Making Better Choices: Just kidding! It just looks that way.

I have been trying to make better life decisions, so I started eating Greek yogurt. However, I stopped eating real fruits and vegetables. Whatever, there are bits of fruit at the bottom of each Chobani yogurt-thing. The situation is pretty much a solid diet of yogurt, Luna bars, cheese, meat, and pasta. My bowels are like, "seriously?" And in response, I say, "look, I drink enough coffee to make up for all the fiber I am not eating."

Fine, nutrition still needs to be tamed. Despite my poor food choices, I am still exercising! I might not go to the gym as much as I used to, but I am taking a Zumba class once a week with my friend Julian. I did not go this week though... Anyway, Julian and I are going to be Zumba masters one day. I cannot follow along with all the moves, but if I flap my arms and spin around when feeling lost I look Zumbatic enough. While humiliating 40-60% of the time, Zumba is a great deal of fun. Our instructor even plays songs that have the word "zumba" in it; just in case someone forgets why she is there (a lot of old ladies in this class, by the way).

My body is not the only thing getting into awesome shape. My brain is doing okay as well. Olivia and I have been throwing a lot of ratchet parties... Yes, it is true. She and I party almost every single weekend. Sometimes we party during the week. We will often party for hours... like seven. Seven hours of partying sometimes. "What kind of parties?" you ask.

Study Parties!!! Olivia, who is obviously French from the accurate picture above, is a terrific study party buddy. We like to sit across from each other and work. We also like to sit across from each other and eat lunch in between morning work and afternoon work. For extra fun, we like to go to the movies and watch films that you probably have never heard of before because these films do not believe in advertising. Seriously, why don't any of these producers believe in posters? Still, they are usually majorly super nice and magical. I know that if left to my own devices I would only watch romantic comedies and romantic comedies in 3D.

Sometimes we need more than great friends, exercise, study parties, and yogurt. I needed to take care of my "spiritual self". My spiritual self was just screaming for a serious make-over. Just kidding, I really did not know that I had a "spiritual self" until James and I made a pilgrimage seventy blocks south to Radio City where Oprah is kept. Yes, James and I consulted Oprah for some life advice and a self-esteem boost.

Seriously, I went to go see Oprah. She told me that I needed to feed my spiritual self and not just my hungry self. Oprah said a lot of things that day. I know she was speaking English, but I was pretty much lost for all 2.5 hours. Many of these things just ended up jumbling together--"transcendence", "energy", "karma", "meditation", something about the past and the future and how neither is now, "judgement", etc. Regardless of how little I learned about my spiritual self that day, there was one thing I did gain...

Oprah Friendship. Oprah and I are best friends now. She learned how cool I was and wanted to read my autobiography. I didn't have a copy on me that day, so she was all like, "yeah, no worries, maybe I can pick it up from you one day when we go shopping together and do girl stuff together, like facials and whatever. I will put your book on the book club reading list and you will become famous and I will scream your name like, Caaaattthhhhheeeeerrrrrinnnnnnnneeeee!" Yes, I am awesome... Eh, well, not really. Oprah and I are not really friends. I mean, in my heart she is my friend, but that is not a real place because two people cannot sit down inside my heart and have tea. These people would have to kill me first or something, but if I am one of the people then it really is impossible. So, yeah, Oprah is not really my friend. I did not get to hold her hand as depicted in the image above. No one is allowed to touch Oprah anyway. She is made of Phoenix feathers, angel nail clippings, and that warm feeling you get when you step into Saks--mortals cannot handle that kind of tactile experience.

Before I end this post, I have one more thing to share. Here is a fun game...

Guess!

Guess!

Guess!

I might be getting...

I don't want to end up working at Duane Reade and admitting to my mother that she was right about how I should have gone into pharmaceuticals , or married a doctor with a nice Mercedes, or business man with a fuckin' private jet like Bill Gates

I am applying to grad schools this winter, as I have written about and alluded to a billion times.
Recently, I lost the taxidermy workshop I was organizing, I was rejected from the Seattle art gallery because the hipsters think my works are priced too high (I say, not high enough!), I stopped going to ballet, my nose is peeling all the time, and I am slightly behind in my research paper... Well, at least I have not been officially rejected from the smaller publishers... my agent tells me it should take awhile before we hear back from the smaller guys... And, I have my health, which is great--except I have developed a fear of eating hard-candy alone (I could choke and die with no one around to try to save me or listen to my last words, "arg, argh, always check the stove before you leave the house, arg, arg!").

Things feel like garbage even though I know these things are not THAT bad--and in fact, compared to other people's situations, my life is baller.
Very much a part of my quarter-life crisis, (1) I am finally realizing that one day I am going to die... and while there was a time in which death felt eons away, I have already gone through a quarter of my life--and that is generously assuming that I am going to live up to 96, which we know is not going to happen because of my diet of corn syrup and wine--it's probably going to be diabetes or liver failure around 65, right before retirement (2) I don't want to be mediocre, but I am realizing that a lot of people are mediocre. I am not going to be a Beyonce or an Ellen or an Oprah or a Boyle.
After all of my reality checks, I just want to go to graduate school, get my Ph.D. in sociology, work as a researcher/professor at a second tier university, publish some of my fiction, and skin road kill on my spare time.
This is where I am today:

I don't want to end up managing a flippin' Duane Reade.

I thought I was going to tell a cute story and specify all the things I hate about Duane Reade, but I spent too much effort on the picture above, so I'm just going to go make more popcorn and end this post.
The main point is, I want to get into grad school and if I do not get into a school this year I am going to barf.