watching VH1, pretended to exercise a bit, eaten ginger snaps and gone out at night.

The college mail in preparation for the fall has started coming in earnest. The one chink so far has been my student ID. All three photos I've submitted have been rejected for ridiculous reasons, even the one I had taken at a passport center. I kind of feel like if they won't tell me exactly what kind of photo paper and what quality image I need to use, it's not my fault if they have hernias. My favorite part was when I called the office and the automated response told me not to call. The woman insisted that they only had two photos, even though I'd received three rejection emails for three separate photos. I have to call them back and heckle them, perhaps leave some anonymous, flaming, sack of dog poo on the doorstep.

I saw The Devil Wears Prada. Meryl Streep stole the movie, and it was pretty mindless, good mid-afternoon fare overall. My mom and went to see it together, and she did this thing where she jabs me in arm and looks at me when there's something she feels needs special attention or commiseration. My dad does something similar when I'm listening to headphones in the car. He gives me a good elbowing and yells (as though the ear phones make me deaf) that we're passing such-and-such very important monument, piece of American history, or Dairy Queen. The point isn't the scenery so much as annoying me and making sure I still know he's there as my dad, not just a chaffeur who happens to share some DNA with me.

My dog practically ate her arthritic back paws off and got them infected. Now they're wrapped up in purple bandages. She's taken to bunny hopping up and down the stairs and looking at me pathetically, asking me with her eyes why I insist on hurting her so. I sometimes find dogs to be rather like small children. They can't talk, but they say all they really need to say without speech. It's always clear when she's hungry, annoyed, disgusted with me or a combination of all three.

Life is good.