I’m sorry, but I’m just not to the stage in my relationship with one of my older sisters wherein I feel comfortable playing “ORAL” against her in our Words With Friends game.  I’m just not.

Resolutions 2011: How I Did; And, Resolutions 2012

Aaaaaah, hey, so remember these?  That was 365 days ago!  Man, I simultaneously do and do not want it to be last year again.  2011 was fucking awesome, mostly, which I’ll tell you all about one day in my year-end recap, but for now, let’s just recap those resolutions and see how they turned out!

1.  do some reflecting and some really hard thinking in the first few days of the year.  First few days of the year?  This was more like ALL OF THEY YEAR, EVERY DAY, ALL THE TIME.  I think now, after this year, I finally and fully understand the term “navel-gazing”.  What can I say, I think about myself a lot.  But really, I said then that I wanted to learn more about who I am and figure out how to be more comfortable with that, and whoooooooo GIRL.  Thanks, 2011, you can throw up that “Mission Accomplished” banner now.  I think I not only grew, but really liked who I was growing into, more in these past twelve months than ever before.  And fortunately, I think grad school and my program will only facilitate more of that in 2012.

2. eat more fruits and veggies and keep walking.  The fruits and veggies thing was hit or miss.  Summer was weird, and I didn’t feel at home, so I spent a lot of time avoiding the common areas like the kitchen and hiding in my room, snacking on things that were bad for me.  Things have gotten better.  The walking thing was a big old FAILURE.

3.  become the girl who reads at work again.  You only wanna know the people who are into her.  Hmmmm.  I did read at work more, but I still managed to kiss inappropriate people and feel vexed by my coworkers and my interactions with them until the bitter end.  Mostly, the problem was there weren’t really any people at work who wanted to know and hang with a girl who read.  I worked with typical a-hole college kids, is why.

4. try harder to be better.  A better sister, daughter, friend, roommate, employee, student, human.  Kinder, more patient, sweeter, more loving, harder working.  You’re kind of lazy and you know it.  Just work on it.  I certainly didn’t make a concentrated effort every day (see mention of laziness, above), but I think I had moments where I would catch myself being uncharitable or awful and try and work on it.  This one, though, is, and probably will remain for a very long time, a work in progress.

5. write more.  I made it my mission one year ago today to write at least three posts per month here, just to keep myself chronicling my life, for my own sake, and reflecting, and de-stressing, and I’m so fucking proud of myself for doing it (as of this post!) that I wish it were possible to do some sort of running high-five with me.  Go Team!

6. try and be braver.  Trust others, make things right with the people you need to, face the future with optimism, a sense of self-efficacy, and your chin up  The trust thing is…..still a thing.  I made things right with the person with whom they weren’t, and it didn’t blow up in my face, and that’s mostly due to this other person’s generosity and good humor.  The optimism/self-efficacy/upwardly-pointing chin thing didn’t happen so much, but hey, things still turned out really well, so perhaps in the future I should REMEMBER THAT, huh, self??

So, overall, things were spotty, but mostly completed.  2011 was such a great year, with some rough patches here and there, and I’m really hoping things can continue at an even keel in 2012.  I don’t have as thoughtful or profuse hopes for next year, just a few general resolutions that have been floating around in my mind, so here they are.

1.  I want to read more.  I’ve tried and tried to make myself quantify this one somehow, but I can’t.  I don’t want to say “x number of books per month” because what if I try (again) to read Anna Karenina?  That shit’s a doorstop, yo!  So, instead, in my mind, this is more like, “read at your own pace, several nights a week, even if it’s just for ten minutes, but for the love of God, READ, and don’t stop”.

2.  Cook more.  Or learn more cooking-type activities?  I don’t cook.  Grilled cheese was a fucking revelation when I finally mastered it.  This year, I’ve got a few easy things I can make that still really surpass my super-low-bar standards (chicken salad, devilled eggs), but for 2012, I think I’d like to try actually, I don’t know, baking things?  Putting things in the stove for a pre-determined amount of time, and then taking them out when they’re golden-brown and ready to eat (aside from frozen pizzas, don’t worry, those are my bitches)?  Perhaps I will chop things.  And season!  I’d like to know how to properly season!  And….cook meat?  I think I could bake a potato easily enough, but broiling a steak sounds harder than getting a phD at this point.  Basically what I’m sayin’ is, the art which we call cooking is something upon which I would like to improve…forthwith.  Posthaste.  Henceforth.

3.  Embrace my program more fully.  You guys, though, seriously, you would be so impressed about how much I contribute to class.  Like, I’m legitimately pretty sure that there were people in some of my undergrad classes who probably thought I was an actual mute, but now you can’t shut me up.  In some classes, at least.  So, more of that.  That is good.  Also, developing more rapport (ah, look at me with my counseling lingo) with professors and peers, get involved perhaps, and be less lazy about reading/writing for class.  Oooooh, that is setting the bar perilously high for me, you don’t even know.  2011 was a record year for laziness, especially the latter half.

4.  Be a better person in general.  This, much like last year’s resolution, encompasses a lot of things, and isn’t something I can say I definitely finished when the year is over.  It’s a lifetime of work.  Patience, charity, basic kindness and understanding, but also, belief in myself, confidence, feeling comfortable in my own skin.  That’s a big bill, huh?

5.  Well, it worked last year, so I think I’ll amp it up just a bit here for 2012: write four times a month, at least.  That’s at least once a week, you guys!  That is so much, for someone who has a life.  BUT, happily, I don’t, so it should be no problem.  Ba-dum-chhhhh.  No but really, it’s fun to write when I’m happy, and soothing to write when I’m sad/nervous/angry/frustrated/lonely, so I want to keep at it.  I think in fifty years I’ll be glad I did, and what’s even the point of making a resolution if you can’t say that about it?

Paper-Writing Blues

Remember when I was writing my thesis and I would lapse into hysteria occasionally?  Well, I haven’t written anything spectacularly long or taxing since then until….today mostly.  I’ve spent literally all day, since about ten this morning, at my desk writing a research paper, and I just glanced up at my monitor, laughed like a maniac, and whisper-screamed, “Why do I have so many tabs open?“  I take this as an indication that my writing skills have seriously deteriorated since spring, because on thesis-night, the hysteria didn’t set in until WELL into my all-nighter, and tonight….wellllllll, it’s only just past eight.  Can’t wait to see what’s laying in wait for me in the next six or so hours!

On another note, though, I have learned that now that the sun has set it is officially Simchat Torah!  And for the first time in my life, I actually know not just that that exists, but also what it actually means!  I gotta admit, even though I am slowly losing my mind over the writing process, it’s been fun learning about a vastly different culture all day.  Yeah, that’s right, I’ve done almost all of my research for this paper due tomorrow in the past, mmmmmmm, let’s call it 20 hours.  Procrastination at its finest, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A Year In The Life, Part Two

Alright!  I am motherfuckin’ determined to get this posted MUCH earlier than last year’s part two.  Fall ’10 is so much happier to write about than fall ’09, so that helps the process.

July was largely spent in Dayton when my BG job went on hiatus for a few weeks.  During those three weeks home, I came to a few realizations: this was probably the last solid amount of time I would ever spend working at Coldstone, and also the last solid amount of time I would spend living in my childhood home.  Both of those things simultaneously wrench at my gut and feel right to me.  I didn’t fit in with the high schoolers at Coldstone and was increasingly just short on patience with my boss, and home just seemed lackluster compared to BG.  Probably because I was in the midst of the best summer of my life here, and didn’t appreciate the interruption to go home, work a job with coworkers I didn’t really care to know, live with my parents instead of my roommates, and spend quiet nights in instead of at college bars.  Not so shocking, then, to have the reaction I had.  The majority of my July was actually spent away from BG, come to think of it.  I drank a bit with friends from home, spent the first part of the month in Dayton like I mentioned, and the last two weekends in Kentucky visiting my sister and in Michigan at a family member’s Christmas tree farm.  Yes, you read that right.  It was AWESOME.  I went tubing for the first time in Kentucky, and four-wheeling for the first time in Michigan, and loved both.  I feel like those are some quintessential Midwestern summertime distractions, right there.  Garsh.  August was a weird month of waiting for things.  The first two weeks were my final two weeks at my beautiful summer home, and I spent them alternately eagerly anticipating moving into my new apartment and holding on like hell to the place and people I was with.  And then I spent the first week in my new apartment lonesome for my summer house and my new roommate, who spent the whole week working all day, and waiting, waiting, waiting for classes to start.  And then, BAM, I was a senior.

Once my other roommate moved in and the school year kicked off, I settled in really quickly.  Summer, as a season, was winding down, but still infusing my first few weeks of school with so much sunshiney bliss.  I guess it helps that I fell rapidly in love with my roommates, as well.  I wore a dress every day for the first week of classes.  Someone professed their deep and intense crush on me, and then left for Europe.  The feeling was not mutual; in fact, I was so weirded out that I shut that person out of my life entirely.  Sometimes I’m kind of a dick.  Don’t worry, though!  Things are better now!  But that’s for next year’s recap.  Late August and early September are practically indistinguishable in my mind.  It was all just breezey warmth, learning my routine, starting to figure out what the year was going to be like.  Mid-September, my grandmother passed away.  Ugh, I remember that morning so clearly.  The texts from my sister implying something was wrong, until I just snapped “WHAT is going on?”  Crying alone in my room, before I told anyone.  My half-hearted attempt to cheer myself up by going to the football game.  It was so terrible.

Fortunately, things did look up from there.  I did not descend into the depths of despair.  The rest of September was a little gray, but October really livened things up.  I think I managed to drink every weekend, despite being the sickest I’ve been in a while mid-month.  I know I started the month off terribly.  TERRIBLY.  Let’s not revisit the decision I made that night.  I kissed at least three different coworkers this month, so you know it was a shitshow.  I think we can measure the stability of my life in any given month by the number of coworkers I kiss therein.  SCIENCE.  Anyway, October, hummmmm, hewwww hawwwww.  God, I think this is the shortest year in review segment I’ve ever written.  It’s not that October wasn’t good, or that first semester wasn’t good, it’s just that second semester was SO MUCH BETTER.  I don’t even give a shit about October, I wanna talk about January and February!  That’s when the real adventures were!  But, okay, focus, focus.  Fall break happened.  It started out really promisingly, with a visit to one of my best lady friends in Cincinnati, where men ten years older than us tried to pick us up at the bar and what we drunkenly thought were members of an opposing campaign (my friend was an intern on a Senate race) ate in a booth behind us at a diner at 3 AM.  Duh, we tried to spy on them.  We were drunk, so I don’t think it was spying so much as me leaning back verrrrrry obviously and then whispering everything I could hear back to my friend across the table.  And then I went home for a few days, got in a HUGE fight with my dad about green olives because my life is funny that way, and drove back to BG angry.

Halloween weekend was one of my favorite weekends of senior year.  The Halloweens of my freshman, sophomore, and junior years were, respectively, the first time I ever kissed a boy at/got drunk at college, completely unmemmorable, and relatively underwhelming with a side of regret.  But this year, we (and every time I say “we”, I’m most likely referring to my roommates and best friend A.) went out and went hard Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  My favorite part, which I didn’t tell anyone about, was drunkenly holding hands with the guy I liked on Saturday’s walk home.  We got lost, peed in a front yard, A. knocked over a mailbox on a post, and all went our separate ways eventually.  This is kind of a bittersweet memory now, but again, that’s something for the Spring ’11 recap.  And then November rolled in.

One of my favorite people, my friend C., came up to visit just when I needed someone around to whom I could confess this burgeoning crush I had goin’ on.  She was in a remarkably similar situation, and it was incredibly comforting to me just to hear her story.  We were ladies unlucky in love together that weekend.  Then I went to a concert with said crush, and….MISTAKE.  My darling roommate H. has a hypothesis that it’s dangerous territory to listen to songs you love with or start to recognize the smell of the guy you like, because that’s when the heartstrings REALLY start to get tangled, and….yep.  That’s all I can say.  Yep.  I was a bit lovelorn in November.  But I don’t mean to make this sound more serious than it really was, because I still managed to flirt with some bad-idea people and crush on yet another coworker (this one the worst idea of all, no lies). 

Jesus.  From the way I write in these recaps, you’d think all I ever did was flirt and make out with coworkers and develop crushes that go nowhere.  I promise you, in November I did do some positive, productive things.  I fucking rocked out on the GRE!!!  I scheduled myself a much-needed haircut!  AND my classes for the spring!  What else, what else.  November seems pretty unmemorable, too, which is frustrating because I know I was happy and the world felt sweet, I just can’t remember any of the specifics.  I was listening to crappy music, spending time at the summer home, seeing movies for cheap, going to classes and doing homework, TFunding.  Regular life.  OK, so I did some Facebook excavating, and also roommate M. and I were really obsessed in November with that one AFLAC commercial with the goat, too.  So there’s your random memory for the month.  Thanksgiving was lovely but uneventful.  I went, as I have for the past I-don’t-know-how-many years, to the Christmas tree lighting in downtown Dayton, and then got STUPID drunk by ten that night and confessed that huge crush to A., who was a mutual friend of the guy and me.  OK, so December.  I got a haircut, I drank some wine, I went to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party, I kissed a pretty consistent KUI, and struggled through finals week.  Roommate M. actually needed emergency transporting home mid-finals-week, which led to my first all-nighter of senior year.  That was an eerie night.  All of us had been in our beds, but none of us had been sleeping when the bad news hit.  We drove her halfway, to be picked up by a family friend, and then roommate H. and I drove home in the wee small hours of the morning, wailing along with Tegan and Sara, and ate breakfast together while the sun rose.  I had a paper to finish, she had a final to study for.  Shortly thereafter, we had finally, mercifully made it to Christmas break.  And within a few days, I had figured out my future in more clearly defined ways than ever before, so that was neat.  I feverishly shopped for Christmas, loved on my family, got in a lot of good sister time, and was overall a decently happy girl.  Nevertheless, I was still overjoyed to come back to BG for a night on December 31st.  I spent the day with A. shopping for dresses, and then started drinking.  I was a little blue welcoming in 2011, because of that GODDAMNED crush, but not to worry!  In just a few days, life got AWESOME and so so so so much happier than I realized was possible.  I thought, throughout all of fall semester, that I knew what happy was, but the fall just doesn’t even compare when I think about the last five months.  Stay tuned for 2011, Part I, y’all, cause everything got SO GOOD.

Liveblogging My Thesis? Let’s Do This.

This is going to be SUCH a fun night.  My thesis is due tomorrow at noon, and in true procrastinatory style, I have yet to finish it.  I mostly have a laundry list of small things plus some major organizational issues to work through, and since I’ve been pretty neglectful about my writing here, AND since I’ll spend most of tonight talking to myself anyway, I thought, “What better time to update?”  So I plan on stream-of-consciousness-ing it up over here til this bitch is done.  And honestly, I could use the “been working on my thesis” excuse for having been absent so long, but on the real, April was just a shitty uninteresting month; completely DID NOT live up to last April, so I really haven’t had much material to work with.  Until now.  So.  I was blessed to have a professor who was flexible enough to allow me to write about Mad Men instead of focusing on literature which is really, really cool and totally unexpected of the English Department.  So, the topic: Mad Men, Advertising, and the Creation and Validation of Identity.  Uhhhh that’s a working title.  Alright now, bullets to the end!

• 10:21 PM: Working on the introduction now.  This is always one of the hardest parts for me.  Luckily, the last episode of season three was spectacular; it boasted the BEST writing I’ve ever heard, so I’m starting with a quote and working my way forward.  Cliche?  You bet your advertising ass it is.  I don’t have time for creativity at this point in the game.  Brass tacks here, people.
• 10:41 PM: MLA dictates that, when citing recorded telelvision episodes, each episode needs it’s own individual citation in the bibliography.  OH FUCK.  I don’t even KNOW how many episodes I’ve cited so far.  Double digits.  Now I have to track down the writer and director of each ep and make separate entries for each.  Help help help.
• 11:00 PM: Oh man.  Don Draper.  Oh man.  Eeeeesh.
• 11:16 PM: This has nothing to do with my status but roommate H. just sent me the GREATEST text.  “Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into BG’s drunks.  Spotted: (name of guy I used to hook up with who, surprise, is kind of a douche) the knave outside of The Attic.”  Best.  Best best best.
• 11:48 PM: Jesus, how many times did I mistakenly write “Martinson’s” instead of “Martenson”?  At least five on one page, great!
• 12:15 AM: Looking at pictures from the Met Gala.  Yep.
• 12:15:30 AM: Realized it’s AM, not PM.  Heh.  Since this thesis is due at noon, this is a positive development.  Also a positive development for my time-telling skills in general.
• 12:27 AM: Roommate M is home; she’s going to be up all night, too.  Finals week is upon us!
• 12:34 AM: Oh my God, creeping on Facebook (seriously, did you take me lightly when I proclaimed myself a master procrastinator?  Silly, silly.) I ran across a picture of graduating seniors who work at the Union Starbucks and got all teary.  I don’t even know most of their names, but these people have been serving me coffee on the reg for so many years!  Man I am so sad to be graduating!
• 1:11 AM: Can’t stop humming Robyn’s “Dancehall Queen”.  Did I tell you she’s my new hero/role model/guru/girl-crush?  She is.
• 1:12 AM: This whole “live-blogging my thesis” thing has turned into more of a “live-blogging my every mundane thought” thing.  Hope you don’t miiiiiiiiiind.
• 1:20 AM: Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool has basically been my bible for this project, PS.  So, so fascinating, and, because my life is low-key magical sometimes, my professor totally gave me one of his used copies.  To keep.  For free.  Yes, I plan on actually reading the whole thing this summer.  NERDOUT.
• 1:24 AM: I actually think I might be able to shoot for 4 or 4:30 as a finish time?  Which would give me a solid five hours’ sleep, since I plan on getting up at 9:30 to print and turn this monster in.  BUT, that bib is gonna be a BEAST to tackle.  So.  Maybe more like 5 or 5:30.  Eghhhhh.
• 1:37 AM: Brief bout of hysterical laughter.  My introduction is going to be, like, one-third of my thesis, I think.  Cool.
• 2:12 AM: Ok.  Yes.  Ok.  Starting to feel really good about things.  FINALLY think I have an idea on how to fix my largest organizational issue.  Fuck yeah, fuck yeah.
• 2:46 AM: Slowly but surely, slowly but surely.  Also, it’s FREEZING in my apartment.  I’ve got on socks, slippers, sweats, and a hoodie WITH the hood up, and my nose is still cold.
• 3:07 AM: I think I’ve finally spit out what I want to be the final thesis statement of my thesis.  I think.  Time to take a break, put on my senior year playlist, and look up all the writers and directors.
• 3:34 AM: THAT only took half an hour.  Pulling the rest of the bib together now instead of later, mostly because I can’t face finsihing organizing and adding transitional material and re-reading what I wrote earlier and checking cohesion and unity and blahblahblah just yet.
• 3:40 AM: And thaaaaaat only took five minutes, as all I had to do was copy and paste all of my other sources over from my annotated version, which was due ages ago.  Eff.  Time to bite the bullet and just grind it out until I finish this bitch.  That sounds like every snuff film plotline?
• 3:51 AM: My intro spills over onto the fourth page.  My bib spills over onto a third page.  Too much?
• 4:28 AM:  Oh.  I kind of forgot I was doing this.  Prime reason why the brain is not made for all-nighters.
• 4:31 AM: FUCK IF I KNOW WHAT THE ETHICS OF MANIPULATION HAVE TO DO WITH MY THESIS RIGHT NOW.  I QUIT I QUIT I QUIT.
• 4:33 AM: More hysterical laughter, this time verging on tears.
• 4:58 AM: Oooooh, “jai alai”, that’s fun to say!
• 5:10 AM: I’ve officially entered that space where I’m not really sure anything I write makes sense or is flowing well at all anymore.  Ayyyyyy.
• 5:11 AM: Just misspelled “really” as “relly” for a second up there, which is probably one of my LEAST FAVORITE misspellings in the WORLD.  It makes my skin crawl.
• 5:30 AM:  And here we are at what became my REAL goal bedtime for the night (or morning, I suppose).  I’m waving as I go speeding by
• 5:31 AM: My thesis is making less and less sense the more I work on it….
• 5:35 AM: “The Puppy Who Lost His Way”.  I am so MUDDLED right nowwwww.
• 6:06 AM: My mother has officially started her day.  And I have not officially ended mine.  Things are coming together in a pretty piecemeal fashion.  I’m not confident at all, but I am weary.  I am tired and I just want the damn thing to be DONE.  So, I’ll take piecemeal.  Probably not the attitude I should have toward arguably the biggest, msot important piece of writing in my academic career, but there it is.
• 6:27 AM: Was stretching just now and almost fell out of my chair when I realized it’s already getting light outside…
• 6:43 AM: Hallelujah praise Jesus, I’m working on the conclusion.  The body may or may not need more work; I can’t tell anymore.  It will definitely get a few more proofread-throughs, as well as somes adjusting and tweaking here and there, but for the most part I think it’s alright.  The end is near….?
• 6:57 AM: Ooooooh, nope. Uh-uh, shouldn’t have crept on that person on Facebook.  That was like punching myself in the gut.  Oh, I’m sorry, I’m supposed to be writing (about) my thesis?  Whoops.  Still not closing that window. 
• 7:20 AM: Twelve hours ago I was in the midst of my shift at work.  Twenty-four hours ago I was fast asleep in my cozy, cozy bed.  Sigh.  No I’m not finished yet, that’s what she said.
• 7:34 AM: Doing an out-loud readthrough.  This could be soooooo terrible you guys.
• 7:41 AM: I seriously tries to use the “word” “manipulatory” instead of “manipulative”.  Wow.
• 7:56 AM: About halfway through reading, correcting, tweaking and editing as I go, and I am a lot happier with this than I originally thought.  I just needed to focus my brain.
• 8:11 AM: OMG.  The word “young” like four times in one sentence.  Eeeesh.
• 8:32 AM: Alllllllmost an hour later- readthrough complete.  And….thesis complete?  I can’t decide if I want to just leave my last sentence as is, or go out with a bigger bang.
• 8:45 AM: Yep.  Done.  Complete.  Finito.  Amen I say to you, my thesis, she is birthed.

Well.  HASN’T THIS BEEN INSTRUCTIVE AND FUN.

Lady Jane Fill-In-The-Blank

You know, I don’t normally go for British spellings of words (…because I’m American), like ou‘s instead of just o‘s, or s’s in place of z‘s, but one thing I can really get behind, and kind of grit my teeth at changing, is grey instead of gray.  It just looks so much more elegant the British way.  Is it ok to just adopt that into my writing and move on with my life?  Please say yes.

Also, it’s probably pretty hopelessly American of me that I actually pulled the title of this post not from the Nine Days’ Queen, but from what I’m pretty sure was Betsy Ray’s cat’s name, huh?

PS: My apostrophes are doing some crazy, crazy, CRAZY things up there in the first paragraph, and I just cannot.  They’re staying that way, I’m SORRY.

The Not Even Remotely Dog Days Of Summer

Geeeeeez.  I promised myself I would have this up sometime in September.  And then, BAM, the last week of September really kicked my ass school-wise, and then it was a new month out of nowhere, so I was like, cool, no problem, I’ll at least get it posted earlier than last year’s.  And then ALL OF OCTOBER happened in what felt like about a week.  So, now it’s November, we’re three weeks away from Thanksgiving (!) and summer was three damn months ago. However, don’t let my tardiness with this post keep you from thinking that I’m not COMPLETELY psyched to write it.  Because this summer?  This summer kicked last summer’s ass. 

This summer was a terrifying propsect to me back in April.  I knew I would be staying in BG, spending my first summer away from Dayton ever, so this summer was kind of like freshman year in that I had no idea what to expect, and so was completely terrified to begin.  This summer, I arranged to stay in a humongous, gorgeous house with two (and late in the summer, three) girls I didn’t know very well, one of whom ended up becoming one of my closest friends.  Nowhere has ever become home to me faster than that house did this summer.  This summer got off to such a great start oh my god I don’t know if I can articulate it.  Coworkers everywhere, shotsshotsshots.  This summer started with tornado sirens, my oldest friend from home, and a kiss with a boy I really liked, whom I haven’t seen since (ehhhh, this isn’t true anymore after this past weekend, but it sounds so much more romantic this way, don’t you think?).  This summer started in a whirlwind of a night, lost keys, and a miserable all-day hangover.  This summer started lonely and shaky, and went nowhere but up, up, and away.  This summer was spent in bars, bars, and more bars.  This summer was Four Lokos and fountains and a ucked-up foot.  My time this summer was divided between BG and Dayton, as I spent nearly every weekend at home for some event or another.  This summer was up and down, up and down on I-75.  This summer was sundresses and parties on people’s side lawns.  I spent my days so lazily this summer, sleeping til noon, working at night, staying up and out late.  Lest you think all I did this summer was get wasted (which, ok, was a rather large part of my summer, but not ALL of it), pretty much all I did on my weeknights was wait for my roommate to get home from the RUBBER FACTORY where she worked so we could play cards and watch Whose Line?  Titillating stuff right there.  This summer was Grey’s Anatomy for hours on end, curled up on the futon that served as my bed, killing time before work.  In fact, I’d wager that a good majority of my time this summer could be described as “killing time before work”.  And work itself….was such a large part of me this summer.  It was the only responsibility I had, the only structure or definition that provided any shape to my days and weeks.  This past spring and summer really transformed the way I feel about that place, so that now it’s not a chore to go in at night; it’s almost enjoyable.  Although, to be fair, there were nights over the summer that I would come home so incredibly exhausted of working with the people I did.  This summer nerves were tried, that’s for goddamn sure.  This summer involved tiny baby kittens moving in to my house about halfway through, so this summer was cute and cuddly and sweet and troublesome.  This summer was also (man this is so hard to write) probably the last chunk of time I will ever work at Coldstone.  Oh man, that’s making me tear up.  I spent very little time thinking about my future this summer, and much more time thinking about my past.  This summer also contained what may or may not turn out to be an auspicious meeting; I’ve been holding my cards close to my chest on this one.  Hell, I’m nervous just throwing this out there, and I’ll probably come back here in three months and be like “….Idiot”.  This summer felt like it went by fast and slow all at once.  I was ready for people to be back in town, ready for another crazy great semester like spring had been, but was so busy just enjoying myself, the laziness and lack of responsibility, the drinking, that I never wanted summer to end.  Spending this summer up here really cemented my love of this place that I’ve ended up in, my love for this town, and my love for all the crazy twists and turns that have brought me right up to where I am now.  At the end of the summer, as I and one of my other summer roommates were spending a few days packing up and preparing to move out of our summer home, I wandered into her room to find her fast asleep on her stripped bed in the afternoon light, with a cat by her shoulder and a cat curled up in the crook of her legs.  It was one of the sweetest sights of my summer.  Moving out of the summer home was so, so hard; I was leaving the place that had made this unexpectedly one of the greatest summers on record into a new apartment with a roommate who would be gone all day for the final weeks of summer, leaving me lonesome and on rocky ground once again.  However, this summer really ended beautifully, at the bar where it began, conveniently enough, kissing another boy, and reuniting with people I love and had desperately missed all summer long.  This summer was quiet, soothing, sweet, lazy, crazy, adventurous, drunken, fun, and so overwhelmingly happy that I feel I’m bound to be disappointed by whatever comes next summer.  This summer taught me, though, not to let my expectations fool me, because above all else, the time I had this summer surprised the hell out of me by being unadulteratedly AWESOME.

Five More Places

This has been sitting in my Drafts folder for a good month and a half, and the content of it is older than that even, so I figured I’d finally take the time to post it.  Also, because I don’t feel like doing homework.  What else is new?  I almost wrote another of these last night, because I was feeling much the same way I did when I originally wrote this: a little lonely, a little teary, a little bereft.  I’m much better today.  The night I wrote this, I remember really missing one of my summer roommates, who had left town for a few days (God, I’m so delicate), and being very close to the end of All The Pretty Horses.  In an attempt to distract myself from being all broken up, I set a goal to finish the novel that night, but ended up having to put it aside to sob into my pillow.  As one does.  And then I sat down and wrote this instead, which is in the same vein as these.  It’s really hard not to go back and self-edit now, but I will say my favorite is the second bullet.

5 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

• Christmastime, at home around the dinner table with my mom, dad, and all my sisters, probably laughing
• 3 months ago, before I had turned 21 and started making out with inappropriate people, just quietly happy and living in easy rhythm with my roommate, but always able to look out the window and sight the trucks moving by out on I-75
• Summertime, Claire’s basement, wrapped in a blanket and ready to watch an obscure movie
• 8th grade English class, with an awesome teacher at the front of the class, giggling and making stupid jokes with my friends
• On a road trip to anywhere but here

Today’s Letter Is R

So, I just went to Google Riley Keough (don’t question how I spend my time!) and the first thing that popped up in the dropdown suggestion box after I pressed ‘r’ was rumple mintz.  I love that because seriously, how fucking delightful is that to just say out loud?  Also?  I made some interesting choices last weekend.

You know,

something that has eternally* confused me is how to properly pronounce the name “Siobhan”.  Nothing I know about the rules of the English language help me out when I encounter it, and I’ve NEVER heard it said aloud, just seen it written various places.  You should have heard me five minutes ago trying it out different ways.  “Shabaaaaaaahn.”  “Shobin?”  “See-o-ban?!”  And so I think today might be the day I finally Google it and have that internet lady robotically murmur the name in my ear.**

On an ENTIRELY unrelated note, the sun has been out almost all week here, and GOD I have spring fever something fierce and I swear on (something important and meaningful) that if I come back from Spring Break to a frozen tundra and ten inches of snow, HEADS WILL ROLL.

*and by eternally, I mean occasionally

**I did this with the word “jodhpurs” a year or so ago, and it was a life-changing experience.  Really revolutionized my thinking.  Evidently, something about the letter h behind a consonant just really throws me.  Something to work through with my therapist.  That I don’t have.  But probably should.