Prologue

“If it’s so important why don’t they just call it Chapter 1” – my fav ginger.

This section isn’t that important except that it lays out for the wary reader the general plan I have for this blog. Oh and it also kind of introduces me. I’m not good with just jumping right into things so while I’ll try to keep this short it will probably be pages long and have no point.

Basically I’m a senior at UCLA, graduating in June, going to Italy in August, and then after that I have no plans.

None

Nada.

“Well," you ask, “what did you think you would do after college, I mean you can’t have had no idea of why you were paying thousands upon thousands of dollars to attend a top notch university?”

And my answer would be…complicated…. but I’ll try to map it out for you anyway. For starters, I wanted to be a teacher. I still want to be a teacher. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I decided that being the first woman president would ruin my life’s happiness and that what you are isn’t as important as how happy you are. Because let’s face it, life sucks and then you die. At least for most of us average, middle class, citizens. But I think that if you recognize that, live by the philosophy of making lemonade out of lemons, and do your upmost to be happy without hurting anyone else, then life doesn’t really have to be that bad. And really, it’s not exactly like I’ve lived a shitty life so far. It’s actually been pretty good. My parents are still alive, together, and doing well. My brother and I only tried to beat the living shit out of each other for a 6 months period when I was around 13. I’ve had a job the last 4 years, can afford to go to school without getting into debt (barely), and don’t actively hate anyone that I have to see day to day. My life’s actually pretty awesome, beige, but still awesome. And sure shitty things happen and I tend to blow them way out of proportion, overanalyze them for years, and let them affect me way too much while vainly trying to suppress them.

Anyway, that little digression aside, we come back to the fact that I actually WANT to be a teacher. In a public high school - preferably sophomores and juniors. Little did I know that two years in the economy would plummet, the baby boomers would hang on to their jobs for another ten years, people would fall into their back up plan of becoming a *shudder* teacher, and all of the sudden a profession in high demand for able, young minds was suddenly broke and with a surplus of applicants. Half the reason I wanted this job was that I wouldn’t have to be cut throat, constantly comparing myself to others, and be more worried about keeping my job rather than doing my job. And while I’m sure I should have started applying to grad schools or education programs and all the other things you’re supposed to do before becoming a teacher, I’ve found myself frozen. Can’t bring myself to actually sit down and do it. I keep putting school first (which honestly for the amount of money I’m paying I should be) and then my friends and family, or my part time job on campus. And I feel like I’m going to be this way for a while.

So, essentially, my life’s going to be pretty transitional for the next two or three years, so I thought I’d blog about the two constants in my life with a few rants, maybe a few art critiques (and by critiques I mean I’ll babble with no structure and little style and try to prove I can still B.S. about art), and anything else that comes to mind.

And you’re wondering what those constants are? Well refer back to the lovely title of this blog and there you go. The one thing that's guaranteed to make me stop whining about whatever it is I’m whining about is pets of any kind that appear on the street, in cars, on TV...you get the point. (Not just puppies btw except that despite the actual species I’m seeing I tend to just squeal “puppy” anyway). And given that blogging about cute animals is going to be pretty boring and non-sustainable pretty quickly, I’ve added the Douchebag parts to add some spice. And by dbag I’m talking about those special individuals that try to completely ruin your day by making what should be short, brief, person to person encounters into traumatic events to be discussed for at least two days after. Thank you so much for making life interesting.

Coming up soon: a cute Irish border collie and soyless baristas.