monday funday!

most people hate mondays, right?  lucky for us, i am not most people.  do i hate getting up early on monday morning?  certainly.  is it exclusive to mondays?  absolutely not.  i hate getting up early every day so i really don't feel that monday deserves its bad rap.  i also happen to really enjoy my job and while i do love the weekends, it's a different kind of joy.

anyways, while most people were probably simply trying to make it to tuesday, i decided to make it the first weekly megan's monday funday!  granted, i didn't decide this until i got home and checked the mail, but whatever.

despite this being the first monday funday, we were SO VERY CLOSE to having another monday go down in the record books as a bust.  why is that?  well i'm so glad you asked.

 my darling little destroyer with talons that could rival great eagles (known to uninformed strangers as macy) decided to take it upon herself to bite through her BRAND NEW CAGE and frolic about the apartment while i was at work.  she must have had a grand day as the wii remotes were moved into the living room, my nail files were in the floor in the dining room, and my flip flops were strewn throughout the kitchen.  seriously mace, what were you doing?

no matter what she was doing, i most certainly didn't appreciate the macy-sized hole in the side of the new cage.  again, emphasis on the NEW CAGE.  sheesh, woman.  at least let me cut the tags off before you wreak havoc upon it.

the funniest part of the entire situation was the fact that she was back in her cage by the time i got home ... and she was whining as if she couldn't get out.  hun, news flash: if you can bite your way out and crawl back in, you certainly can get out on your own.

BUT DESPITE THIS COMPLICATION, it's monday funday!  so what could possibly turn the tables on this puppy-related headache?

THIS COULD:

it speaks for itself, right?  RIGHT.   props to hot topic in their speedy delivery of my very own mockingjay pin.  power to the rebellion, people!  and for those of you that don't get the mockingjay rebellion reference, google the hunger games.  you're welcome in advance.

and may the odds be ever in your favor on the next monday funday!

it's okay to want to run away.

despite the slightly emo feel this post's title may have, i promise it isn't going to be a whine fest.  in fact, it's going to be the opposite of a whine fest.  i'm not exactly sure what that term would be, but whatever it is, it's this.

these past two-ish weeks have been all kinds of crazy busy with everything due all at the same time and not enough waking hours to complete it all (hence the reason i stayed up working all night thursday night...well at least until 4am when the royal wedding coverage started which forced me to stop doing homework and start wishing i was a princess).  anyways, it's been a hectic and stressful last couple of days, but i can FINALLY breathe.

the last month projects - DONE!

that's right, 3rd semester of graduate school. we are so dunzo. don't call, text, tweet, facebook, linkedin (i don't even understand what that is but i still get invites to "link" with people...something i don't think i want to do ever because it sounds a tad strange), myspace (do people even still use that?), etc. me.  for realz.  this is one of those breakups where it's good riddance. i will burn your pictures (or books - gasp! i know, the librarian shouldn't burn books), stop factoring your importance into my decisions, and truly feel better because i am no longer tied to you (at least not until august when i start writing that pesky little master's paper thingamajig).

naturally, as assignments pile up and the stress gets to the pimple-breakout stage, it's easy to think about running away from graduate school and becoming a bartender (which after my librarian days are up, i think i'll try).  but then i go to the public library and i realize why i can't give up.  i just like it that much.  if you don't get that feeling or you don't think you've ever met a librarian that actually feels that way, you've obviously never been to my library.  you lose in the game of library love.

despite this, i still think it's okay to want to run away.  i never ran away as a child because let's be honest, i was terrified of the dark (still true), i don't think i'd survive very long in the wild (duh), and i don't believe in sweating so i wouldn't walk very far before i threw in the towel (true forever).  i have this vivid memory of my sister running away one time to the stop sign down the road.  i remember being petrified, although to be honest this entire memory could be distorted due to the fact that i was probably 7ish and i suffered (and continue to suffer) from an overactive imagination.  this is what i remember thinking: i didn't know how she was going to make it on her own.  she was all of 9 and woodmere loop was a loooong loop.  yikes!  i'm pretty sure she just packed socks and panties and i remember wanting to sneak her food in the garage.  i don't think she even made it half an hour sitting at that stop sign before she realized whatever chore she had, punishment she was given, or tv show she couldn't watch didn't cancel out the importance of a toilet and flintstones vitamins.  who knows what parts of that occurred in real life or as a chapter in the book i will one day publish about two sisters and their adventures around the country, but that's my story and i'm sticking to it.

and it's not just people that think about running away.  my mom recently sent me a video of ali trying to do it.  granted she and jennifer were actually playing with a ball in the ocean, but it really looks like she's swimming out to sea (she should really be more careful because she can't possibly know about all the creepy ocean creatures that will bite her toes in that murky water).  if dogs want to run away sometimes and so do their human counterparts, we must all be onto something.   if i had run away from grad school i'd not only have a lot of classes to retake, but i'd also owe my parents a lot of money.  i think we should copy ali (in the video below) and even if we think it'll be better out in that big scary ocean, turn around and come back.  it's so much better when you do!

sprinklers will never stop being fun.

sometimes i like to pretend i'm sixty (ahh the horror!) and think back to the good old days where the most important thing to worry about was finding your flashlight before the epic flashlight tag battle took place once the sun peaced out for the day.  my sister and i have lived in some pretty fun neighborhoods throughout the years, playing street hockey (usually i watched because i hate sweating), flashlight tag, and all kinds of water games: going to the pool, the slip-n-slide, and of course, just running through the sprinkler.  sometimes my dad would even come outside and squirt us with the hose.  it sounds simple (and maybe a tad cruel now that i think about it), but we LOVED it.  

i think back to these kinds of things when graduate school is trying to suck my soul out...when life didn't require 74 sticky notes to keep it all together.  while i don't have any of my sprinkler/slip-n-slide home videos with me (they're safe at my parents' house), rest assured there are tons. for those of you that have not seen the video drawer organized numerically and cross-referenced with an alphabetized list (i come by my talents naturally), every single part of my childhood is filmed, complete with me smashing my mom's favorite christmas ball (circa age 1) and standing in the corner laughing because my cousin couldn't walk without falling (circa age 3).  the events got even more interesting as i got older and trust me, we have them all. 

anyways, since i don't have a sprinkler video from my childhood to share to remind us all of the good in life, here's a recent one of my sister's dog being introduced to the joys of the sprinkler.  she might look a little confused through parts, but we all know that doggie brain of hers is just screaming "HOW HAVE I NOT KNOWN ABOUT THIS BEFORE?! THIS IS SO FUN!"  when life gets you down, just watch this video and remember the simple joys in life...and that sprinklers will never stop being fun. ever.

it's all fun and games until someone gets their face scratched

so my sister has this really precious little (and by little i mean kind of big) dog.  although not much of an animal enthusiast myself due to my fear of things with more legs than me, this bundle of joy has grown on me over the past few weeks.  i've been doing a lot of dogsitting when i've been in town and although i'm not very good at it, i've survived.  i'm still trying to teach her to do something helpful like carry my luggage into my bedroom or bring me a diet coke, but i'm willing to wait.  don't all those glass-half-full kind of people always say good things come to those who wait?  we'll see about that.

she's just pretending she doesn't love the glamour shots.

ali (the dog) isn't supposed to get on furniture because let's be honest, she's the size of a small elementary school student.  and her blonde hair gets EVERYWHERE, but i'll save that for a post about what not to wear when you're dogsitting (ex: black tights).  anyways, i would sometimes let ali get on the air mattress with me because she was having ear problems as some labs do and it made her feel better to sleep by me or something like that.  apparently i'm a comforting presence.  let's be honest, she probably just wanted to manipulate me and get on the air mattress.  sneaky little thing.

regardless of her intentions, i still thought it was funny and let it happen.  one night ali forgot she was the dog and i was the human and she actually nudged me off the pillow and laid her own head in my spot.  it was so hysterical to me i just decided it would be a head-on-mattress type of night.  looking back on the situation, i imagine it's like the first time a child draws on the walls or stuffs a box of tampons down the toilet (shout out to my sister at age two!) -- it's funny at first (or is it?) but then it's like come on did that really happen?!

that's how i felt yesterday when ali came to "check on me" during my nap (and by check on me, i obviously mean take advantage of my lenient no-furniture rules).  she climbed up onto the mattress and little by little began to make her way up towards the pillow.  the few moments of thinking ali was funny came quickly and went even more quickly as i really just wanted to keep sleeping.  i don't know if she was pissed that i didn't cave into her wishes this time or if really she was just getting me back for all the times i made her play glamour shots as i took countless dog modeling pictures, but either way she decided to take a swipe at the side of my face.

and swipe she did.  she left a nice little scratch from the middle of my right ear down the side of my cheek and as i squealed in pain (yes, i have a flair for the dramatic, and no, it didn't hurt that badly) i was instantly brought back to a 10th grade slumber party where a cat clawed my upper lip in the night as it ran across the living room (now you know why i fear creatures with more legs than me -- they have so many options for attacking my face).

my mom insisted that it didn't break the skin (she was wrong) and she was confident that it wouldn't leave a mark (strike two, mom).  i attempted to cover it up today with makeup, but i'm pretty sure i just ended up with an orange, oompa-loompa inspired face that can only result from a) too much tanning, b) too much foundation, or c) actually playing the part of an oompa loompa in charlie and the chocolate factory.

so what did i learn?  dog scratches don't go away over night regardless of what mom says.  and also, it's all fun and games until someone gets their face scratched.