Summa Summa Summatime

Hello.  I’ve missed you.  Like, a lot.  Only for some reason I didn’t realize it until it hit me hard in the face this morning.  And then I had to go to four hours of class.  Figures.  But because of my lack of writing over the summer, I decided that I should definitely do an extensive recap, in the same vein as this, but totally way better.  I’m trying to type fast here, which is hard on a practically empty stomach, plus I’ve got this funky Batman ring on, which is all sorts of awkward, but also all sorts of awesome, but I want to finish this soon because I feel like I owe this to…somebody.  Maybe myself.  So let’s talk about this summer, in depth and in detail:

This summer was so so SO different from last summer.  It was not the best summer of my life, and while I was in it, I didn’t appreciate it at all, but now, looking back, it was pretty fucking golden.  This summer started with tears in the arms of my (now ex-) roommate over having to leave so much of what I had loved and grown comfortable with.  The beginning of summer brought an end to something else; it brought an end to my “rescue year”.  The people and places I encountered through the year saved me time and time again, and leaving them behind was so scary because I knew that when I returned in the fall, everything would be different, would have changed.  And change is very hard for me.  So this summer was a little scary.  This summer I readjusted to being in Dayton, to working there instead of here, to being with those friends more often than BG friends.  This summer I didn’t have a freakin’ CAR for the first month-ish of being home, so I felt isolated and bored and frustrated alot.  My dad took me to and from work, so this summer was kind of like being 14, only I didn’t work when I was 14, so maybe not.  Anyways, this summer there was a Florida family vacation for my oldest sister’s wedding, which was understated and perfect and made me believe in true love and all that icky stuff.  This summer was waves and sand and dinners out and lots and lots of family time in the evenings.  This summer was Coldstone, Coldstone, Coldstone day in, day out, working with some people I knew and loved from last summer and some new people whom I now know and love, too.  There were regulars, Virgil the ice cream machine, a broken freezer door, and in general alot of fun that consisted of the last memories I may ever make there.  This summer was also pretty fattening.  This summer was a drunken late-night walk up ghetto Main Street in search of food; instead we found goth kids and prostitutes.  Not a bad trade-off.  This summer two of my very best friends in the whole wide world left for month long trips to Spain and Cameroon, and I felt stranded without them.  I threw myself into working as much as possible because there was not a whole lot else to do.  This summer I spent so much time with Martha, trying to make up for the fact that we won’t see each other a whole lot this year.  I think the people working at the local cheap movie theater started to recognize our faces this summer because of the sheer amount of nights we went to see crap like Obsessed and 17 Again.  Yes, I paid money to see both of those films.  We all know how I feel about Beyonce, people!  And Zac Efron…well, that was a sacrifice I made for Martha’s sake.  This summer I got Lost in Austen, and MY GOD it was horribly wonderful, and I highly suggest it.  This summer saw the return of the trip to Indian Lake for Martha’s yearly family reunion, which oh my GOD, I have missed.  Her family is HUGE and doesn’t mind when I get drunk on whiskey, and her cousins and uncles all do their best to charm me.  It always works.  This summer was a spectacular camping trip involving sangria and apple pie, as well as dirtbikes and whole flaming tree branches.  I like a mix of classy and hillbilly, sometimes.  I saw this band in concert this summer, only to be severely disappointed when their lead singer acted like a total dick, insulting other bands and actually criticizing the way Columbus was laid out, like when was the last time you worked professionally as a city planner, dude?  Shut your trap.  I spent alot of time this summer lonely for school and school people, which meant I traveled back and forth to Springboro alot to visit my future/now current roommate, after, oh yeah, I GOT A FREAKING CAR!!!  That might have been the highlight of my summer.  That or the time I threw up in an East Side Wendy’s parking lot.  Oh yes.  Highlights galore.  This summer was Gossip Girl, Dorm Life, and Mad Men at the very end, so this summer was super dramatic and award-winning.  Because I was so lonely for BG, this summer I also took a trip up here to see some of the people I missed the most.  The trip involved me touching snakes and lizards, standing by while a train sped past my face, eating dinner with a motley crew of friends and friends of friends, and having the exact same conversation with a drunken co-worker while he was well and truly plastered and then sober the next morning.  This summer was baseball, like every other summer, which is not bad, but cozy.  The Cold War Kids and My Morning Jacket came into my life this summer, so as far as music goes, this summer was pretty damn satisfactory.  You would probably be surprised how many times I carted drunk friends to Waffle House this summer.  Once, the cops were called, and the giant, imposing chef bellowed at people to get out.  They listened.  With good reason, trust and believe.  This summer I almost skipped the best barbeque of my life.  Thank God Martha is so persuasive, otherwise I wouldn’t have the memory of waking up (miraculouslyalone in my own bed at home, to an alarm someone had had the good sense to set for me) still drunk in purple frog pajama shorts on backwards with puncture wounds in both my arms.  No, it wasn’t heroin.  It was almost as trashy, though.  Sigh.  Can that be the motto of my summer?  Or, better yet, my life?  “No, it wasn’t heroin.  It was almost as trashy, though.”  That’s the life of every Daytonian.  This summer…wasn’t all that bad.  I’m glad to be back where I am, but part of me now misses it a little.  This summer, I was spoiled, working at an easy job, making decent money, driving around in a new-to-me car, seeing the people I love as much as possible, while still having PLENTY of me time.  So in the end, this summer was pretty OK.

Man I Gotta Get Out Of This Town

When I was home for Spring Break at the beginning of the month, I went through my notebooks and folders from last semester, and found a piece of writing I’d done in my Social Psych class back in October.  I remember the exact day I wrote it; it was the day I was going home for Fall Break, and I was in the most boring class I’ve ever had, at 4:30 in the afternoon.  I couldn’t sit still for the life of me because I was so excited to go home; it had been a while since I’d seen people in Dayton.  So instead of listening to lecture, I wrote this, and then just walked out of class.

5 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

• Sunday morning, 1996, Grandma’s house, sitting down to bacon and eggs with her and Lydia and Whitney
• Home, now, lounging in the green chair, chili cooking, football on TV
• May 2008, Brooklyn Bridge, with the beer and the wind and the lights
• In bed, under covers, in soft afternoon light, Ben Lee singing in my ear
• Whenever, wherever, driving my old, wrecked Honda, windows down, music up

And then, after I found it, I stuck it in the folder I use for my Shakespeare class now and forgot about it.  Until St. Patty’s day, sitting in class listening to a boring presentation, when I took it out, reread it, and added to it:

• About 15 hours less than a year ago today, drunk off my ass with my best friends, in the room of two trashy boys
• January of my senior year, driving home from work with a song in my head and the biggest crush
• August, my sister’s, with beach hair and a book
• Springtime at OLOM, 2002 or so, outside in the early morning cool, on the bike racks waiting for the bell to ring
• 4 hours from now, taking a walk around campus with coffee and my iPod

I think this might become a thing I do.

A Detour Is a Choice Between Two Tasks, Each With Its Own Pros And Cons

Well!  It’s February!  Would you look at that!  I feel like such a shithead for not writing here for the past three weeks.  Seriously, like I couldn’t sleep last night because my mind was racing with things I wanted to write about.  I know I’m not really accountable to anyone with regards to this blog because no one reads it, but the whole reason I started writing here wasn’t to become some famous-on-the-internet blogger.  It was more for my peace of mind than anything, because writing clears my head tremendously, and it’s actually something I’ve been doing mentally my whole life.  Seriosuly, when I was younger, I would just imagine how some writers would set down the most mundane daily events of my life in my head, narrating everyday shit to myself, like “As she exited her school building, Meredith scanned the mass of cars in the parking lot for her father’s distinguishable red [whatever kind of car that was].  She spotted it easily, strode over, and climbed in, pulling the door shut behind her.”  WHAT?  What is that, internet?  It’s so frightening that things like that happen in my head, but that’s something that happens all the time.  Only, uh, I think I’m a better writer now than I was when I would’ve thoguht something like that, which was 5th grade.  I mean, a better writer in my head.  And in real life too, I guess, but I ain’t tryin to give myself props here, people.  That’s your job.  Man, probably the only reason I have friends is because I’ve never told anyone about that habit, ever. 

Another reason I write is summed up in one of my favorite quotes: “Writing is opening up a crack just wide enough to let some light into you, and some you onto the page, so that the next person feels less alone”.  I hope someday someone stumbles across what I have written here and sees something they can relate to, apply to their life, or just laugh at because they’ve been there before.  That’s what I want.  And in the meantime, if it means that a little light is let into me in the process, so that I figure out something abut myself as well?  All the better, I say.  It’s why I keep this up and why I don’t really think I’ll ever be able to stop writing; it’ll always go on, I hope, in some capacity.  And that quote, by the way, was taken from one of these, believe it or not. 

So, ok, I sat down to write an update with some of the silly and, yes, mundane things that have been going on in my life, and ended up accidentally getting all philisophical on your ass.  It happens.  Next time, maybe, I can tell you all about dancing with creepers and my thoughts on Keira Knightley.  But for now, I have to go learn how to write a sentence using the phrase anstatt…zu for my German test tomorrow.  Auf Wiedersehen!

So I was thinking in the shower and my head started to do that thing when you think about a word too much and it makes no sense anymore, and you’re like, “Why this random assortment of letters to mean this thing?”  I briefly considered thinking more deeply about Structuralism, and then was like, “Nah, fuck it”.  And, not gonna lie about it, this all came about because I was thinking about Kafka and all of his girlfriends. 

Currently, my roommate is viewing YouTube videos that have made me think fondly of Torrin’s Passage and her exclaim, “I can’t help it, I love Asians!”

Hello My Darlin’

Tonight I got a text from a boy that I met last night that read: “Hey gorgeous how ru doin tonite”.  Ignoring all the egregious spelling and grammatical issues therein, I wanted to slap him immediately for assuming he could call me gorgeous just like that.  Um, no, we are not doing this.  God, it was like worst song, played on ugliest guitar.

On a completely unrelated note, I learned a new word today: verisimilitude.  That’s a $1.00 word right there, as my old Psych teacher would say.