Thursday, December 22, 2011

who doesn't like airports?

i want to start this blog with something completely unrelated, and that is the fact that yesterday, i had the opportunity to drive an hour and a half by myself.

this is unremarkable. the drive to my college is three hours, and i do that by myself all the time. unfortunately, i don't do it at night, and i particularly enjoy night highway driving with a nice can of dr. pepper ten because i am a woman and can defy commercials.

this drive was remarkable because i had the lion king original broadway soundtrack, and i will be damned if i didn't sing every single song like i was about to win american idol. i sounded exactly like young simba. which means that i sounded like a ten year old girl pretending to be a boy on broadway.

not sure how i feel about that.

but this blog is about traveling. i was supposed to write this last night, seeing as last night was when this marvelous singing of the lion king occurred, and then i could've posted it last night and not be writing this last minute. but my brother was watching avatar and i absolutely had to watch it too, and of course, i tweeted about how much i hated humanity.

then jacob alerted me that he left his phone in my car. but that's a whole different blog post.

so this blog post is about traveling.

i have a fairly comfortable life. my parents are paying for my expensive private school with the help of my gigantic scholarship. we did not feel the pinch of the economy. both of my parents are high school science teachers, but my dad is so awesome with budgeting that we have plenty of money. there are a few reasons for this.

1. i do not have fancy, expensive things. my laptop was a big deal.
2. i do not have tons and tons of clothes. just cardigans.
3. basically, i just don't have a lot of things.

because of this, my parents had lots of money for me to experience things, and that, for my family, is travel.

every single summer, up until i was sixteen, we took at least a week vacation. every christmas we'd visit my grandparents in florida, and every spring break, we'd visit my other set in phoenix.

i am leaving to head to visit the phoenix set in approximately one point five hours. and i cannot contain my excitement. mostly because i want to live in phoenix.

at the tender age of twenty years, six months, and nineteen days, i have been to over forty-one states and five countries.

honestly, i'd rather have that on my resume than an iphone. but i'd still like the iphone.

normally, when my family travels, we drive. we drove to florida every year until that magical day that my father discovered airplanes (when i was about thirteen). when i was fifteen, we took a seventeen day road trip and almost made it to alaska. i liked my brother up until that trip. pretty sure i hated him the rest of the summer.

but since that happy day that my father discovered airplanes, we fly. and i have to say, i absolutely love flying.

but this is the weird thing. i hate flying. so let's make another list so you and i can understand how this works.

1. i absolutely love airports. i would live in them if i could. airports excite me. i feel happy. productive. terrific. i adore airports.
2. airplanes are so neat. i don't care about the engines or the physics, i just think that airplanes look cool.
3. i hate take-off and landing.
4. i'm fine up in the air with my ipod playing obscure hipster music.

numero uno is the most important bullet point in that list. airports are my favorite. so the summer of 2010, when i flew from indiana to denver by myself, that was so exciting! and yes, this is what my blog is actually about. me flying across the country by myself like a big girl.

national youth conference, otherwise known as NYC, is something that happens in my church every four years at colorado state university (CSU. oh the acronyms!). i am proud to be a religious minority. trust me, we're not on the SAT bubble in thing. we're last on the ACT. so NYC is decently important. it's where the three thousand of us brethren high school kids get to congregate, live on a college campus, and worship god in our little brethren minority way for five days.

because of work, i was not able to fly out with my youth group. i would be flying out all by myself with my one bag of checked luggage and my one carry-on item. i would arrive at NYC one day late but still be able to join in the five day festivities of worshipping god.

this was my only chance for this experience. the next time NYC rolled around, i'd be twenty-three.

the sunday before i left, i swam my last summer swim team relay race (for the team that i coach) and upon finishing, i sprained my wrist on the wall. it didn't mean much at the time, not until i broke my hand three hours later. that didn't mean much until three weeks later when i finally found out it was broken after working the rock wall at my church camp.

i packed and packed and was too excited to sleep. i was going to NYC! i was going to colorado! i was going to meet so many great people from across the country!  my wrist really hurt!

the not sleeping turned out to be a bad thing. my dad came and woke me up at two o'clock in the morning. i think i fell asleep around midnight.

i was too excited to sleep on the drive down to indianapolis, a two hour drive from my house. i chattered and chattered and my dad popped espresso coffee beans like he was dr. house popping vicodin. i was so excited, i was so ready, i was going to fly all by myself. i had my tickets and my luggage and an extra change of clothes and my cell phone to call my youth pastor when i got to denver, and i even had my shuttle ticket to take me from denver to fort collins. i was so unbelievably ready.

when my dad drove away, leaving me in the lit up overhang of the indianapolis airport and i knew that i had nowhere to go but on, i wanted to bawl my nineteen year old eyes out, go home, and snuggle with a stuffed animal.

i managed to check my own luggage without much of a hassle. at five o'clock in the morning, the security line wasn't too long. i didn't have to go through those weird new puffer doors that shoot painful puffs of air at you. i thought that the young guy behind me in a trench coat might be a serial killer. i went back on that statement when he pulled out a paperback copy of the fellowship of the ring.

while i waited at my gate, too nervous to be tired, i played solitaire anxiously on my ipod and listened to kings of leon (don't judge, it was 2010). an asian lady watched me as i nervously clicked through card after card. finally i got to board my flight. i talked to a blond haired lady with a carry on that was probably too large for airport regulations.

just my luck, i was seated next to an old guy who looked possibly turkish. his scruffy beard seemed sinister to me. i was sure that if my dad had been a row behind me, i wouldn've been fine, but here i was, flying all by myself, terrified of an older looking man sitting next to me because he had gray scruffle and puffy eyes. he looked a bit like tim curry.

he slept the entire flight. i anxiously read harry potter.

the flight was flawless. but there was no dr. pepper.

denver's airport is one of my favorites, but once i got off and collected my luggage, i wasn't quite sure where to go with my shuttle ticket. i called my youth pastor and told her i was safe and sound in colorado, and she said, "hooray! now get on that shuttle and get here!"

so i wandered around aimlessly with my luggage and back pack, becoming increasingly more sleepy. but i had just flown backwards in time three hours. it wasn't even noon yet. good lord, i was hungry. and i had a shuttle ticket.

i found a counter behind a curtain of glass. the lady behind the counter took my receipt and told me where to go.

i went in the wrong direction.

i waited and waited in the wrong spot for my shuttle. finally i got enough courage to ask somebody, and i was on the wrong side of the entire freaking airport.

when i found the correct shuttle waiting place, i sat on a bench and munched on some blueberries. my youth pastor called about why i was late. i got on the shuttle when it came and stared at the rocky mountains and wondered about living in colorado instead of arizona. then i remembered that i don't like to downhill ski (too scary) and i hated snow (too cold).

the shuttle dropped me off at a fancy looking mall. i then had to transfer onto a small personal shuttle that had a few people on it. i listened to music while two young guys with gigantic archery bows loudly discussed bow hunting.

i was not in the midwest. i was in a movie where young guys with gigantic archery bows loudly discussed bow hunting.

by the time i made it to CSU and my youth pastor found me, i was exhausted. but it was only noon, and i had another twelve hours of NYC fun ahead of me. what happened next was this:

1. i put my stuff in a dorm. on the eighth floor.
2. i got lost in a big scary building looking for my NYC group.
3. i went swimming.
4. it rained while it was cloudless.
5. i ate dinner.
6. i went to a workshop.
7. i wandered around the campus.
8. i went to ten o'clock worship with 3,000 other youth.
9. i went to a candlelight vigil to mourn the loss of my aunt to breast cancer the previous spring.
10. i slept for six hours before another full day of NYC began again.

in approximately one hour, i will be packing up my suitcase and heading to indianapolis. then i will board a plane destined for phoenix arizona to spend a week with my twelve crazy relatives.

once again, i have harry potter and my love of airports to keep me company.

if you're traveling somewhere this christmas, i hope you travel safely, and that you have a hell of a good time. sometimes the fun is in the actual traveling, not the destination.

and hopefully, i will not be sitting next to a man that looks like tim curry.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

i'll put the coffee on.

this is one of those magical moments where i am holed up in the library, but i do not have any homework that is sitting in my bag screaming, "EMILY I SWEAR TO GOD IF I DON'T GET DONE, YOU ARE GOING TO FLUNK OUT OF COLLEGE AND GO HOME TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS AND NEVER BE A TEACHER."

i just reread that and realized how dramatic it was.

but seriously, i really don't have that much homework to do.

and that's what's scaring me and prompting me to blog.

things prompting me to blog:

1. it's the sunday before finals week and i am sitting here with no homework to accomplish. i do, however, have a box of teddy grahams and a vitamin water.
2. with no homework to accomplish, i am absolutely bored out of my mind. there's a criminal minds marathon on A&E, but i don't want to leave my boyfriend alone in the library with his fascism essay.
3. i just watched the latest episode of chuck and am not entirely sure what my emotions are doing.
4. now i'm making a list about why i'm blogging in my blog.

i feel that if i make this blog entirely about homework, it'll be short and weird. but what the hell, let's do it.

and i really hope that you don't stop reading this because it's about homework. i swear, i'll try to make this entertaining. because my life is generally entertaining, and i feel like you're on here because you find me writing about my life at least a little bit entertaining too.

so. finals week at alma college looks something like this.

1. grab all of the books and notes you own.
2. spend an hour trying to find a place to camp out in the library, buy something with caffeine from highland java, and praise the extended hours.
3. spend a ridiculous amount of time on facebook, tumblr, youtube, or whatever you're into.
4. actually do your homework when you realize it's midnight and the library closes at two.

all day. errrrayday.

this also applies to the week before finals, which was last week. there are punctuated classes between hours and hours of endless studying.

as you probably know, my goal is to become a teacher. i want to teach spanish and literature. my schedule doesn't truly live up to this goal. my schedule for the (now finished!) fall semester.

1. philosophy. (oh. my. lord. comprehensive final. there is homework screaming in my bag.)
2. zumba. (no. i cannot dance. i just pretend that i can.)
3. creative writing. (my pen might vomit soon.)
4. education 200. (the weeder class that's nothing but cases and portfolios and dr. seals being legitimate.)
5. advanced spanish composition. (this is where true evil exists and i question learning spanish at all.)

my finals stand something like this.

1. comprehensive philosophy final on wednesday. no studying in sight.
2. educational portfolio due on friday. finished.
3. creative writing portfolio due on monday. finished.
4. four page spanish research paper in spanish. almost finished, just need to talk to my professor about my somewhat strange these that involves the word "erradicar."

i'm feeling pretty good about how this is going. but while everybody is freaking out this week, i saved all of my freak out for last week.

so last sunday was this super epically productive day where i decided that i was going to write my spanish paper on illiteracy in colombia. illiteracy in spanish is analfabetismo, which makes me think of "without alphabet" in greek or latin or something, and i have gotten so good at typing that word it is not even funny. but once i decided on that, i had this brilliant idea that went something like this.

"hey! all of your education portfolio stuff, with the autobiography and the student interview... you could do that in two hours and then not worry about it at all and turn it in a week early and then just be like... existing on campus."

i enjoy existing on campus.

so that sunday i did all of my education portfolio stuff, turned it into dr. seals, went and said hi to my boss, and painted a happy birthday sign and felt pretty happy. i might've eaten some licorice.

then thursday happened.

to help with my productivity, i wore a teachery outfit. i was going to print off my entire 112 page english portfolio and make it pretty. then i was going to write my entire four page paper about illiteracy in colombia in spanish and hopefully learn lots of vocabulary along the way.

i holed up in my friend sarah's carrel. she's told me that i can use it, but it was covered in her scary shakespeare books for dr. aspinall's class, and no matter how much i covered it with my stuff, it didn't feel like mine. i felt guilty and texted her to let her know what i was doing. she laughed at me. i had from ten thirty until one to do a lot of work, and i spread my study wings and went to work on that portfolio.

i spent a decent amount of time three hole punching my 112 page portfolio. when i finished grunting and sweating in my cute teachery outfit, i found the electronic three hole punch machine. i accidentally sent half of my portfolio down to the basement printer when i was on the third floor. after putting it together, i found i put some chunks in the wrong area. my table of contents was out of order and i had to reprint it. i did this all in my socks.

then it was just sitting there in this big fat blank binder and the hipster in me thought, "naming this 'portfolio' is so incredibly mainstream and dr. vivian will be expecting it."

so, i spent an indecent amount of time avoiding my spanish paper by naming my portofolio and honest to god decorating the binder. on friday dr. vivian asked if anybody wanted to turn their portfolios in, and i selfishly kept mine because it is beautiful and i am proud of my 112 pages of original work. and the hot air balloon on the front of it looks like the up house. it's called "ribbons and bows". mostly because i like to wear bows in my hair.

i then had from two o'clock until five o'clock back at sarah's carrel to write my spanish paper. i actually sat down and went through my 28 pages of research and highlighted what looked useful. i think that taking advanced spanish composition has made me a worse spanish reader and a worse spanish speaker. eventually i think i was just highlighting anything that said "educacion."

then i spent the remaining time on tumblr and thinking about blogging about all of this. i did fill out my RA evaluations, that made me feel a bit better.

after dinner i had a complete freak out where i sat on my bed and cried and fed my fish too much food so i didn't eat my own feelings. i needed to write my paper before ten o'clock (my mandatory hall meeting about christmas check-out) and it was now seven in the evening. how on earth was i supposed to write a four page argumentative research paper in another language in three hours?

desperation. that's how.

my best friend google translate and i busted through that four page paper in less than two hours. i left the library practically in tears and i am happy to say, i did not go back to the library until this afternoon. and after that paper was over, elf was on TV.

ELF.

so everybody is at least a little upset that i'm not really doing much at the moment. but i will tell you, i did far too much work (and procrastination) on thursday to make this week so much happier and healthier.

i think i might actually work out this week.

so now all that's left is this awful comprehensive final in philosophy. i really knew i should've paid attention to those terrible plato presentations that we did. at least my presentation involved a disney movie.

i believe i'm going to go study some philosophy now and hope that tomorrow doesn't come, because i really don't want to turn in my creative writing portfolio. i am selfish. but i really like that binder.

oh yes, the front of my portfolio.
not mainstream.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

well aren't you pretentious.

once again, i am holed up in a study room and lo and behold, not doing my homework.

yes. i am wearing a cardigan. i am also wearing some random person's shirt from 2003 greek week and there is a walrus on my left sock.

the homework that i have to get done is not truly as terrible as it sounds, it's just rather tedious and time consuming. the main problem is that none of it is in english.

1. read this little paragraph about research paper criteria. pick out the criteria and make a list.
2. read these two introductory paragraphs and see if they fit the criteria.
3. after deciding that they DON'T fit the criteria, rewrite a list with different criteria to make it fit.
4. then go research a large amount about illiteracy in colombia.

none of this is in english. the directions or the paragraphs or the research.

i've done one and two. i just really don't see myself doing the other two for a long time. so... like, after dinner.

i did that thing where i got on tumblr. then to get myself away from tumblr, i decided that i was going to write my novel.

this was a novel  idea (haaaa i made a pun), seeing as i haven't written a word of my book in at least a month and a half. this is killing me, because i have been working on this damn book for something like eight months, and it's only 311 pages. it's also gotten a lot of leukemia twitter sites to follow me.

i really shouldn't complain about this novel. i've been writing my other one for nearly two years and that hasn't moved in at least nine months. poor eli is stuck in the moscow airport not quite sure what he's doing there until i figure out what he's there for. when i do, i'm pretty sure i will dance and sing and not surface from that book for at least three hours.

this other novel, this 311 page one, i have it open at the bottom of my screen. it's a little microsoft word tab between my sticky notes tab and my spotify tab. i'm not sure why i have spotify open because i'm listening to iron & wine on my ipod.

so the other day i had to write a creative writing reflection about my habit of art (which i never formed) and my writing process. i already blogged about my poem process; my pen just kind of vomits strange words everywhere. while i was writing my four page reflection that turned out to be like, eight pages at least, i began to feel guilty about not making my habit of art. i feel like it might make writing novels easier.

the first day of class, dr. vivian (while still clutching that sacred rose) begged us to try for just one semester to write every day. that didn't sound bad to me, i did it all the time during the summer. but i underestimated how busy i would be this semester, what with being an RA, going to chapel, being a placement teacher, being in other various organizations, and having five classes. soon it was things like "go write this spanish paper and when you're done, make sure you read these five education cases and do write ups for them" instead of "go work on your novel."

i sat there dreamily the first day of class and said, "oh yes dr. vivian, i can make a habit of art."

look how that ended up.

the other week i was thinking to myself, when i make my 100 page portfolio (which is done!) i can make it ALL poetry. i can write one hundred poems. that'll be so cool.

since that time, i have written maybe three poems. don't get me wrong, i still have a good thirty poems in my portfolio, but nowhere near one hundred. and their eccentric strangeness has me worried for my sanity.

but getting back to my creative writing reflection and discussing how i just didn't get to the habit of art, i was supposed to make a connection between my work. before i comment on that, i should describe exactly what i did to order my portfolio.

i took my six main characters that i had book chunks from.

1. clementine. an eighteen year old aspiring baker/astronaut with a boyfriend that has leukemia.
2. eli. a twenty-four year old bank investor who is abnormally tall, abnormally rich, abnormally nice, has an elderly friend named charlie who rather resembles my grandfather, and is recovering from the sudden death of his fiancee.
3. alice. an eighteen year old compulsive arsonist who gets involved with a bipolar explosives dealer. (don't ask.)
4. cameron. a seventeen year old australian kid who is still piecing his life together after his older sister died when he was ten.
5. frank. a fifty-two year genius with a secret, an estranged wife, and a missing daughter who randomly shows up to come live with him.
6. kip. well, you probably know kip, the blind kid. if not, see previous blogs.

i wrote all of these names on a chalkboard, and then i wrote major themes from their lives and their stories underneath them. i generally had about six traits and themes under each one, and there was something that fit for every single one of them.

terrible or nonexistent father.

where on EARTH did that come from?


and then i think i figured it out.

if you know anything about me, it should be that i love my family, and i love my father. i believe that my father is superman. he is nerdy and funny with a unique sense of humor. he is incredibly smart. he calls me sweetheart. he cooks me pancakes every single saturday and he can solve any problem. he does sudokus in pen and doesn't blink. he has a great taste in movies and he is the best teacher that i have ever had. i am a daddy's girl through and through.

so what i figured out was this: every single person in my novels has terrible or nonexistent dads because not having a dad or having one that's absolutely terrible is something that i find to be terrifying. i think it's one of the biggest letdowns and conflicts and terrible things i could possibly write about, and so i do.

i state this so much better in my reflection.


Perhaps all of these broken families stem from my terror of not having my father be the father that he is. Not having a father, or having one who not suited to fit the role of father, is one of the worst plights that I can possibly imagine, and my terror comes out through these people that live in my head. Perhaps they are me without a father and they live up there to remind me of everything that I have. It is their job to come out through my writing to remind me of how impossibly lucky I am to be the daughter of William Hollenberg.

yes. i think i state that much better in essay form. 


you know, this isn't really where i intended my blog to go. but my blogs never truly go where i intend them to go, and that's kind of how i write books. when i started wrting about kip's sister, i had no idea what was going to happen. the next thing i knew, i was killing people and there was an iranian cab driver.

a lot of the time i wish that i had been given some other weird talent other than writing novels. writing novels is annoying. it's a pain in the butt. it sounds pretentious, so i really don't like to talk about it. i don't like how people tell me that a terrifically painful process is "cool". i'm forced to read good works of literature for my major and realize that i'll never write that well. but i write novels anyway because i think that if i didn't, i would go absolutely insane.

more insane than i already am.

i am now going to end this blog, do some laundry, and hopefully eat pasta. and maybe, just maybe, i will continue to write about clementine. and perhaps eli.

he really needs to leave that russian airport. nine months is a long time to be in an airport.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

well hello there black friday.

this is the blog where i talk about how i lost my black friday virginity.

a few things to start with.

it's not really my black friday virginity. i went out last year at nine in the morning, and the year before that late in the day.

but on black friday of this year, my mother and i ventured out to target at midnight.

normally on black friday my family stays inside like it's the freakin' zombie apocalypse. like the abnormal family we are, we stay inside and read together. my parents go to bed early on thanksgiving night, and i stay up unusually late and research serial killers and watch criminal minds. i'm not sure what my brother does. i feel like it's not as creepy as what i do.

but this year my mother surprised me by saying that we were going to target at midnight. and so my tale begins.

my mother is a morning person. i am a night owl. she had to take a nap, and i was instructed to wake her up at eleven thirty. i ended up waking her up at eleven thirty four because i simply couldn't bear to pull myself away from the criminal minds episode i was watching. (corazon, if you're wondering. the one where reid gets headaches and beats down a college professor with a pipe. go reid.) i then fluffed my hair and we set off for target.

we went to the target by the mall, which was a bad idea from the get-go. the parking lot was completely filled up, so we parked a good distance away at an expensive restaurant called granite city. while waiting in the car, my mother found the target line. it snaked around the building. i tweeted excitedly and yawned.

so. my mom has her purse and i have my gamma phi bag. she's wearing her nice winter coat and i'm thinking we're not going to stand in line for anything, so i have on a cardigan, no coat. and then she's all like, 'hey emily let's go walk to the mall.' the mall is a good quarter mile away, but my mother and i are fast walkers. i agree.

so we set off toward the mall. my mother has her car keys clutched in her fist like a weapon and she's telling me that she's ready to shank someone down if we get mugged in the parking lot. i point out to her that it's way more likely that we'll get hit by a car because we are literally walking in traffic. nonetheless, she clutches her keys, i shiver, and we run into the mall. no muggers. no terrible drivers. just my mom clutching her car keys.

we make a beeline for macy's because we have a coupon. the entire world seems to be at the front of the store, and my mother, in her five foot two way, manages to push her way to the back where we accost the on sale dress pants and cardigans. in no time we're in a dressing room and i'm trying on future teacher clothes. it's twelve fifteen in the morning and my phone is alive; i'm tweeting and jessica (my cousin/sister) is texting me and telling me that she's outside this huge mall in detroit. then i look over and my mom has out two coupons and a calculator.

the woman has out a calculator.


when i ask her what she's doing, she says, "we have a fifteen percent off coupon and a ten dollars off coupon, i have to see which one is cheaper. YES THE TEN DOLLAR COUPON GETS US SEVEN DOLLARS OFF, NOT SIX!" i love my mother so damn much.

we buy our purchases happily and run to new york and company.

at new york and company, i find a pair of dress pants for seventy dollars. while trying them on in the dressing room, i get a text from one of my friends dropping some big news and that she has to talk to me now. i text back saying that i'm half naked in a dressing room. the responding text is, "sure thing, i love you, why the hell are you in a dressing room at one in the morning." ahh... well... the pants fit.

the line to buy said pants (that were fifteen dollars after the coupons and sales) was pretty long. my mom left it to go peruse more pants. when she returned with a pair, she said, are these the same? i replied with "si, pero es negro, no gris." but it's black, not gray. as soon as those words left my mouth, the woman in front of me turned to her ten year old daughter and began to speak very rapidly in spanish. real spanish. spanish like i-grew-up-speaking-spanish-stop-speaking-my-language spanish.

i shut up so fast.

before leaving the mall, i peeked into the aldo. it was closed up, but i pressed myself up to the bars and got on my tiptoes. what the hell, there was no gigantic poster of matthew gray gubler modeling their shoes. i lamented loudly to my mother, who grabbed my hand and dragged me away. i really wanted to see a poster of him and embarrass myself by screaming and getting excited and fangirling all over the place.

after i scored my teacher clothes, we decided to head back to target. we ended up walking across the part of the parking lot that was rather barren, except this one lone car that looked scary. my mother clutched her car keys again. for fun, i began to tell her all the serial killer facts that i knew. instead of being freaked out, she asked me completely seriously, "are there serial killers in india?"

well, yes. where there are humans, there are serial killers. england has quite a few, let me assure you.

we managed to get into the target store without being run down by a car or a crazy stay at home mother. but once we got inside of target... well. there were so. many. people.

we, of course, headed right to the cardigans. there were, of course, none to be had. i was sorely disappointed, beginning to yawn, and becoming hungry. starbucks seemed like a good option, but the line for starbucks curled outside of the target, and i did not need caffeine.

we headed over to boots. i go to school in michigan where it snows a fair deal, so boots were a good thing. i found an adorable gray pair. of course, i was wearing my toms and didn't have socks to try them on, so we stopped in the aisle and i used my mother's socks. this is true mother/daughter love, my friends.

then we headed to DVDs with me clutching this gigantic pink box with boots in them. the electronics line was making its way into the shoe aisle, so we had to battle our way through it. i had a slight advantage; i'm really tall and was carrying a large box. we busted through some frantic women and i found myself facing a mid-life crisis.

criminal minds season six was not on sale.


i know. i know. but really. i was super upset. so i stared at the small picture of reid on it and thought about the nonexistent matthew gray gubler poster back at the mall. i resigned to watch criminal minds upon arriving home if i wasn't too tired.

trying to get to check-out lane involved going through the toy aisle. some lady almost knocked me out by swinging around some gigantic robot toy for her kid, and in the commotion of being happy that i still had my head, i lost my mother. when i took off running to find her, i ran down some poor target employee who probably didn't want to be there at all. i hope he heard me apologize. when i found my mother, we walked quickly toward the front of the store. what we passed was really odd; from the candy aisle at the back of the store all the way through cosmetics to the front of the store, people were snaked through each aisle with shopping carts. they weren't moving.

this was the check-out line.

it was literally snaked through sixteen aisles. it looked like cedar point. and the women in line looked like bears about to maul the crap out of some unsuspecting person just trying to buy tampons.

my mother said, "go put those boots back."

i didn't need telling twice.

when we got halfway through the store, we hit a solid traffic jam of people at the on-sale DVD bins. my mother told me that she didn't really care if i just threw those boots down somewhere, but i'm a good citizen. i always put my shopping cart back, and i put things back where i find them. so i decided to battle back to the shoe aisle. after ten minutes of a furious struggle in which i pretended i was defending gondor from mordor (do NOT hate) i got the boots back. as soon as i set them down, some hysterical lady with a mullet grabbed them and i never saw them again.

my mom and i made it out of target alive, barely. i did not have boots, but i was not about to wait in a four hour check-out line. no way in hell was that going to happen. when we left, the lone police officer gave us a long look. what was a mother/daughter couple doing leaving target at one thirty in the morning without purchases?

we were simply being sensible, mr. cop. and i feel so sorry for you if you have to tackle anybody.

i am no longer a black friday virgin. a lady with a mullet practically attacked me over some boots. we did not get mugged walking to the mall and back while we discussed the fact that are thirty-three active serial killers in the united states at any given time. i got some good deals on teacher clothes. i texted half-naked in a dressing room at one in the morning. i threw a small temper tantrum at the lack of matthew gray gubler in an aldo.

i had fun. and i don't think i'll be doing it again. especially when jessica texted me back and said that she still hadn't gotten into the mall in detroit yet.




but seriously. i just wanted to see this beautiful human being at that aldo.









post script: i just want to say that human beings are crazy creatures for the havoc that we wreak every black friday. i count myself among the crazies.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

a million brilliant pieces.

i am honestly blogging because my fingers need to type something.

what my fingers will type, i have no idea. now that i'm typing, i'm realizing that i really need to cut my fingernails, and this is why i have been failing at trying to learn to play the guitar.

i also feel the need to openly admit that i am listening to eminem. i am thoroughly ashamed with myself. mostly because in terms of music, i am the ultimate hipster.

you go, the new pornographers, frightened rabbit, the head and the heart, and the national!

so anyway. i have absolutely no idea what this blog will be about. we'll see what comes out of my fingers.

that's a really odd phrase. seeing what comes out of my fingers.

i used something close to that when i talked to dr. vivian about my poetry. i was sitting in his office wearing a really nice cardigan and one of my better hair bows and i had my legs crossed and he was asking me something, and i said something like, "oh i don't spend long writing poems. my pens just kind of vomit them."

i could probably write a poem about that. i'm surprised that i haven't.

(HEY LOOK, MY BLOG IS ABOUT POETRY! i'm as surprised as you.)

dr. vivian's office is really magnificent. the most magnificent place i've been to (but i haven't really because it's not real) is The Office of Possibilities of Opportunities, and dr. vivian's office is pretty close to it. it has all these awesome pictures that students have had in the art show (by the way, there's a nude sketch of my brother in the library art display downstairs) and all kinds of books about poetry and life. and his door is always open, even when he's not there. one day, if i ever decide to become a criminal, i'm going to walk right in there and take a paper weight. or a book.

i don't think i'll ever decide to become a criminal. so for now, his paper weights are safe.

so every time dr. vivian reads one of my poems, he writes all over it in his handwriting. this means that my boyfriend, who has handwriting almost as bad, has to take a magnifying glass and we have to scour it under fluorescent lights. it really is a process. then there's absolutely no criticism, only things like, "nice metaphor, what does this mean?" when i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing and need criticism. writing poetry isn't really a process, at least not for me, because my pen just vomits poems up.

before he got me to try dramatic monologues (those are really fun, let me tell you), he arranged this meeting with me about my poetry in which we sat around and discussed how my pen vomits things. he told me very kindly that nobody is supposed to understand their own poetry. i thought about how much my feet smelled.

well gee. I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT.

the other day, while he was lecturing about one-act plays, my pen vomited up this in the back of my notebook:



or
    din
          ar
               Y

                        going once twice (sold!)

to the man with the extraordinary sun
(who alone knows)

                        for the price of seventeen cents.


and then, the other day when i had a migraine:

stacks of shelves
            stacked with books
walk sleepily
                        down that never ending road to

            we are studious
we are studious
                        we are studious.

and finally, after i watched monsters inc. :

 screams
                        high
                                                piercing


invisible in the white
            cutting through the roaring wind
   (they cut so easily)


the monsters come

small
            large
                        scaly
                                    furry
not hungry just the screaming

   to terrorize children.


children sleep
            the closet door closed
    but knowing, yes knowing
            the knob will turn as silently as a toy firetruck
                        and then the monster will come


spiked
            smooth

leviathan
            miniscule


never hungry, always the screaming

                        to terrorize children.

they come
            they come

they come.


i am now officially afraid of my closet, my mind, and my pen. i am now also officially afraid that some of my poetry is out on the internet to anyone interested in reading my blog. oh jeez.

poetry is not what i want to do with my life. poetry is something that happens when i'm not paying attention, and when i'm paying too much attention. and suddenly i have this english professor telling me that submitting to journals, literary journals, is something that i absolutely have to look into, that i have this gift, and all kinds of things like that.

um, excuse me, what?

i just want to be a spanish teacher and blog and go to my classes and be a resident assistant. and when my pen vomits up something weird, well. i suppose it can vomit up weirdness.

and goshdarnit, i just want to understand my poetry.

i've given up on that. the more poems i write, the weirder they are, and the only thing that i can conclusively conclude is that it's poetry and that i space my poems very oddly. and i can tell you that the monster poem is definitely about monsters inc.

think about it. the idea of monsters scaring children is somewhat terrifying. even if pixar made it happy. 

"we'll dig a tunnel using mostly spoons and release it into the wild!"

i love you, mike wazowski.

so this blog turned out to be about poetry. maybe. i will leave you with another poem and i will probably hate this blog post for the rest of my life.

one of these days
                                                my head will explode
into a million brilliant pieces

and you will open your mouth and say


“yes.” 

Monday, November 14, 2011

oh my god, the humanity.

picture this if you will.

i am sitting in a study room in the basement of the library at eight o'clock in the evening wearing a cardigan and my matching toms. my boyfriend is across from me reading some gigantic poetry anthology. bill and connor are doing something terrible that involves genetics. amy is spinning and reading art history.

our room is loud. the iron and wine in my ears is not loud. i have so much spanish homework to do i'm thinking in english.

welcome to my life.

right now i have another terrible need to blog, and this blog is probably going to be literary and all over the place. so i'll start out with this because i need to get it out.

THINGS I AM EXCITED FOR.

1. i currently have a copy of midnight for charlie bone sitting next to me.
2. i'm almost done with the prisoner of azkaban for the forty-sixth time!
3. it's gift week. I GOT MY GAMMA PHI BETA CRAFT BOX! (if only i knew how to craft.)
4. i found this really cute picture of a psychopathic dinosaur on my phone.
5. i made up a latin word and was right, it's a real word. that word is quadrennial.
6. i am definitely getting a smart phone.
7. i made myself an iron and wine shirt. and a frightened rabbit shirt.
8.. i am not doing any of my homework and i am not feeling guilty about it in the least.
9. some half-rational part of my brain is telling me to just drop out of college and write poetry.

my lastest poem looks something like this:

his marvelous maybe

sat on a window sill

                        mouth open like a venus fly trap


  trying to swallow the world.

please do not ask me to explain my poetry. i have no honest idea. my pen just kind of vomits them out.

okay but this is what i really wanted to blog about while i listen to iron and wine and ignore all of my homework. i want to blog about walmart. walmart and literature. literature and walmart. and doughnuts, we can't forget the doughnuts.

once again, the fabulous dr. vivian had given me another daunting and fabulous prompt: go to walmart, people watch, and write a reflection on it.

well. i wrote my reflection last night before i went to chapel to praise God and write MUFASA on my spanish name tag (which i later stuck on my dorm door), and i feel the need to blog about it.

the first part of this trip involves me buying hairspray. i need hairspray to survive. it is a fact that i am not entirely comfortable with but accept. i also bought a small plastic plant for gabberdine (that's my new fish) but when i stuck it in his bowl, it was too big and poor gabberdine swam around in fright, trying to avoid its little poky pokers. i took it out immediately and almost cried.

and i bought a gigantic box of clearance doughnuts.

you know those little chocolate doughnuts that have chocolate coatings but are white cake on the inside and they're bite-sized and a whole crap load of them come in a gigantic box and you just keep eating them and eating them and then your stomach is like, "what the hell did you just do"?

oh yeah. i bought those.

from there, i proceeded with my purchased items to sit in the subway by the self-checkout lane. the guy working at the subway was slightly suspicious, but i assured him that i was just sitting and eating doughnuts. he disappeared into the kitchen. probably to kill a chicken.

this is where it gets fun, and i had a pretty sweet paragraph about it in my reflection (tentatively titled "walmart", i'm so original). here's how this was going to play out.

1. i was going to an FBI profiler! like dr. spencer reid!
2. i was going to make up stories. mostly based on what i saw.

intrepid walmart shopper numero uno was an older lady wearing a nice pea-coat style trench coat with a single rose pinned to it. the minute i looked at her i knew that she felt like her husband was cheating on her. he was probably a professor (not at my college) and god forbid that he was doing anything scandalous with a student. she had a steady job, most likely working for a small business, that held nothing for her. after she left walmart, i knew that she was going to home, pour her and her husband some wine, and they were going to sit in bed together silently, watching television (probably lifetime). i felt that she was using the self-checkout because if she actually had to talk to a living, breathing human being, she would confess what she suspected about her husband. and she was not ready to do that to herself yet.

person of interest numero dos was a high school aged boy clutching a gigantic bag of dog food while his little sister rammed him in the butt with the cart and his mother snapped at both of them. here's where my elite (oh dear) profile skills come in. this kid's jacket was all the way zipped up. he wasn't comfortable being near his mom or his eighth grade aged sister. he was definitely awkward and uncomfortable around women, he had no real male role model in his life, and simply lived with his mom and his sister. he even let his sister bully him, judging by the fact that she was sneering at him and driving the cart right into his butt and he wasn't doing anything about it. he even edged away from the nice female cashier who accepted my doughnuts without question. when he left with his mother and his sister, he walked demurely behind them, and i felt like maybe he was losing some perverse game of "which child does my mother love more?". his sister was definitely winning. i hate seeing parents who favor their kids above their other kids.

i ate another two doughnuts for him.

next came a young-ish overweight guy wearing a zip up hoodie that half-hid his tuxedo shirt. i'm sorry, but those are never classy, no matter who you are. he was tall and wearing sweatpants underneath his tux shirt and decently nice hoodie. he was simply going through self-checkout with two gigantic bins of ice cream. after scanning one, he couldn't get it into the plastic bag and gave up, looking upset. the more i watched him, the sadder i became, because this guy was definitely clinically depressed. i also truly believe that he thought that it was just a phase that he would move out of as he neared his thirties if he wasn't already there. he was not going to move out of that on his own.

the most interesting couple award goes to midwestern/bluecollar/slightlyimpoverished mr. and mrs. claus.

santa was a big guy with nasty turning white blond hair that went halfway down his back in thick weird rope curls. his beard was big and bushy and grimy. his gigantic glasses had that eighties yellow tint and he was standing at the check out counter, watching my cashier silently in a huge pair of dirty overalls. i at first thought that he'd been laid off, but then i realized he was probably a mechanic. for sure he owned a big, old truck that he tinkered with.

mrs. claus was a small, frail lady who looked about ten years older than santa. she had short cropped white hair around her extremely lined face. santa just watched while she unloaded the entire cart and reloaded it. it looked like she would fall over from the effort. she looked incredibly sad. i marked her down as a sunday school teacher that none of the kids really like. i also pinned her for taking santa to church with her even though he didn't like it. he kept going because they'd been married for so long that "yes dear" might now be the only way to get by.

of all the people i saw (including an unhappy girl who i just know will go to a big state school and go to a really bad party when she enters college), the most hopeful person i saw was my cashier.

she was a rather overweight lady in her mid forties. her santa hat was nice and jolly and went with the tinny christmas music that was playing all over the store. (i hate christmas music. for the record.) she was super smiley and upbeat while she checked me out, and even the saddest people who went through her lane smiled at her. she was infectiously bubbly.

but the first thing that i noticed about her was that there was no hair underneath her santa hat, and even though she was overweight, i could tell that she had lost a lot of weight in a decently short amount of time.

this lady, the happiest lady i had seen in the entire walmart, had cancer.

i don't have to be a profiler to see this. i did not randomly make this up by looking at her coat. i genuinely believe that the kind-spirited woman who gladly scanned my box of clearance doughnuts has cancer. and i also firmly believe that she is more happy to be alive and to have a job than anybody i've ever met or known.

that got deep really fast. don't worry, it did in my paper too.

sitting at the subway at walmart was fun. part of the time i pretended to have a gun like dr. spencer reid. the other part i just sat there shoving doughnuts down my throat and feeling depressed with humanity.

i'll leave you with another poem that i'm still trying to understand.

the waterhole



african animals wander
(lionsandtigersandbearsohmy)
            elephants
                                    lions
rhinoceros

perhaps hoping to find the waterhole

they forever wander the blank canvas
            surrounded by a red world
(of more canvas)
                                    forever in the stench of my bare feet

never to find the waterhole.

this poem is actually about the animals on the insides of my toms. so if you were confused about how my feet played into it, there ya go. :)

and for your entertainment...


dr. spencer reid profiling with a gun and wearing an interesting sweater vest.

me wearing a superhero costume pretending to be a super profiler. no gun. just a cape.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

boxes.

as an RA, i know when i can swing a hall program and when i can't.

a good hall program: community service. that won't draw anybody.

a passable hall program: pizza party with brick decorating. that'll get the whole hall if you say there's pizza.

my hall program for november, well, that wasn't going to fly. but i decided to do it anyway.

mitchell hall decided it was going to make november an all-hall, and they were proposing something slightly insane.

box-out.

so the first question that must be answered is this: what on earth is box-out? now that box-out is over, i'm still pretty sure that three quarters of my small campus still doesn't know.

box-out is exactly what it sounds like: putting a box outside. it's a homelessness awareness activity. for an entire night, can you sleep outside in a cardboard box? in november? in michigan?

honestly, those goes with my laziness. i didn't particularly want to plan a hall program in november, and morgan told me that other RAs were more than welcome to join mitchell. so i thought, what the heck, why not join them? sleeping in a box sounds like fun. to me, anyway. i find a lot of things that are terrifying to be fun and a lot of things that are fun to be terrifying.

welcome to my life.

to help the homeless (because honestly, sleeping outside in a box isn't going to do jack squat), the cost to get in and sleep in your box was a can of food or two dollars. i appealed to my hall and got minimal response. this was to be expected. finally, two days before the actual date, i got three girls who said they'd give it a try. so i went out and bought them each a can of kidney beans for their admittance and hoped that they would show up.

two of them did. hall program, in the eyes of the handbook, was successful.

but this isn't even about whether i got my residents to come and if we raised homelessness awareness on campus, this is about the adventure and awesomeness that was box-out.

the first hour was spent shoving boxes into ruth's van bertha. we had so many boxes it was startling. six of us made three trips from the mitchell basement up to the parking lot where jacob spend a decent amount of time wiggling them in. we were afraid to open the doors and the trunk.

ruth then trundled bertha over to the chapel lawn while garrett, chelsea, and jacob and i struggled with all of our blankets, pillows, and the rest of the boxes. three feet from gelston, the gigantic box that we'd thrown all of our stuff into split in half. chelsea was slightly distressed as she had claimed that box for sleeping.

we then spent another half hour unloading all of the boxes into a gigantic pile and getting the speakers to function. we had a gigantic can on cinder blocks for a fire, but security wouldn't let us light it by ourselves. our wood pile to keep the fire going seemed pretty sufficient. the key word in that sentence is seemed.

before i move on, it is time to address my apparel.

emily was wearing:

1. leggings.
2. sweatpants.
3. cami.
4. long sleeved shirt.
5. sweatshirt.
6. swim team jacket.
7. hobo gloves.
8. ACSD hat.
9. fuzzy socks.

once the sun set, oh lord, did it get chilly. lucky for me, i still had one more coat to put on, and jacob and i had supplied two blankets and a pillow for our meager little box that we were sharing.

when the clock chimed seven, we began to construct our new homes for the night. because of the temperature, we agreed to go inside at two, but that didn't put a damper on our suddenly homeless spirits. we had tape, paint, other various things for decorations, and of course, plenty of boxes.

we set to work.

jacob and i quickly found the biggest and most stable box. it was perfectly square and probably about four feet by four feet. we secured it with tape, found a teeny box, and stuck that on top as the chimney. jacob made a small sign that said "for gabe" (his actually homeless friend in kalamazoo) and then we set to work decorating. jacob painted on windows and i painted the house and the chimney yellow. by this time it was definitely getting dark and the only light we had was the bonfire and a measley street lamp that lit up the path to the chapel. i'm pretty sure that in daylight, our box looked mightly ugly. but in the fiery darkness, our box felt awesome.

it looked even more awesome when jacob laid down the blankets and pillows and stuck his tea and my vitamin water inside. home sweet home.

the middle part of my story is not that exciting. we stood around the fire all bundled up with our little box city behind us, listening to music. we told stories and laughed and made ourselves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. we learned facts about homelessness that were shocking and scary. we disproved myths about homelessness. we had some residents come and build boxes, we had some say hi and eat our food. we were cold bundled up kids proud of our cardboard houses.

then jacob and i decided it was time for bed.

so remember when i said our box was four by four?

i am not four feet tall. i am five foot nine.

jacob is not four feet tall. he is six foot four.

but somehow, both us of managed to squeeze together in this ridiculous perfect curled up position with the blanket over us. could we move? absolutely not. we were comfortable? maybe for the first ten minutes. we were warm?

absolutely.

we spent a good three hours curled up in that box together. we attempted to sleep and did a pretty decent job. we made terrible jokes about how this was our first house. we lamented that the chimney didn't have a hole, so our frozen breath couldn't furl out of it like smoke. we were happy and warm and in terrible leg pain, cramped in that teeny box.

we stayed in that box until one in the morning. by the time that we emerged into the freezing twenty-seven degree weather, the fire was almost out and all of the other boxes had been torn down and used to fuel the fire during the last hour of the program. we had definitely run straight through that firewood.

i feel like this blog should have a good conclusion. i feel like this blog wasn't quite that great. maybe i was supposed to tie in some awesome life lesson like i did when we played the game of life, but honestly what i gathered was this.

1. you can have a lot of fun spreading awareness for things.
2. sleeping in a cardboard box in twenty-seven degree weather sucks.

so i'm just going to end this blog with some pictures for your enjoyment.

box-out!


me!

jacob!

our box. equipped with the chimney.
 yes. we both fit in that box, closed it up, and slept. :)

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

so... i got a fish.

here is how the world works in terms of facebook when posting things about your day.

me: I GOT A FISH! (eight people like this post.)
jonathan: write a blog about it. (a comment on this post.)
me: i already blogged today. (a comment on this post.)
jonathan: you make that seem like i care that you already blogged today. blog about it. (not a comment. but i know jonathan well enough to know that he thought this.)

i think if jonathan had his way, i would blog about everything all the time. and i would, jonathan, if i had time, the capacity, and if i thought people actually cared about my life.

but you, my dear reader, are obviously interested enough to be reading this, so hi. jonathan. i am blogging about getting my fish.

ahem. the tale begins as such.

at dinner in the campus cafeteria, i sit with a variety of colorful people and we all manage to squeeze ourselves around this impossibly small table between the pasta bar and the pizza bar. we're loud. we're obnoxious. we shout and scream because life is too short to just sit and eat dinner together. life is about expressing emotions.

we were currently crowing about amy possibly getting an illegal bunny and housing it in the science building. i then boasted about my pet cactus and was instantly run down with "that's not a real pet" "it doesn't move" and "emily, it's a CACTUS." 

i get that a lot. and i don't care what anybody says, atticus is my pet cactus, dammit. you cannot take that away from me.

anyway. 

i had been sitting on the idea of a fish for a while.

pets are kind of a sore subject with me, honestly. it's mostly because i've never truly had one. my brother had a gecko for like... thirteen years or something, and he was already old when we got him. when he ate crickets he thought he was a dinosaur (a blind one at that) and it was fairly entertaining, but mostly he just kind of... slept around in his cage and ate crickets. he got bonus points for being named harry like harry potter back when only the first three books had come out.

there are no pets in my household. there is a very specific reason for this: my mother and i are both highly allergic to fur.

i'm not sure if you quite understand what this means. so many people say things like, "oh but my dog is hypoallergenic. he doesn't shed."

that's all fine and dandy. but he still has fur that is attached to him and he still salivates. i'm allergic to both of those things, soft cuddly fur and nasty slimy saliva. whether your dog or cat sheds or not, i will be allergic to it. see, what happens is this.

1. my eyes get itchy.
2. my nose gets stuffed up.
3. my neck/throat region becomes unbearably itchy and i claw it and look like i've been attacked by a werewolf going for my jugular.
4. then i start having problems breathing.
5. and if i'm around the animal too much, well. asthma attacks are welcome.

this isn't just cats and dogs. this is cats and dogs and bunnies and hamsters and chinchillas and basically all household pets. and horses and buffalo and kangaroos and anything with fur. 95% of the animal population makes me asthmatic and red-eyed. the same goes for my mother.

so no, i've never had a real pet. 

so yes, i'd been sitting on the idea of getting a fish for a long time. like, three years.

jacob (the boyfriend, not the best friend) and i ventured to walmart after dinner to buy an air freshener. my bathroom smelled something terrible and it would not go away, no matter how many times i cleaned the toilet and the sink. so it was a routine five minute drive to walmart to get some air freshener.

about halfway through picking out what kind i wanted (one of those weird gel squares that smells like happy laundry) i said, "i want a fish."

jacob said, "huh?"
and i said, "i want a fish. and i want one NOW."

impulsive. the same way i bought my cello.

well. walmart didn't have fish. i was upset. we'd already looked at rocks and bowls and fish food, but did walmart have fish? absolutely not.

so i squared my shoulders and said, "we're going to mt. pleasant to get a fish. meijer has fish. come on."

and jacob said, "let's pay for your air freshener first. then we'll go."

this is love, folks. this is true love.

i used a scary self-checkout machine and then we were in my car and driving twenty miles on the highway to mt. pleasant. we sang very loudly to mumford and sons. i was getting excited and nervous. our routine fifteen minute trip was almost an hour long now, but the exit for mt. pleasant was coming, and i was absolutely shaking with excitement.

we located mejier after putting in the head and the heart and singing "CATS AND DOGS AND ROOSTER CALLS" at the top of our lungs and then we were parking my car, then we were walking, then we went inside meijer and i made a beeline straight for the fish.

everybody gets a beta fish. that was my original intention. i looked at the beta fish for a while, grew bored, and then looked at the big tank with lots of fish swimming around. there was a guide that alerted me as to which ones needed filters and had to be in tanks. i looked around and saw what was available to a broke wannabe teacher with pet issues.

and then i saw him.

he was the most perfect cutest little fish i'd ever seen. i pointed at the glass and stated like a spoiled five year old, "i want that one."

jacob wandered away to find an employee and i bent over with my hands on my knees, looking at my perfect little fish with my butt sticking out in the aisle. i was not leaving the damn store without my damn fish. 

and then the employee showed up and i implored emphatically that i wanted that specific one, that i had to have it, it was that one, right there, no right there in the back, oh yikes he looks afraid of that net-

and then i was holding him in a plastic bag and i could feel him swimming over my fingers.

thus the baby talk began.

picture this if you will. i am wandering around meijer in dress pants, red toms shoes, and a bright green cardigan with a big bow in my hair (a teachery outfit, as it were). my boyfriend, who is of an immense height with a nice head of curly hair, is walking next to me and looking at bowls. i am completely preoccupied with the bag that i am holding with the fish in it. jacob is asking things such as, "what kind of rocks do you want? river rocks or plastic pebbles? these are the cheapest, we should get these. what kind of bowl? what size? we need fish food too."

this is what's coming out of my mouth. "aren't you the cutest little fishy i've ever seen. awww you're so adorable. i am so glad i found you, are you all mine and i love you, i love you so much."

in that baby voice. you know that baby voice.

we eventually found rocks and fish food. but we did not find a fish bowl that was suitable for my perfect little fish. 

so we went back to walmart. jacob held the fish in his lap and i went on and on about how happy i was that i found the perfect fish, and then we sang more of the head and the heart, singing singing singing. and then when we got back to the fair town of alma, we went back to walmart to get a fish bowl from the clearance glass vase aisle.

in the parking lot i ran into megan. while walking inside, i excitedly screamed about how i'd bought the cutest fish and he was currently in a bag nestled in my coat in the passenger footwell of my car, and how i was so so excited and so so so happy.

she said what you are probably thinking: oooookay.

we found a fish bowl for ninety-seven cents. i actually think it was some sort of vase. i paid the cashier in exact change: four quarters and three pennies.

we got the fish bowl. we drove back to my dorm room. we ran upstairs and cleaned out the bowl and the river rocks. then we dumped my perfect little fish into the fish bowl, put him on my desk, and crooned at him for an hour.

currently, my fish does not have a name. i am terrified that i will name him the wrong thing, or worse, kill him. i have never had a true pet. but oh, do i love him so much.

jonathan morley: i just blogged about me getting a fish.

and thus my tale ends.

he is the absolute cutest.


Tuesday, November 1, 2011

that teachery feeling.

!feliz dia de los muertos! (happy day of the dead!)

okay remember that other blog last week when i was like, "oh my goodness it was raining and i was wearing heels and all of this fantastic but not really fantastic stuff went down and i finally went to my placement but i swear i'll blog about actual placement on a later date"?

hello, it's that date.

what i'm actually supposed to be doing right now: having my laptop plugged in and doing my spanish homework. what i'm actually doing: sitting in the library with my laptop NOT plugged in (and now kip's battery is draining) blogging and doing fun things on tumblr and listening to the head and the heart.

SO. placement.

my second day of placement was last thursday. and what an exciting day it was, oh what an exciting day indeed.

it was sunny! warmish! happy! and i found the visitor's parking lot so i only had to walk twenty yards to find a locked door and the only another ten to find the unlocked one. and nobody at the office looked at me funny. that was pretty awesome.

i snuck into the classroom while it was dark. truth be told, i was standing outside of the classroom trying to stuff my coat into my oversized purse when a kid opened the door and scared the bejeezus out of me. i then slipped into the room while the lights were off and took my seat in the back.

when mrs. johnson turned the light on and saw me sitting in the back, she screamed. way to go, ms. hollenberg, scare the teacher on the second day.

i was then formally introduced. mrs. johnson told the kids that they could ask me five questions and it could be anything. then she added anything appropiate. way to go, mrs. johnson, saving my dignity.

only four kids had questions. they were fairly simple and answered like this: my name is ms. hollenberg. i'm a sophomore education student at alma college. yes, i like alma college and college is what the cool kids do, so get good grades. and... yes, i like spanish. otherwise i wouldn't be here trying to become a spanish teacher.

mrs. johnson then told the kids to call me senorita because let's face it, hollenberg is a mouthful, and i'm not even sure if she can pronounce it correctly. i'd rather have people mispronounce it than misspell it, honestly. so now i'm senorita.

i led a game of bingo. it was fairly straight forward, i sat in the back and read off vocabulary words for the kids to repeat back while they filled up their bingo cards. while i sat there with my large list of vocabulary words, i thought about all the vocabulary words that frequented my very intense 300 level spanish college class that i didn't know and how maybe i should get a tutor soon.

then it was tú and usted.

here's the gist for those you who know nothing about spanish.

1. there are two ways to say "you."
2. they are tú and usted.
3. you say tú with your friends and family, and kids younger than you.
4. you say usted with everybody else. doctors, teachers, people you don't know, and old people.
5. it's really not that difficult. if you don't know, use usted to be polite.

the class objective: read the paragraph describing this at the top of page ochenta y cuatro. that's eighty-four. then, with a partner, look at the pictures and decide if you address the people pictures with tú or usted forms. then write a sentence using the correct forms asking the people what they need.

que necesitas tú? que necesita usted? this was written on the board.

it was my time to travel around the room and make sure that kids were doing their work.

here is where i came across hugo. and here is where i switch into playwriting mode just for your enjoyment.

me: hey hugo, how's it going?
hugo: i don't understand this.
me: what don't you understand?
hugo: everything.
me: did you read the top paragraph to see what you're doing?
hugo: i don't know how.
me: it's in english.

GIGANTIC PAUSE in which hugo realizes that yes, that paragraph is indeed in english.

me: what can you tell me about tú and usted?
hugo: nothing.
me: that's because you didn't read. what did senora johnson say?
hugo: you think i was paying attention?
me: you should've been.
hugo: i was watching you. you're cute. i like your sweater.

another GIGANTIC PAUSE while i realize that i am being hit on by a sixteen year old kid with a pick up truck who raises cows.

me: focus on your work. tú and usted are ways to address people. which one is formal and which one is informal?
hugo: those are big words, lady.
me: it's senorita. look at the picture of this lady right here. she looks to be about fifty.
hugo: she looks like a librarian.
me: sure. would you address her informally or formally?
hugo: i don't know what that means.
me: is she your homie?
hugo: what?
me: IS SHE YOUR HOMIE.

well. that's about how that went down.

i'm not sure about me using words like 'homie' while teaching. but mrs. johnson was definitely talking about something being ghetto today when we were talking about their dia de los muertos celebration.

when i left hugo to his own devices, i found a group of boys in the back having a nice chat. they were talking about spanish and going through their bingo cards. i asked them if they'd finished the assignment and they said, "sure senorita, we finished it, we're not dumb, we're on top of that stuff."

i asked them to pull out their sentences, because i didn't see them.

you know that shifty eyed look you try not to give people when you haven't done something or you're caught in a lie and it ALWAYS gives you away but you can't help it?

oooooh yeah. did they have their sentences done? absolutely not.

students: 0. hugo: 0. me: 1.

it was about at that moment that i felt like a badass teacher.

today i didn't get to do much. i passed out some papers about the day the dead because the day of the dead is cool. and if you don't know much about it, it's like christmas but decidedly more creepy. mostly the part about people cleaning the bones of their relatives.

but seriously, don't judge. we dress up in weird costumes and beg strangers for candy. don't tell me that's not weird.

anyway.

i'm not entirely sure what kind of teacher i'm going to turn out to be. hopefully i'll have more placement stories to tell. hopefully they won't involve being flirted with.

my biggest regret about placement so far: not being able to celebrate the day of the dead with my class tomorrow because i have classes of my own.

when i told them i couldn't come, they looked genuinely upset.

and i really wanted some arroz con leche.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

an almost really grown up blog.

i'm going to start out this blog by saying that on monday night, i went to a drag show.

this was not my first drag show. this was my second drag show, and i liked it more than the first.

i will also say that i really really enjoy drag shows, and on that note, i am dressing in drag for halloween. if this just altered your opinion of me, that's perfectly acceptable. drag queens are beautiful and i admire what they do. a lot.

this has absolutely nothing to do with the gist of my blog. i'm just throwing that out there because by god, i love drag shows.

this blog is about me being a real person.

if you've read my blogs, you've heard this before. i honestly don't even remember what i said constituted being a real person. something about living on your own... or taking care of a house... having a job? maybe? something? anyway, this is a different type of real person.

this is me jumping feet first into my future and screaming and flailing. it was an adventure.

in my education class, EDC200, we're the people the education department is trying to weed out. they throw at us this gigantic teacher ed program application and all kinds of dates we have to turn stuff in by. they give us a dated book full of cases where teachers screw up and get fired. they tell us everything that goes wrong when you become a teacher.

their goal: to scare us. the ones who survive, those are the true teachers and get accepted into the teacher ed program.

seven weeks into this course, i am true teacher waiting on acceptance. but i knew this forever ago. so now it's just looking through this dated book a cases. my book is so old that one of the cases deals with people not understanding how computers work. i mean, really. let's update, people.

there is a second aspect to my weeder class: teacher placement. each of us must venture out into the world of middle school or high school and observe and help out a classroom for twenty hours. this sounded like a lot until i realized that i needed forty hours after christmas.

after contacting my unknown placement teacher and alerting her that i would be intruding on her spanish classes every tuesday and thursday from nine until eleven, i prepared myself. i went to the business office and got a nice, cute little nametag that says Ms. Hollenberg on it. i spent a long time deciding what clothes to wear. i packed my bags the night before.

i knew for a fact that i should've woken up the circle of life or pumped up kicks. those generally lead to good days. i instead decided to wake up to an unknown kate nash song that had a bouncy, happy beginning. but oh, how it dampened my day.

literally.

it was cold and rainy yesterday morning when i bounced out of bed at seven thirty-four with kate nash banging something cheerful on her piano. i speeded into my bathroom, excited as ever to find... that my hot water heater had broken. i shivered in my towel on the cold tile floor for a while, thinking that maybe the hot water would magically come spurting out of my showerhead, but it never did. i, of course, had no time to wait. i had to shower shower shower so i could eat eat eat then i could leave leave leave to go teach teach teach.

so i took a terrifically quick shower that was very reminiscent of antarctica.

i then shimmied into my dress pants, couldn't button the three decorative buttons in a timely manner, pulled on my yellow shirt, then my plum colored cardigan, strung on a pearl necklace, and pinned my little nametag pin. my dress pants, however comfy and professional, are long, even for my incredible leg length. this meant it was going to be a day for heels to keep my hems dry. i was praying to god that my placement teacher wasn't short because when i wear heels, i am six feet tall.

i grabbed my gigantic purple purse and headed out into the rain under my bubble umbrella. i clacked my way through breakfast, then clacked my way to my car, where i discovered something lurking under my seat that looked suspiciously like my brother's taco bell from a few nights ago. and i headed through the cold rain to alma high school. i had vague directions and a foggy windshield. and i was terrified.

after almost going through the DO NOT ENTER part of the parking lot, i creeped around the building, trying to see where the office might be located. i had a background check to turn in and administration to alert. so i found what looked like the office and parked between two old beat up trucks.

i scurried as quickly as i could through the wind and rain in my heels and strode right up the office door. of course, the office wasn't an office; it was a gigantic art room. like, seriously, the art rooms at my high school were never that big, and my high school was at least TWICE the size of this one. the doors by this art room were locked, so i set back into the rain (without my umbrella) with my glasses all spattered. i had no idea where to look for a door next, so i just began to half-run ungainly around the building.

i located a kid who looked like a senior. he was standing outside of a door with one foot barely propping it open talking on a cell phone. i smiled like the chesire cat at him in my little teachery outfit and he shrugged and let me inside.

now i was in the maze of an unknown high school in what looked like the music wing.

i walked loudly with my purse swinging, trying to figure out which way to go. i found a long hallway and a nice kid in a tie, and i instantly accosted him. he told me to go straight and when it forked, go right and i'd run into the office. so my large heeled feet when straight and to the right.

and straight and to the right. and straight and to the right. and straight and to the right. you get the point.

i entered the first office i came to and told the secretary who i was. she smiled ever so sweetly and told me in a voice like honey, "oh, dear, you're in the wrong office. you want the office three doors down."

this freakin' high school had four offices. all next to each other.

i still had ten minutes. i set off... you guessed it. straight and to the right.

i caught that secretary on her way out. she wasn't nearly so friendly. she told me my placement teacher's (mrs. johnson) room number and sent me in the right direction. now i was wandering down a loop.

i located mrs. johnson's room. it was across from the auditorium and near a boys' bathroom. i hadn't run into a girls' one yet. if need be, i have no issue going into a men's bathroom to do my business. when you gotta go, you gotta go.

i had five minutes to spare, so i huddled awkwardly outside of her door for a moment. i didn't want to be early, and now i was downright terrified; what was placement going to be like? what was mrs. johnson going to be like? what level of spanish did she teach? and i was extemely unnerved.

her class was screaming.

i knocked and was let in and on a vocabulary game being played by a very loud spanish one class. i sat down in the back and a kid instantly began to ask me about my socks, which of course, were brightly colored and didn't match anything, least of all themselves. i tugged my dress pants down and watched as the class commenced to play tortuga. that's turtle in spanish.

in a nutshell, i'm really not blogging about placement. i'm blogging about how i got to placement, and i've had a lot of blogs like these. blogs where i describe my ridiculous life in some ridiculous situation.

i will blog about actual placement later when i've done something concrete. so far placement has been like this.

1. go through a lot of shenanigans to get there.
2. observe for two hours.
3. get promised that later you'll be leading games and tutoring kids.

when i get to the point where i begin to actually teach, i'll get back to you.

then it will really be a growing up blog.




post script: my placement teacher is short. i am now her awkwardly tall assistant. i think i'm done wearing heels.