Turmoil in the Household

Our little family is slowly remembering how to function. It's a little messy after we've been at school for so long--Claire stayed in Troy last summer and I didn't come home for spring break. Having four of us at once is a little stressful--especially given my penchant for leaving my stuff everywhere and Claire's habit of yelling at me about it.

Naturally, disagreements happen. The most recent has grave implications. And it involves Netflix.

This is the type of stuff Edward Albee would write plays about these days. Instead of marital strife, awkward dinner parties, and drunkeness, we are at war over Justin Bieber. Yes, I should start from the beginning.

I commandeered our account this past semester because I was taking a class in which I had to watch an incredibly weird foreign film every week, and couldn't make the class screenings. These movies were all strangely similar and basically followed the rule that if you were a sexually promiscuous woman, you would die in an extremely random but blatantly metaphorical manner. And that was basically the entire plot, and it wasted about 2 and a half hours of my extremely valuable time. ANYWAY, I'll end this tangent. The point is that I used up my claim to movie choice prior to returning home.

Dad is, in general, not too interested in movies unless they are based off a book he read or are a Bourne Identity sequel. We all love Matt Damon. It's not weird. Really. Really?

Mom has been using the account to watch Sex and the City from the very beginning. When this show was actually on the air she had better things to do, like raising children, than figuring out if she was a Charlotte or a Carrie and wondering what the heck these women were wearing. So we had been recieving these DVDs regularly in the mail.

Claire likes movies that are happy. Actually, Claire only likes movies that are happy. I believe I may be at fault in this. It was I who dragged her to see Sweeney Todd, only telling her that it was a musical. After (spoiler alert) people were repeatedly murdered and baked into pies by a grief-stricken psycho and later shoved into a furnace by a small child, she turned to me and exclaimed, "YOU SAID IT WAS A MUSICAL. MUSICALS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY." From about that day, we watched happy movies. Most of these were animated. Others involved attractive people falling in love. None of these romances were star-crossed.

So, at the recommendation of her sorority sisters, Claire decided she needed to see the Justin Bieber movie. These were the main reasons given:
1. It is true.
2. It is undoubtedly happy, because a 16 year old ends up being a millionaire.
3. Catchy pop music! Songs of young, innocent love!
4. SHINY THINGS
5. Also, Canadians!

(Disclaimer: numbers 4 and 5 are not actually real. Those are just extrapolations I've made from the given arguments.)

After much lobbying, Claire succeeded in getting the movie onto the top of our queue. This required many significant lectures and work on her part. This was the turmoil referenced in the blog title. It felt endless. I am pretty sure Dad still has no idea who Justin Bieber is and doesn't want to on principle, and Mom thinks we are receiving a DVD entirely about fancy haircuts and screaming pre-teens. But that is beside the point. The point is, yesterday Justin Bieber arrived in our household, and Claire,the one who isn't at all interested in law or political strategy, has won.

Don't get me wrong, Claire appreciates good music. 80 percent of my iPod has been suggested by her. But, she also enjoys making our parents roll their eyes, and winning. Also, based on these events, I am pretty sure she likes liking things ironically.


And that, my friends, is the biggest problem my family faces today. Now you are free to pay attention to real issues! Like the Greek budget crisis and related protests, or the Kardashians.

Sad Face. :( HAPPY FACE :)

Today, I worked at computer for approximately 8 hours. I went over signing statements, and tried to find someone who could tell me which specific gosh-dang federal websites are being shut down because of this waste cutting initiative. It was fun. That is only kind of a lie. I love doing the analysis. I hate not being able to find information. Hence my choices in collegiate study.

So this has actually been a pretty good day. The reason I have cause to whine about it is that I am in an office, and the entire rest of my family is AT THE LAKE.

So now I am going to make myself feel a little better about that by talking about the awesome things I did this week. I actually attended the announcement of the Transparency and Waste Cutting Executive Order. And this meant I got to go to the Executive Offices--super fancy, by the way--and sit about five feet from Vice President Joe Biden while he said interesting things and gave you only kind of rational hope for the future of bureaucratic management and government accountability and oh-my-god-isn't-he charming?!

So that was certainly a moment. Also, to this event I wore this awesome pink dress, and it was a complete Elle Woods moment.

I also wore shoes that destroyed my feet. That was less awesome.

That same day, to make it cooler, I went to another branch of government, and sat in at a panel on transparency in tax expenditures at the legislative offices on Capitol Hill. This was relatively boring, because it was people talking about tax expenditures, duh, but cool because I got to run around legislative offices. And by run, I mean hobble, because by that point my feet had been torn to shreds because of stupid fancy shoes.

Yesterday, I got to go to a meeting at the American Bar Association. It looked exactly like you'd expect the American Bar Association to look like. There were literally pillars outside and the meeting was held in a dark wood-paneled room with huge comfy leather chairs. Before going to the meeting, one of my bosses and I went to this chic little bakery and got shmancy sandwiches. After, on our way back, she generously bought me my very first ridiculously expensive and silly designer cupcake. It was delicious. Because I am me, I chose chocolate peanut butter. It came in a fancy specially-designed box with clear paneling. I ate that thing with a spoon because I felt like it was fancy enough to deserve some sort of utensil.

Closing note: you cannot sneeze in Washington, DC without getting snot on both a cupcake shop, frozen yogurt shop, and a Cosi all at once.

Aren't you pleased I used this imagery? Me too.