Saturday, December 15, 2012

THE HOBBIT.

if you're as smart as you look, you know what this post is going to be about.

i'm having a lot of hobbit feels. a lot. and by a lot i mean my entire tumblr right now is nothing but the hobbit and i want to climb richard armitage's lonely mountain. if you know what i mean.

i stole that line from a witty person on tumblr. i never would've come up with that myself.

oh, here's my warning.

THIS IS GOING TO BE NOTHING BUT SPOILERS AND STUFF BUT YOU SHOULD READ IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT'S MOSTLY JUST ME SHARING MY INTENSE FEELINGS ABOUT LORD OF THE RINGS AND I DON'T THINK I'LL RUIN TOO MUCH OF ANYTHING AND I NEED TO LEARN TO TURN OFF MY CAPSLOCK.

right. like, i don't think i'll actually spoil anything? except maybe like, the basic premise of the movie?

maybe. let's begin.

so this actually begins with me laying around in my room watching breaking bad and drinking wine alone in my room on a thursday night, because we all know that the best time to drink is alone in your room on a thursday night. this is like, the fourth time i've done this and i feel like it's a sure sign of alcoholism.

so walter from breaking bad was blowing up some bad guys and cooking some awesome crystal and getting sick from chemotherapy and i was like, man, what if my dad was a meth cooker like walter and then jacob (the boyfriend not the best friend) was like, SURPRISE IT'S ELEVEN AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!

sometime over the summer.

me: the hobbit comes out in december!
jacob: we're seeing it at midnight!
me: what if i have an exam on friday morning? it's finals week.
jacob: uh. don't care.
me: but-
jacob: DID YOU HEAR ME, WOMAN?

he didn't say that last line. but we were going to the hobbit at midnight no matter what.

we bought our hobbit tickets in the same trip that bought me the wine that got me through the first season of breaking bad without vomiting. because a guy literally melts through pinkman's ceiling at one point and i really think that alcohol was the only thing that got me through it.

so at eleven thirty we head over to my car, slipping in the lovely snow that alma has and i'm incredibly excited. like, i get excited about everything.

when i say i get excited, i mean i get excited. i twitch. i tremble. i jump. i wring my hands. i flail my arms. i make inhuman noises. i scream and make highpitched whistling sounds.

i. cannot. control. excitement. it's a problem.

so i'm driving and squealing and shaking and jacob is just sitting in the passenger seat like, whatever, man. and i'm like, HOW ARE YOU NOT EXCITED and he's like, yo i'm totally excited and i'm like, YOU ARE NOT PHYSICALLY SHAKING ENOUGH TO BE EXCITED! and then the rest of the ride i yelled HOBBIT HOBBIT HOBBIT and flailed my arms until jacob was like, emily hold onto the steering wheel, you're driving a car.

so we get to alma's little theatre and who's it full of?

jacob's PMA brothers.

we take our seats. nobody rips our tickets, so technically we could've snuck in, but we're honest, decent people. the theatre is PACKED with alma students. we find a spot for two between a huge throng of jacob's brothers and some of their friends who are girls (not to say that they don't have girlfriends.) and we have half an hour to wait. i'm practically having a seizure i'm so excited, which is saying something, because i actually have seizures in real life.

and then, after an agonizing wait in which jacob and i see that there are an average of two RAs per building staff in the theatre, the movie starts and i'm about to pee my pants.

my first reaction is that ian holm's face is a lot fatter than it is in the fellowship of the ring and i'm trying not to let it bother me. and then frodo shows up and i'm like, well that's weird, i'm so used to him in that outfit he wore ALL THREE MOVIES and then frodo's like, hey bilbo, i'm going to go wait for gandalf in the woods and surprise him!

and then my heart melted into a gigantic puddle of feels from the fellowship.

i should back up. i skipped the part about the dwarf kingdom that got demolished by a dragon that you never actually see. which was really crafty on peter jackson's part.

anyway, ian holm transforms into martin freeman and of course, i fangirled really hard. here's a conversation to help you understand.

me: MARTIN FREEMAN IS PLAYING BILBO! EEEE!
my dad: who?
me: martin freeman, daddy!
my dad: who's that?
me: he plays dr. john watson in sherlock!
my mom: elementary?
me: NO. SHERLOCK. THE BRITISH TV SHOW.
my parents: oh. right. you watch british TV because you want to be british.
me: MARTIN FREEEEMAN

so of course, he's adorable as a hobbit. and dwarves start showing up and they're making a mess and bilbo's doing exactly what i do in any situation: panic.

and then it gets quiet and there's a knock on the door and gandalf whispers, "he is here."

who is here?! i can't figure out who's here. i'm excited. who's at bilbo's house?!

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DWARF ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.

UNFFFFFFFF.
that would be thorin oakenshield. or thorin son of thrain. that's so much fun to say out loud. thorin son of thrain.

THORIN.

thorin is kingly. he has a deep voice. he's a badass warrior. and he can sing.

so the whole movie i'm like, i'm attracted to a dwarf. dwarves aren't supposed to be pretty. but oh my GOD do i want this dwarf. ahhh is this normal?!

tumblr alerted me that yes, it is normal. i feel better about being attracted to a dwarf now.

so the whole gist of the movie is that thorin, twelve other dwarves, gandalf and bilbo set out to reclaim the kingdom that was overtaken by the nasty dragon. it's an adventure story! hooray!

bilbo has no idea what he's doing. at one point he falls into a crevice and the dwarves are like, welp, he's dead, let's move on. he falls off a cliff at one point and thorin is like, ugh, gotta save your ass now, stupid hobbit in the middle of a thunderstorm. he gets sneezed on by a mountain troll and he has absolutely no idea how to wield his sword.

the dwarves, on the other hand, are like, badass fighters. thorin is the best of them all, having defeated this giant scary orc named azog. i was looking at azog and i was like, man, he really looks like the tree fawn in pan's labyrinth and then in the credits it was like, guillermo del toro and i was like, WHAT UP. I WAS RIGHT.

but anyway, azog is this big ass pale orc that's like, gigantic and mean and speaks an ugly language and rides a huge white warg and he's like, i killed thorin's dad and his grandpa, i want thorin's head so we're going to hunt them the whole movie because i just really hate thorin's family and thorin cut off my arm and that makes me sad inside.

halfway through the movie there's a huge repulsive giant goblin and i just wanted to vomit every time i looked at him. he's absolutely disgusting.

and caves! the dwarves are always going into caves! and bad things happen when they go into caves and halfway through the movie i was like, yo, thorin, another cave? not a good idea, bro.

and then there's gollum. bilbo falls into a crevice and all the dwarves are like, we can't find bilbo but that's okay because we're being attacked by these crazy goblins and we're going to DIE and bilbo is like, what's around this corner?! AND IT'S GOLLUM FUGGIN' BEATING A GOBLIN TO DEATH AND EATING IT WITH HIS BARE HANDS.

oh, and then gollum appears out of nowhere and his eyes GLOW IN THE DARK and he spends like, ten minutes discussing ways to eat bilbo and bilbo is like, i am about to be eaten by a scrawny thing that speaks in this awkward third person and who the hell is precious?

and then we all know that bilbo takes the ring. when gollum found out that bilbo had the ring, i have never been more terrified for a movie character in my entire life.

eventually azog made another appearance and actually spoke english, so that was cool. but then all the dwarves were hanging over a cliff by a tree and azog was like, BRING ME THORIN'S HEAD and i was like, NOOOOO THORIN MY EYE CANDY and there was some legit amount of time that i thought that thorin was dead and i may or may not have cried, which really means that i did.

AND RADAGAST.

picture an old man completely high out of his mind and keeping a bird's nest in his hat.

that's radagast.

he also has a wooden sleigh drawn by giant talking rabbits. he's like... santa of the forest. he also has pet hedgehogs. he might be my spirit animal.

so we all know that the hobbit is being made into three movies, and the first one was two hours and fifty minutes long. some of it was boring and i almost fell asleep, but i was seeing it at midnight, to be fair. even though it's a long movie, there's still two more, and we all know what that means.

it ended. rather abruptly.

so all the dwarves are on a rock and thorin is like, hey bilbo, you're actually not a worthless stupid hobbit and then it's like

DIRECTED BY PETER JACKSON

and i was like, NOOOOOOOO IT CAN'T BE OVER

me: WHAT. NO. 
jacob: let's go, i have a splitting headache, it's three in the morning.
me: I NEED MORE
jacob: please, let's just leave
me: NOOOO IT CAN'T END LIKE THAT

and i legitimately cried. i hugged jacob around the middle and sobbed into his shirt for a good two minutes before he finally dragged me out of the theatre and made me drive back to campus.

in short, i loved the hobbit. it was awesome. it gave me so many feels. 

i posted "i never thought i could be incredibly attracted to a dwarf" on tumblr and it has like, forty notes, which is awesome. tumblr famous!

i want to go see again. of course, i'm saving my money, so i'm not going to see it like, eighteen times like i did with spiderman and the avengers. but now that i'm home, i will make sure that my parents go see it with me.

i'll leave you with this.


that's right, bilbo. you go on your adventure.

AND DON'T DIE IN THE LAST MOVIE, I WON'T BE ABLE TO HANDLE THAT.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

that fantastic day i had wires sticking out of my head. during hell week.

aaaaand we're live at procrastination station!

aka my carrel that's not really my carrel. i'm treating it like it is my own. which means i left a huge pile of my books there during lunch where i shouldn't have had those two cups of dr. pepper.

it's the week before finals, which brings to mind my list of LAST year's week before finals when i was furiously writing a five page paper in spanish.

right now i'm writing a five page paper in chicago style formatting, which is almost as painful.

because it's the week before finals, i obviously had to blog about it for student life, and you can find that here.

so here's a list, because all of my blogs have a list.

THINGS EMILY SHOULD BE DOING.

1. finishing her five page paper on hemophilia, rasputin, and the fall of the romanovs.
2. writing her seven page paper on beowulf.

both of these papers are due tomorrow. in the morning.

THINGS EMILY IS DOING.

1. drinking a really delicious vitamin water.
2. blogging. obviously.
3. wearing a cute dress.
4. having too much fun with her iphone.
5. listening to fun. their old album. before they were cool.

here's another list of acceptable things to do during the week before finals, and it will actually get to the point of this blog.

ACCEPTABLE THINGS TO DO DURING THE WEEK BEFORE FINALS.

1. drink wine alone in your room and cry.
2. watch spiderman too many times and want to marry andrew garfield.
3. make your residents goodie bags and wish you had an RA to make one for you but you can't because you're the RA and you're afraid of eating all the candy yourself alone in your room.
4. take showers three times a day and cry in them.
5. have awkward wires sticking out of your head.

number five is the premise of this blog.

right. so we all know the routine of "emily's been having seizures but they're not actually seizures we don't think but seizure is so much easier to say than convulsions, so emily's been having seizures and nobody knows why", right? of course we do.

so my bloodwork is clean, i don't have lupus or AIDS or some scary autoimmune disease, so what's the next step?

a 24 hour EEG, of course.

an EEG is where they hook wires up all of your head and watch your brainwaves. i had one in the hospital, but it was only for an hour. this was for twenty-four.

i had specific instructions i had to follow before the procedure, which happened on tuesday, the day that i was planning on being ultra productive and writing at least one of my two papers that's due tomorrow morning. instead i slept in, was extremely nervous, and spent a lot of lunch time whimpering. instructions: i wasn't allowed to put anything weird in my hair, such as hairspray. or bows.

i wear hairspray every single day of my life. i also wear a bow every single day of my life.

it was awkward.

i drove to mount pleasant where i didn't have quite as much gas as i thought, and i found my neurologist's office, which is in the middle of nowhere but down the street from target. i was wearing a comfortable t-shirt like they instructed and my hair was woefully undone and bow-less. i brought my careworn copy of the order of the phoenix, i announced my presence, and read about harry putting his terribly aching hand in a bowl of essence of murtlap tentacles.

sounds spiffy.

every single person in the waiting room of my neurologist's office was a sad, overweight, older woman. apparently spry young college girls don't often see my neurologist.

a nice lady took me back into a special room with a special chair with a special towel on it. she told me her name, but i quickly forgot it, which made me feel bad, because she was super nice and we spent the next two hours together bonding.

have you ever had somebody draw on you with crayon? it doesn't show up unless you really dig that crayon in there.

i hope you haven't had somebody do this to you. it's really painful.

so this nice lady is taking this marker and she's rubbing it hard into my head, and it feels like she's trying to draw on me with crayon. she's parting my hair in different directions and really scrubbing it in there, and i figure if we're going to be here for a while, i might as well tell her half of my life story, so i start talking. then she's sticking glue over the spots that she's marked, including the giant red line going right down the middle of my forehead to my nose.

then she starts to tell me about this stuff called colodian. i'm not sure if it's spelled like that, but it's pronounced "cul-load-eon" so i figure i'll just spell it colodian and deal with the consequences of misspellings.

it smells horrible. she's putting it all over my scalp and in my hair. we're talking about how shitty the education system is and why i want to be a teacher and live in england, all that jazz. the colodian is cold. smelly. unhappy. my hair is sticking up in odd places. this lady is super nice and letting me talk her ear off.

then she's telling me that the colodian is this extra special glue so that the electrodes won't fall off my head when i'm having a seizure or when i'm sleeping. it takes forever to dry, so she's going to dry each electrode site with an air compressor.

it was a like a loud, scary dental instrument that puffed freezing air at my head. totally normal stuff.

the whole ordeal of sticking twenty-eight wires to my head with scary glue and an air compressor took two hours. and it wasn't done after that.

all twenty-eight wires, which were easter colored (pink, blue, purple, yellow, green) came together at the back of my neck, where they were funneled into an awkward fabric tube. that tube then ran into a heart monitor, which was held onto me by a shoulder harness. to keep the shoulder harness on, it connected to  a strap that went around my waist.

basically, i was wearing a giant seatbelt/guitar strap covered in wires.

after that, a cord leading from the heart monitor attached to the brainwave monitor, which was about the size of a video camera, like, the old ones from the nineties. THAT was put in a puffy fanny pack that sat around my hips.

all the cool kids wear fanny packs.

i was less than thrilled, but i figured hey, i've been through a lot worse than walking around campus with wires sticking out of my head and an awkward shoulder harness and a fanny pack. i was pretty chillax about the whole thing. the lady who stuck all the wires to my head and set me up in my straps told me that i was the most positive person she'd ever encountered that had a 24 hour EEG. she said that most people hid in their houses and didn't come out.

well, i have a life. and classes. and sorority sisters and stuff. i can't hide in my room. i have shit to do.

she gave me the basic rules of the EEG.

1. no showering.
2. no taking off any of the harnesses.
3. don't wear hats that are too tight.
4. no chewing gum or having hard candy.
5. no making out with the boyfriend. (honestly. this was a thing.)
6. if you have a seizure, press the button on the brain recorder.
7. fill out your event diary.

the event diary was pretty basic. i ate lunch at noon. i had a seizure at seven. i took my antidepressants at midnight. i took a nap at two.

basic stuff.

when i left the office with my head covered in wires and my shoulder harness and fanny pack secure, i distinctly heard the nice lady say to the nurse, "poor girl."

i'm not poor. i just have seizures and stuff.

of course, i have to have a picture of my harness, fanny pack, and a single wire sticking out of my hair.

holy 24 EEG, batman!

doesn't look too bad, right? that's because you can't see the gigantic electrodes on my forehead that are covered in gauze and the eighteen wires that are tucked neatly behind my ears.

it's also astonishing my large my nose ring is. i should probably downgrade.

it was weird, but i was excited to have a seizure, because it meant that i could push the happy button and then they'd actually know something about why i'm having awkward convulsions. so when i had a convulsion at midnight, i was like, PRAISE THE GOOD LORD I'M HAVING A CONVULSION and i pressed the happy button and when it was over, i fell asleep. which was awkward with the wires, the fanny pack, and the shoulder harness and heart montior.

so the next day i wake up for my eight thirty class and my hair is a hot mess. i have about twenty alfalfas chillin' on the top of my head. my bangs no longer have the capacity to hide the gigantic electrodes pasted to my forehead. and those wire bundles behind my ears have been freed and are sticking out and making a huge halo around my head. i'm not allowed to brush my hair or get it wet. i don't have a suitable hat.

i venture out into the real world wearing a shirt that i wore the day before and then slept in with my hair and my electrodes a hot mess. it was pretty glorious.

i wish i had taken a picture of the extraordinary bad hair day. i feel like it tops most of the bad hair days you've ever had. unless you woke up one day with the biggest afro in the world, and if you did that, then you're not having a bad hair day, you're just awesome.

finally, after three classes and a whole bunch of people staring at me and feeling gross, i drove like a maniac back to the office, where another lady that was nowhere near as nice started to take off all twenty-eight electrodes and all of the wires. she told me that colodian remover wasn't as smelly as colodian, but she lied.

that shit was disgusting.

it was also runny. it ran all down the sides of my face and she had to cover my eyes in a washcloth to prevent it from getting in my eyes. 

when i was electrode free, she patted my hair down with a wet towel and collected my event diary and told me i'd get my results back in january. i touched my hair, which was now spiked in strange directions. it was slimy. very slimy.

the whole drive back to alma, the terrible smell of the colodian remover filled up my car and i was extremely unhappy.

i got back to campus at five o'clock and the first thing i did was lock my door and jump in the shower. i could feel glue all over my head and my scalp and i scrubbed and scrubbed. did you know that you get can get sore behind your ears? it gets very tender there, especially when you scrape glue out from behind there with your fingernails. 

i washed my hair three times. when i dried my hair and went to go do it before dinner, i still found gigantic chunks of glue hiding all over my scalp. 

i spent most of my night class finding glue deposits with my hands and pulling it out. soon i was covered in little pieces of glue, which got all over my sweatshirt and my desk. one of my sisters asked me if it was snowing outside and i had gotten it in my hair.

nah, just pulling glue out of my hair.

i washed my hair twice this morning. i am still pulling glue out of my hair.

every girl's dream, especially during the week before finals, is to have wires glued to her head, be unable to wear cute hats to cover it up, and then be covered in sticky smelling goop that doesn't actually do its job when you finally get in the shower to get clean. i mean, this has to be everybody's dream.

right? right?

it certainly wasn't mine.

now you know a little bit of something about my adventurous life with my newfound convulsions and my week before finals.

until then, i get back to this.


so. much. rasputin.

FINALS WEEK, KIDS. LET'S DO THIS. 

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

procrastination, enchiladas, and tarantulas.

my carrel in the library, which by the way, isn't even my carrel, is currently procrastination station.

things emily needs to do.

1. write my gigantic beowulf paper that's due on friday that's kind of a big deal because i'm sending it into this awkward renaissance consortium.
2. work on my education unit plan.
3. write my nanowrimo novel because that's due on friday also and i'm about six thousand words behind.

things emily is GOING to do at the procastination station.

1. blog about thanksgiving.

HEREEE WE GOOOO!

so there's something about this semester that's been tremendously awful. and i've been weirdly homesick. which makes no sense, because usually i get back to indiana, i hug my parents, and about five minutes later i'm like, cool, let's go back to alma now. so all semester i've been calling my parents like, every other day and i've cried a lot and i've just generally wanted to go home all the time, so when it was time for thanksgiving break, i was like, THANK THE GOOD LORD THAT THIS HAS ARRIVED.

most of my friends peaced out early. i happen to be an RA. i peaced out at five.

my brother and i embarked on our three hour journey to the great state of indiana together with five weeks' worth of laundry, my new fish starship cruiser, and my brother's tarantula alexandria.

they became BFFs.
i wasn't really looking forward to driving home with a tarantula. i told my brother that if it escaped, i was going to pull over and set my car on fire.

appropriate response.

alexandria is actually pretty cute. for being a gigantic hairy spider.

we got home just in time for some pie, which was like, heck yes, welcome home and then i started in on my laundry, because i hadn't done it in five weeks. like, that's a really long time to go without doing laundry. i was on my last pair of underwear and i was seriously out of pants. so i came home wearing awkward tights, a dress, and a cardigan. i threw in a scarf and i actually looked like a put-together teacher.

i'm not gonna lie. thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday. as a strict vegetarian, there's not much i can eat. everybody is like, ERMAHGERD TERRRKERRRRR and i'm like, euw no. and always, without a doubt, my grandma will put bacon in the green bean casserole and i'm like, furrealz grandma?! and she's like, oh emily i just can't get used to you being a vegetarian, and i'm like, grandma, i've been a vegetarian for like, MY WHOLE LIFE.

so mostly for me it's like... rolls. and mashed potatoes. which is enough to make anybody cranky. and i just don't think it's that cool that we celebrate a day where we kind of like... took away land from innocent people and killed them with our european diseases.

so THIS thanksgiving we ventured to my dad's brother's new house. we spent thanksgiving with my aunt, my uncle, my grandpa, my two cousins, and my cousin-in-law, and of course, merlin, their excitable dog that my mom and i are highly allergic to. i haven't been exposed to fur in like, five months, so i haven't built up any type of immunity to it like i do when i visit my boyfriend for extended periods of time, so merlin combined with their imperial cat loki (oh yeah. like the avengers.) made me extremely asthmatic in an extremely short period of time. like, an hour into our visit i was like, yo, who's got an inhaler?! because i totally left mine at home.

smooth operating, emily.

my uncle, bless his soul, made me cheese enchiladas. so all of my friends were like, OH MY GOODNESS TURKEY and i was like, THIS IS THE BEST ENCHILADA EVER HOLY GOODNESS and there was much rejoicing.

hollenberg family tradition dictates that instead of watching football or doing something pointlessly american, we play a family game. this year we played "would you rather", which is exactly like it sounds.

real life question that we had to answer: would you rather bite off and ingest your own finger or break your mother's leg and never be able to tell her why?

obviously the second one.

the entertainment of the game was my parents doing a challenge in which they had to bend over and vigorously wave their butts in the air and my grandpa had to explain that he would rather have an itch in the middle of his back for all eternity because he would have a bunch of hotties scratch it for him.

somehow, every year, we end up embarrassing my grandpa. the other year he had to act out loony bin and he ran around my living room waving his arms and screaming.

we also got into a really big argument about driving. my oldest cousin, becky, was shouting about how she can't stand people that drive in the left lane all the time, to which my cousin-in-law eric responded by shouting, I TAKE WHAT IS MINE!

last year i lost my black friday virginity and my mom decided it was fun, so we were going to venture back out to the mall at midnight again. i wanted to go to target, but they were opening up at nine on thanksgiving night. my parents refused point blank to go to any store that opened that early because "we needed to take back thanksgiving". i feel like my parents would be good protestors if they actually paid attention to the news. 

so my mother and i set out to macy's to look for deals on teacher clothes and things to buy my brother for christmas because his entire list consisted of movies, which made my mother angsty. macy's had a DJ on a platform near the ceiling that was spinning one direction and i resisted the urge to vomit. we headed downstairs to avoid him and we spent a really long time looking at some oddly colored ties. when we had our purchases my mom was all excited by her coupons, but the macy's lady was like, lol nope none of these work and my mom was like, bitch please

no coupons for us.

we were back home within an hour and decidedly unhappy. we parked a quarter mile away and it was raining really hard when we left the store. it was a cold, wet, and quiet ride home.

on friday we put up our tree, which is like, a million feet tall (it's actually nine and a half or something) and always involves a ladder. my mom smashed a really pretty ancient ornament with her name on it and we said a prayer over it before vacuumed it up. we jammed to the head and the heart while decorating the tree, i almost fell off the ladder, and it was a pretty great time. 

we then got in the christmas spirit by watching batman begins. because nothing says it's holiday season like batman.

i might've had some unrestrained sexual tension towards cillian murphy. just sayin'.

on saturday i was like, DUDE. GONNA WRITE THAT BEOWULF PAPER. I'M ON TOP OF THIS. and then i was like, ooooh i have netflix so i watched an incredible amount of grey's anatomy and had feels about it. after dinner we watched captain america, who we call captain mrrca.

MRRCA.


again. superheroes. christmas. they go together.

now my parents are like, BRING HOME THE AVENGERS FOR CHRISTMAS BREAK so i'm excited about that. and i asked for spiderman for christmas. so it's just going to be a merry marvel christmas. besides batman. that's DC. i don't even know what DC stands for. does it actually stand for something?!

after we watched captain mrrca, we skyped with my grandparents, which was adorable. it took them a while to orient the camera correctly and they didn't really spend much time looking at us. there was also the part where i farted really really loudly and my grandpa was like, what on earth was that and my brother was like, no big deal, emily just ripped this giant nasty fart and i fell over because it smelled so bad.

i'm such a lady, i swear.

my grandparents also got to meet alexandria, which was fun. i expected my grandmother to be terrified by my brother's new tarantula, but i think she liked her. which was cool.

i actually was slightly productive over break. i wrote like, seven thousand words in my nanowrimo novel, but i'm still incredibly behind and i have to get that done by midnight on friday night. we'll see how that goes.

on sunday we went to church where a bunch of people were like, are you feeling better?! because of the whole "emily's still having convulsions" type deal, and we had a nice family meal together and then we packed up and headed back to alma, which, for the first time, was actually depressing for me. 

three weeks left, kids. two weeks of classes, one week of exams. and there's so much to look forward to.

until then, there's my paper and my nanowrimo novel. ya know.

i'm going to leave you with my christmas list because i'm very very proud of how it turned out.

Emily's truly wonderful and magical Christmas list.


  • Harry Potter books, the UK edition. I know it seems silly. But it’s very important to me to collect these slowly. Or all at once.
  • A Target gift card would be nice so I can buy all of their cute teacher clothes. And purple pants.
  •  A NEW WINTER COAT. This is very important. Because it’s forty degrees and my winter coat isn’t keeping me warm, it has a bum pocket, and I get the zipper stuck sometimes and I have to shimmy out of it.
  • A tortoise. I am not joking.
  • An iTunes gift card would be magical. All of the music!
  • SPIDER-MAN. Because I obviously didn’t buy it for myself. That took a lot of willpower. Like, a lot a lot.
  • A Union Jack flag to hang in my room!
  • I’d like to get my Iron and Wine poster framed. That would be neat.
  • Any John Green book. Preferably Paper Towns or The Fault In Our Stars.
  • Dr. Seuss books that we don’t already own. Jacob now has more than me and that’s shameful.
  • An iPod converter for the car because I will be darned if I have to keeping listening to the radio.
  • When in doubt, an Amazon gift card can work wonders.
  • Chuck season five because I’ve been waiting for that for a long, long time.
  • World peace.
  • Oh, and concert tickets.
 yeup. reeeal proud of that list.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

and then i started exercising again, and THIS is what happened.

i am a very stupid person.

this post is about my stupidity over the weekend.

no, i did not do what you think i did, i guarantee it.

so on thursday i decided that i was going to get my life together.

i was going to start exercising again. i haven't exercised in like... two years.

after my education class i went back to my room, put on some workout clothes and my boyfriend's hoodie that says HAMMER on the back (ya know, because his last name is hammer and it's hardcore) and i went to the rec center with my ipod and i jumped on an elliptical and i worked out.

it was torturous. it was terrible. but when i was done i felt really good. and i even went back to my room and did some abs, even though i don't really need to because every time i have a seizure i get an epic ab work out.

want good abs? have five hour long seizures.

so i decide to make this a regular thing. on friday i'm going to go work out, too! but first i have to go to walmart to buy some necessities for my gamma phi baby. and of course, it's friday, and we all know what that means.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN CAME OUT ON DVD.

i got an explicit email from my mother telling me that she gave jacob a blessing to do whatever he needed to do to keep me from buying it, besides i'm assuming, killing me or maiming me. she then talked about how i'm going to england for a month and i need to save my money for things like food while i'm there. which is smart.

but... the amazing spider-man.


here is andrew garfield doing the single ladies dance. with a beard that is nowhere near as wonderful as my boyfriend's. to prove my point.

at walmart jacob had to physically grab me and pull me away from the DVD display. it was pretty intense.

when i got back to my room i had an intense set of hiccups, so i called my dad and hiccupped at him for a while. then i went back to work out.

nobody was there! so i hopped on an elliptical and i was like, man. endorphins. they're a cool thing.

so i bumped the level up to ten and i put it on the hill setting and i rode that elliptical to the ground. and when i was done i was like, I AM SO AWESOME.

so that night i'm on duty. i've taken a nice hot shower and i've been on tumblr and i've hardcore cleaned my room for an hour and i'm on weekend duty with betsie! and we're going on rounds and i'm like, mmmm my hip kinda hurts a little bit, like on the inside.

what my anatomy friends would classify as "the groin".

groin is such an awkward word. like, seriously, it's just obnoxious and rather sexual sounding. i don't like it.

so i decide that it's time to teach betsie how to do the duty olympics in wright hall. wright hall, for those of you who are not almanians, is the three floored apartment style dorm with an elevator. 

in the duty olympics, you take the elevator to the second AND third floors. when you reach the second floor, one RA goes left, the other goes right, you race down the hall, up the stairs, and beat the elevator to the third floor, then ride it all the way back down.

it's real fun. especially at two in the morning.

so i teach betsie the duty olympics. sprint down the hall. up the stairs. back down the hall. meet the elevator, take it down, pant a lot, finish rounds in the other two buildings.

my groin really hurts.

barbara comes over and we decide to watch stick it and bake muffins. you can't watch stick it without having intense olympic feels and wanting the intense muscular body of haley graham. like, seriously, can i be that buff without having to exercise or be an elite gymnast?

short answer: no.

about halfway through the movie, bill comes over and he's like, HI EMILY I'M DRUNK and i'm like, good thing you're twenty-one because i'm on duty! and we decide it's a good idea to do cartwheels in the hall. which is technically sports in the hallway. shhhh.

after a few cartwheels and a roundoff, i'm in a considerable amount of pain. but it's worth it, because i have a kickass cartwheel. about an hour later, betsie and i are back on rounds and we decide to do the duty olympics one more time.

by the time i get to the elevator and ride it down to the first floor, i can hardly walk.

i finish rounds. barbara laments that i don't have ice to make it feel better. last round is terrible because stairs are suddenly like, the most insurmountable thing i have ever encountered in my life.

saturday rolls around. i hobble to saga. it hurts. a lot. i steal some crutches from dave.

barbara and i go to the swim meet and everybody is like, are you okay?! and i'm like, yo i pulled my groin and everybody does that little oooh that sucks and then we move on our with our lives. barbara and i then drive to mount pleasant. shifting from the acceleration pedal to the brake pedal is painful. but hey, so is dying because you didn't brake, so braking is a good thing.

on sunday i'm already sick of the crutches. they aren't the right size, so they're painful, and i can't adjust them because they're at their shortest because dave's crutches are for giant people. no crutches on sunday. 

that might've been a bad idea.

sunday night colin comes over after chapel and we watch the lion king together. the ice pack that barbara gave me is warm, so what's left to ice with?

frozen veggie burgers.

but here's the problem with my pulled groin muscle (that might be torn. we'll see). it's not that like, inner thigh groin tear. no, this is pretty much like... right on my vagina.

right on the vag.
i guess it's appropriate that i wore my GOT VAG? shirt last week to celebrate another four years of a president that isn't afraid to say the word vagina.

every time a guy is like, where'd you pull it and i point, they go, oh.

every time a girl is like, where'd you pull it and i point, they go, OH OUCH OMG I AM SO SORRY THAT SOUNDS SO TERRIBLE.

women. we know vagina pain.

yesterday i tried to spend most of the day on north campus. the trek from south campus to saga, especially with a winter coat and a heavy backpack, is pretty much like hiking the entire appalachian trail. i have armpit callouses already and my triceps feel like death. my left leg is also getting shin splints from being the only leg that's fully functional. 

you don't realize how hard it is to not use your hip flexors when suddenly you can't.

but the kicker was last night at our RA inservice. we had different stations about how to be better RAs and take care of ourselves and stuff. the fourth station that i went to was alcohol drink sniffing (i can never smell cranberry juice mixed with vodka) and then we had to put on beer goggles, walk a straight line, pick up a cup, transfer it to a chair, pick up a nerf gun, cock it back, and shoot at a target.

crutches and beer goggles are pretty much the best.

i couldn't find the line i was supposed to be crutching on, so i just crutched straight for the cup. i couldn't bend down and reach the cup, so katie handed it to me and i couldn't reach for it, i was about three feet off. i then made it to the other chair with the nerf gun and my hands were cramped from holding the crutches, so i couldn't cock it back properly. i shot squarely at the target on the window and ended shooting the nerf bullet so high that my boss, who's very tall, had problems getting it down.

it was a riot.

now it's tuesday and i'm hoping that today is my last day. i have plans to stay on north campus until after dinner, and then i have plans to stay on south campus and never return until tomorrow morning. 

so when people ask me, "what did you do?!" and i say, "oh man, i pulled my groin, i might've torn it, who knows" and they say, "HOW?!"

i get to say, "well i worked too hard on the elliptical, i won the duty olympics, and i did some cartwheels."

not what you think i did in my stupidity, hmm?

i leave you with a picture of captain tumblr. he's full of feels.


Tuesday, November 6, 2012

election day anxiety is the BEST anxiety.

it's election day.

i am full of anxiety.

there are a few reasons for this.

1. IT'S ELECTION DAYYYY
2. i don't have antidepressants right now. that sounds bad. like i'm addicted to them or something.
3. i have some. at the pharmacy. i haven't picked them up yet.
4. the pharmacy keeps calling me at weird times like, EMILY PICK UP YO PILLS GURRRL and i'm like, I DON'T EVEN HAVE TIME TO GO TO THE PHARMACY BECAUSE I'M TRYING TO WRITE A PAPER ABOUT HOW GRENDEL'S MOTHER'S LAIR IS ACTUALLY A WOMB.

so. much. anxiety.

like, on sunday i got really anxious about all of the stuff i have to do this week. and i was so anxious i couldn't actually do it, which made me even more anxious that i wasn't doing it, and the thought of actually being in contact with humans (particularly humans that have their stuff together) made me want to vomit so i sat alone in my room and my boyfriend brought me dinner so i didn't have to brave the cafeteria.

i'm anxious about election day. not quite like that.

i've actually had a very human filled day. i ate lunch with a bunch of awesome people. i met with two professors. i went to class. i had a study session.

that involves people. COOL PEOPLE.

so i went to talk to dr. aspinall about submitting stuff to the english honorary convention in portland. if my stuff gets picked, i get to dress up pretty, read what i submitted to a panel of people (with a podium! and a microphone!) and then be like, yo, this is what i was thinking when i wrote this.

then i'll probably have to answer questions like, "was this a feminist critique of something? what about psychoanalysis?"

the life of an english major.

so i sat in dr. aspinall's office and i was like, "okay i have five poems and i have a short story that i critiqued really really hard and i just don't know what to submit and i'm really really anxious!"

and he says, "relax, what do you want to submit?"

i don't know. that's why i'm in here talking to you.

there's a lot of face clutching. a lot of burying my face in my short story and my poetry. because i was cool and printed them off. dr. aspinall then grabbed my poem, read it, and said, "i've read this before."

my first thought is WHEN THE HELL DID YOU READ MY POEM WHAT ON EARTH.

and then he says, "this one the poetry contest, i was a judge."

oh. right.

then he's like, EMILY WHY ARE YOU SO ANXIOUS

and out of my mouth comes something like this.

IT'S ELECTION DAY AND I HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER AND I JUST NEVER KNOW IF I'M DOING ANYTHING RIGHT AND I HATE HAVING ANXIETY AND I GET ANXIOUS ABOUT HAVING ANXIETY AND I JUST NEED TO KNOW WHAT TO SUBMIT BECAUSE I HAVE ANXIETY ABOUT REJECTION AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE.

we've come full circle. i think. maybe. probably. not.

IT'S ELECTION DAY AND I AM ANXIOUS AS ALL GET-OUT.

right now i'm sitting on my bed. i'm on RA duty and i'm sitting here with colin. he's burping a lot.

but the best part is that he brought over a loaf of bread and a gigantic bag of string cheese.

so i'm literally sitting here watching the election results and eating bread and cheese. 

YEUP. IT'S HAPPENING.

it took me a while to find CNN. like, i've never had cable before so i tweet something along the lines of "i don't know what channel CNN is!" and this weird twitter i've never seen before goes "oh emilyyxh, you don't know what channel CNN is?" and i'm like, "BRO CHILL OUT I'VE NEVER HAD CABLE DURING AN ELECTION BECAUSE CABLE IS FOR SUCKERS."

so colin and i are sitting here and tweeting. he's reading this over my shoulder and it's getting annoying. but here's what i've come up with so far.

indiana went republican. i am disappointed, but not surprised. there's been a lot of coverage about donnelly and mourdock because murdock kind of made the biggest douchebag mistake EVER and he didn't bother recanting it because he honestly believes what he says.

GO HOME, MOURDOCK, NOBODY LOVES YOU.

i feel like you guys know my political stances by now. if you don't, here's pretty much how it works.

HUFFLEPUFFS FOR OBAMA!

here's a cute picture of me with the political signs that i have over my bed.

i attempted to be cute. so i took most of my face out of the picture.
breaking news while i posted that picture: MOURDOCK LOST IN INDIANA.

this is a very happy thing for me, mostly because i live in indiana and he was a misogynist douchebag.

speaking of misogyny, the other day in my brit lit class, we were reading sir francis bacon and dr. aspinall was like, "francis bacon was a misogynist. does anybody know what that means?"

epic silence. then dr. aspinall was like, "WOMAN HATER!"

the other day we were discussing john donne and he seriously asked us, "can you get pregnant with a dildo instead of a penis? this is what john donne is asking us through his poetry."

moving back to election night.

about an hour ago, my boss texted me and this is how that conversation went.

my boss: OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA!
me: whaaat? if you know anything DON'T ruin it omg
my boss: no, that's just my battle cry!

ten minutes later.

my boss: i'm drinking woodchuck!
me: i'm on duty and i wanna drink, wahhh
my boss: dave took the duty phone. SO I'M DRINKING

i enjoy my job. and my boss.

but seriously, i want to be sitting here with a wine cooler (and colin and bread and cheese) but since i'm on duty, i can't drink.

i don't have class tomorrow night. 

guess who's going to the bar

CNN has been going through these states one at a time, going through estimates and stuff, and i cannot describe how anxious it's making me. this old guy is standing next to this board and saying things like, "we predict that romney will take this state, blah blah blah" and I CANNOT HANDLE IT.

colin just showed me the epic rap battle of history between romney and obama. the best part was abraham lincoln descending on an eagle and bitch slapping them both.

colin and i have now started a new game. it goes like this.

"IS THAT OHIO?"
"no, that's iowa."
"IS THAT OHIO?"
"every state is not ohio."
"I LIKE OHIO"

i do like ohio because it's a swing state that obama needs.

colin likes ohio because he's from ohio. legit.

AND THEN THIS JUST HAPPENED ON TWITTER.

he knows colin's secret.
twitter is now blown up with mourdock and akin being ousted. 

"looks like god didn't intend mourdock to win."

"akin officially got shut down."

LOLOLOL TWITTER.

time elapsed since i last typed in this post: approximately one hour. during that time, glenda ritz ousted tony bennett as state superintendent of indiana, AND I AM DANCING IN MY FLANNEL PANTS AND WAVING AROUND CHEESE STICKS.

but mike pence just became governor of indiana. less dancing. more unhappiness.

i have officially decided that i am going to stay up as long as it takes until i find out who is the next president of the united states. 

eight thirty class? ehhhhh. 

brit lit exam? ehhhhh.

staying up until four in the morning to see who wins this election? YEAHHHHH.

states are making up their minds. yellow states galore. obama is ahead. romney is close behind.

WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL?!

ACCORDING TO CNN TWO SECONDS AGO, THAT WOULD BE MR. BARACK OBAMA.




Friday, November 2, 2012

HOLY HOMEWORK AND COLLEGE LIFE, BATMAN!

i wish that my post titles could have a little description.

this one would be "in which emily discusses the month of november and how it hereby affects her life and finally culminates in the youtube sensation "aint' nobody got time for that.""

can you tell i've been reading a lot of sir francis bacon for my brit lit class?

fun fact: i've never had bacon before. can i count having bacon as reading francis bacon's verbose essays on humanity?

i've already digressed too much and this hasn't even gotten under way. right. november.

normally i think of october as that month where everything just kind of rushes at me and i'm like, HOLY HOMEWORK AND COLLEGE LIFE, BATMAN! and i have to run around and get everything done while being incredibly overly involved in other stuff, like chapel and my sorority and being an RA and being in active minds. which reminds me, i have posters to print off.

but this year november just kind of shoved october aside and was like, "october, chill bro, it's MY time to make emily's life incredibly busy and fantastical. you've had your run for two years."

yesterday was november first. also known as el dia de los muertos. also known as all saints day.

also known as "the day that emily found out what a terrible month november is going to be, and by terrible, she means awesomely insane."

let's take a quick gander at what lies ahead in my life in, gasp, A LIST. (i never have lists in my blog, guys. ever.)

1. while kayla is at conference, i'm kind of suddenly in charge of active minds. OOPS.
2. forgot about that history quiz. probably not gonna study for it.
3. i need to have a nice conversation with dr. aspinall about submitting some poetry and my really creepy short story to sigma tau delta, the english honorary i just joined. that's due on the twelfth and i haven't even edited my short story yet.
4. again, talk to dr. aspinall about my seven page paper about grendel's mother that i'll probably put into an awkward renaissance consortium. it'll look great on my resume.
5. speaking of resumes, my student teacher application is due on the fifteenth. HELLO, BIG KID LIFE, NOT HAPPY TO SEE YOU.
6. i'm taking a sorority little. SO HAPPY. SO POOR. SO NOT ENOUGH TIME.
7. gamma phi initiations! eep!
8. you know, i'm an RA. i do RA things. that means i have an interview next week to be a senior resident assistant. totally not ready for that to happen. i'm terrified out of my mind.
9. i need to make a unit plan for my lesson planning class. like, what does a high school english unit even look like? do i really get to spend four weeks on literary analysis? i don't even have a lesson plan for that.
10. brit lit exam. thou art a heartless bitch.
11. dr. wise will not stop pestering me about this position paper i have to write. i want to write about britain being douchebags and colonizing the entire world. but i can't really find a position in there. and i just don't care enough to think about the paper.

i swear to god there's more. just thinking about this is making me anxious. i need to pick up my new antidepressants at rite aid. i won't even get into my appointment with the neurologist and the fact that next month i'm going to be walking around campus with wires all over my head.

don't worry. i'll blog about it.

so this is like, my next three weeks. it's scary. i'm still finding time to blog and watch once upon a time. which is probably a really bad thing. i should be living in the library.

but here's the kicker.

yesterday i signed up for nanowrimo and now there is no going back.


agreed, sweet brown.
i should probably explain what nanowrimo is. don't weird yourself out with the pronunciation.

"nan. oh. ree. mo."

right. it's national november writing month. NaNoWriMo. get it?

cool beans. i'm an english major and a writing minor. i write anyway. i got this on lock.

wellllll nanowrimo has like, this awkward stipulation where you sign up to do it on their cool website (nanorwimo.org) and then they're like, GO WRITE A 50,000 WORD NOVEL IN A MONTH GO!

in the words of sweet brown, "ain't nobody got time for that!"

why did i sign up for this in november? when i have all of these futuristic life changing things happening, like applying to student teach and entering my writing in a huge conference in oregon and writing a paper for a weird renaissance consortium i didn't know existed? do i honestly have time to write a 50,000 word novel?

my first answer is yes. i open the novel i'm currently working on, check the word count. 107,069 words.

my first thought: pshhh that's like, over twice as much as i need for this nanowrimo gig.
my second thought: i've been writing that sucker for three years, not thirty days.
my third thought: i am so fucked right now.

nanowrimo.org is a very helpful place. you put in your author information, how old you are, where you're from. what's your novel about? does it have a picture you want to use as a cover? put in an excerpt for other users to read. keep up with your word count and you can see how far you have to go, what you need to average, where you'll finish if you keep up your current word count average per day, and there's even a handy dandy scale that lets you know how you're doing on the graph of writing. you can be buddies with other writers.

i put in my author info. 

hobbies: singing in the shower, reading harry potter, eating string cheese, blogging.
occupation: student, resident assistant, almost but not quite professional blogger.
novel title: alligator.
synopsis: great question.
cover: fuggetaboutit.
bio: the generic "hi i'm emily. i like serial killers, strawberries, and lemon cake. my life consists of awkward moment and cereal." because it does.

seemed like a good deal. then i was like, shit, i gotta write a novel in a month now.

so i feverishly opened a word document with a vague character in mind. i knew more about her obession with presidential dogs than about her, and i was like, it's debate time, why not have her take a political science class during the upcoming election and i'm not gonna finish this by election day, so i have instant dramatic irony, and she can be from florida and there'll be an alligator there somewhere and boom, i have a novel i can work with.

i ran into that sticky spot where i was like, ummm my main character's name starts with an m. what's her name?

google baby names. get on weird sites with weird ads. find weird names that shouldn't exist in nature. eventually come across the name "maggie" and run with it.

write write write write write write, look at the clock, realize it's almost midnight and boom, i have 5,013 words in one day. 

my first thought: BOOOM, BABY, I'M LIKE, FOUR THOUSAND WORDS OVER WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW.
my second thought: dude. i totally don't have time for this every day and i don't even know where the alligator is going to come into play. my book is called alligator. um.

i've decided to give you a small excerpt of my novel, for shits and giggles. i believe it characterizes maggie and her family quite nice.


“John, Maggie said ‘pardon my ass’ earlier,” my mom said to my dad, talking over me.
“She needed to pardon it,” my dad said simply. “Mags, did you need to pardon your ass?”
“I want to pardon the world’s ass.”
“So it’s not a problem,” my father said plainly.
“How does one actually pardon an ass?” my mother wondered.
“Well, if you come across an ass, your pardon it,” my father replied smartly.

currently, maggie is standing next to an abstinence makes the heart grow fonder! poster. you've all seen them. the ugly eighties couple holding hands and urging you not to engage in sexual intercourse.

which brings me to my last point about november, besides all of the terrible things that i have to do this month and that i'm writing a strange novel about politics, dogs named after presidents, and alligators in thirty days.

november is, in fact, no shave november.

my boyfriend has been participating in no shave june, july, august, september, october, november, and forever, and he has the biggest beard on campus. yesterday we stuck froot loops in it. many of his PMA brothers and my close friends are participating in no shave november. colin, my psuedo PMA brother (they don't actually take sisters) is participating in no shave october AND november because he can't grow that much and he wants to be manly. colin, if you're reading this, you are manly. and you're a time lord.

but why can't women do no shave november? i mean, on the swim team, it's totally no shave september october november december (quick shave) january february. i don't have a problem with hairy legs. life of a swimmer.

so i'm doing no shave november. plus, the mccurdy house, the women's advocacy small house on campus, is having some sort of no shave november contest. i'm decently hairy. i have a shot at winning.... something. i should look more into the contest.

yesterday i threw away my razor. i'm pretty stoked about it. but throwing away my razor also means that i'm letting my armpit hair grow. EUW. YEP. IT'S PRETTY GROSS AND AWESOME.

there's been a lot of twitter coverage about ladies participating in no shave november. people are saying that it's just for men (like dr. pepper ten. i drink that stuff all the time.) and that it's disgusting for a woman to do it.

the new phrase is "if women do no shave november, there'll be a no d december."

LOOK! A WILD FEMINIST AND ABSTINENT EMILY APPEARED! (do you see what i did there?!)

to quote my book character, pardon my ass, but that's ridiculous.

1. who says we wanted your dick in the first place?
2. man, i didn't realize that sexual relationships were based on my body hair. i should've known.
3. if you don't want to have sex with me because i have body hair, i don't think i want to have sex with you, douchebag.
4. yes, i'm abstinent, and that means that i'm waiting for the right person. you obviously aren't the right person if you're gonna be like, 'oh sorry honey, i can't have sex with you, your leg hair is too long.'
5. look at your own leg hair, gentleman. we have sex with THAT all up on us. and don't even pretend like you shave your dicks to please us. so why should i shave my vagina to please you?

number five is for a twitter comment that went, "nobody likes a bush down there."

feminist twitter movement as of late: "no d december means no v forever."

i mean, i'm on the no vagina train because i'm abstinent and all that. and i feel comfortable growing out my body hair this month because i'm obviously not getting any. but even if i were getting some, i'd like to think that my boyfriend wouldn't deny me sexual intercourse because i have leg hair.

wow. this post went from "emily has so much to do!" to "emily is writing a novel in a month!" to "emily is a crazy feminist and growing out her armpit hair this month!"

welcome to my life.

so. i'm emily. i'm writing a novel in a month while simultaneously growing out my body hair. i'm going to write research papers and head up mental health organizations and talk to professors and kick literary and academic ass.

and you know, i'm going to try to blog somewhere in there.

and for your viewing pleasure, the wonderful video "ain't nobody got time for that."


sweet brown. my spirit animal.


oh. i also want to mention that last night, while exerting all of my literary effort into writing fourteen pages of my novel in an hour, i ate an entire cake. alone in my room. at midnight.

AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FO DAT.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

that moment i pretended i knew what was going on in politics.

oh my goodness. i need to blog.

today i shaved for the first time since getting out of the hospital. and i was like, MAN, I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN shania twain style in the shower and then i was like, jeez, my life is sad, this is why i have a blog. i need to blog.

my last post was so dramatic. and depressing.

i need to blog about fun things.

here's what i came up with.

1. walk-outs! we got seven new gamma phi babies and jacob and i took stupid pictures and he resembled sully from monster's inc.
2. all of the awkward places i've been having seizures. like the choir concert.
3. the presidential debate.

i've decided to go with number three.

OH NO, A POLITICAL BLOG, RUN AWAY AHHHHHH

you can run away. buuuut i feel like if i've blogged about religion, being hospitalized, my vagina on numerous occasions, and my mental illness, i've earned the right to blog about politics.

um. i should make a disclaimer.

i, emily hollenberg, know absolutely nothing about politics. i do not want to get into any stimulating discussions. i do not like it when people comment on stuff and are like, "actually, if you look at the facts about blah blah in obamacare you will realize blah blah blah about taxes."

i don't know about politics. i'm simply sharing my opinion and how the debate was pretty much the funniest thing i've ever seen on television. i'm not going to be politically correct. also, we can have different political stances and still be friends. don't shove your beliefs down my throat and i won't shove mine down yours.

right. THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE.

in eleventh grade in my US history class we had to keep debate journals. i went back and reread them and i realized that i care more about how politicians act on stage rather than what they're saying. i totally did that last week during the debate.

and of course, i live tweeted. because live tweeting is what i do. and surprisingly, i didn't lose any followers.

OH. i should probably post my political stance.

it is officially HUFFLEPUFFS FOR OBAMA.

because i'm in hufflepuff. and i like obama. i think. i made a sign and hung it in my room, so it's decently legit.

so it's debate time. i have my door open. i have my laptop on my lap and i'm ready to live tweet the hell out of this thing.

my first thought: romney and obama are ridiculously photogenic. like, why can't i be that photogenic? even when my hair looks good i still look terrible in pictures.

WET T-SHIRT CONTEST
wow. i just labeled that "wet t-shirt contest." i'm going to hell.

soooo. i think the rest of this blog is going to be my tweets. because i feel like it'll just be easier for you and for me if i'm just like, HERE, LOOK AT MY TWEETS DURING THE DEBATE.

first tweet. OH SNAP, PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE BECAUSE OBAMA IS AWESOME AND I JUST WANT TO LAUGH AT MITT ROMNEY. there's my political stance, oops, bye.

then i spent some time wondering who the moderator was because i don't pay attention to things like that. i'm way more focused on the fact that whenever one of the candidates is like, "let me tell you why your plan is bullshit" they're like, "LOOK DOWN AND SMILE, LOOK DOWN AND SMILE. IT'LL BE OKAY, JUST LOOK DOWN AND SMILE AT MY SHINY SHOES THAT SOMEOBDY PICKED OUT FOR ME."

so. my first jab at romney.

"oh romney. you're pulling the sob stories and not actually talking about what you're going to do. and did anybody notice that you just dissed china?"

i don't even remember how he dissed china. but he totally did.

even though i'm a pretty hardcore obama fan, of course obama isn't perfect. i got to jab at him too.

obama: education is super important, guys! i want to pay teachers more and i want to hire more math and science teachers!
me: bro. english teachers. we're a thing.

now we're at the point where i'm not entirely sure what's going on because i don't know how the hell medicaid and medicare work. so i'm trying to figure out who the moderator is. when i found out, this happened.

"THE MODERATOR'S NAME IS JIM. JIM. JIM. MY MAN. LET'S DATE."

because i've always wanted to date an old PBS dude in a tie. like mr. rogers.

sooooo then the bullshit starts to fly.

romney: i don't want to cut taxes on the rich.
me: um.
obama: um.
jim: um.
america: um.

obama: i was looking at numbers--
me: candidates understand numbers?! i thought they made that stuff up.

jim: let's talk about taxes.
romney: lol no.
jim: let's focus back on taxes.
romney: lol no.
obama: smile and nod. smile and nod.

it was a little after this that i made my most important discovery of all political history.

republicans blink more than democrats.

i'm so serious. in my eleventh grade journal, i seriously spent a page discussing how much john mccain blinks. like, my seventeen year old self was obsessed with how much that man blinked. and now i'm sitting on my bed live tweeting and i'm like, damn, romney is blinking so much. REPUBLICANS MUST BLINK MORE THAN DEMOCRATS.

it makes perfect sense. right? right.

then things start to get fun. jacob comes over.

jacob doesn't like politics. he doesn't want to vote. he doesn't like obama or romney. and he actually knows about politics and laws and legislation and i'm over here like, i just want to vote for obama because he likes education and is okay with gay marriage. 

the first thing that jacob says to me when he walks in is this: "romney's being an ass. but he's being an ass pretty stupidly. does he think that's good?"

about ten minutes later romney is like, "hang on jim, i want the last word." and jim is like, "no bro, obama gets the last word and you can go first next time" and romney is like, "DUDE, NO, I WANT THE LAST WORD" and i'm like, "romney. LISTEN TO JIM. HE'S A COOL DUDE."

so this was my favorite part of the debate.

romney: i love coal.
my tweet: i'm sitting here with the largest windfarm in michigan five miles away and romney is like, OH HEY, I LOVE COAL.

i put that as a facebook status. it got a lot of likes.

then suddenly it's all medicare and healthcare and things i don't know about and romney is like, "it's my job to interrupt jim because i can do what i want" and obama is like, "i am soooo on the oration struggle bus" and i'm like, "obama, i feel you bro, i had a speech impediment in elementary school."

and then two beautiful things happened.

romney: expensive things hurt families.
jacob: SO DOES LOSING YOUR JOB TO A CORPORATE PIG.
me: i have lost my ability to can.

jim: now let's move onto--
romney: lol no.
jacob: I'M MITT ROMNEY AND I'M AN ASSHOLE AND I INTERRUPT THE MODERATOR BECAUSE I'M MITT ROMNEY.
me: where's kanye when you need him?

a facebook app told me that kanye west would interrupt my wedding. i think i'm okay with that.

i feel like this wouldn't be a political debate blog post if i didn't say at least something about big bird. i actually missed the big bird comment, i was laughing too hard at jacob muttering hateful things under his breath about obama's tax plan that i will never hope to understand.

but seriously, you can't just be like, "hey bro, i know you work for PBS and you're moderating this thing, but i want to cut public programming. like PBS."

there is one thing that i DO know, and that cutting funding and getting rid of PBS will make about a tenth of a percent difference in the national defecit.

if we want to fix the national defecit, we need to stop spending money on a pointless war. i don't care if you agree with me or not. i believe that our war is pointless and is wasting money. 

back to funnier points of the debate.

romney: my first day as president, i'm going to repeal obamacare.
obama: you gonna have a busy first day there, bro, repealing all of my shit.

the debate showed me a few things.

1. republicans blink more than democrats.
2. romney interrupts people more than kanye west.
3. my boyfriend is very knowledgeable about politics.
4. i know nothing about politics.
5. twitter is the best place to be when watching a debate.
6. moderator jim needs a hug. and a large glass of bourbon after what all went down.

after the debate was over, i was flipping channels, and i kid you not, jacob says to me, "i wonder what's on PBS? burning effigies of romney?"

now i leave you with some political stuff that i put on tumblr, where if you are a republican, you are pretty much crucified.


even if we're republican, i feel like we all were.

right. i think we've all figured out my political stance.

i'm not saying that obama has all the answers. because he doesn't. but i am saying that i'm not going to vote for a man that won't let me get married if i were in love with a woman. and he thinks that airplane windows need to be able to be rolled down.

he's obviously never seen goldmember. he should watch more james bond.

also, one of my tweets got on some weird website. you can find it here.

seriously, i was just sitting on twitter and this guy was like, hey emilyyxh, i used your tweet in this article about the debate and i was like, man, i hope you know that none of my tweets are politically correct and  don't carry any political weight.

i am uneducated about politics and i'm going to vote! you should vote too!

and probably be more educated than me. that would be smart of you.

LET'S GO VOTE, KIDS! FOR ROMNEY OR OBAMA! 

and if neither of them work for you, tumblr is starting a "strange women in ponds distributing swords 2012" campaign. 

now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to turn on the vice presidential debate and have absolutely no idea what's going on.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

i am not my mental illness.

today i'm going to blog about mental health. no amusing tweets from the debate last night, no excited pictures of my sorority getting new members and me wearing a giant parrot necklace and superman tights.

that'll come later.

this is a serious post about mental health.

this week is trichotillomania awareness week.

i've hinted numerous times that i have a mental illness. i've snidely called it "my rare and interesting mental illness" because it is rare, and it is, in fact, interesting.

my name is emily and i have trichotillomania.

me: phew. glad i got that off my chest.
you: DA FUQ IS TRICHOTILLOMANIA. I CAN'T EVEN PRONOUNCE THAT.

i'll spare you. we call it trich. because i've had this for seven years and i can barely say it.

it's trick-oh-teel-oh-mania, by the way. if you're really trying.

so. trich. this cool public health website says that "trichotillomania is hair loss from repeated urges to pull or twist hair until it breaks off. Patients are unable to stop this behavior. it is an impulse control disorder and its causes are not clearly understood."

thanks, public health website, for enlightening us.

sooooooooooo basically what it says is this: my name is emily and i compulsively pull out my own hair.

EUW. GROSS. WEIRD. SCARY. AHHH. RUN AWAY.

welcome to my life.

trich affects approximately three million americans. that's three million people out there compulsively pulling out their own hair. and they have no idea why. that's the biggest question.

why?

i started to pull out my eyebrows when i was in eighth grade. i was fourteen. around thanksgiving i just absentmindedly started to yank out my eyebrow hairs during class, especially french. my mom got me tweezers for christmas with hopes that i was just trying to sculpt them on my own, but that didn't turn out well. i put the tweezers in a drawer and never got them out again. i am still afraid of them.

by the time i finished eighth grade i didn't have eyebrows.

this doesn't seem like a big deal. until you don't have eyebrows and people stare at you and ask you about it. then you just want to die inside. then it's a big deal.

in ninth grade i got my hair cut and the stylist commented on my lack of eyebrows. i told her that i shaved them off for swimming.

right before my fifteenth birthday my mom thought that my bangs were too long and she cut them herself. she cut them too short. i spent the last week of eighth grade making up whatever stories i could for the people that asked me where my eyebrows were.

it takes a lot of effort to hide missing hair places. honestly. swimming is always a problem. sweaty bangs curl up and make your lack of eyebrows visible. getting your hair cut is torture.

and then there's always the question: what if someone sees me pulling out my hair in class? what will they think?

the ultimate question: AM I CRAZY?

my mom used to yell at me whenever i pulled out my hair. she'd tell me to "just stop."

if there's one thing i've learned about the stigma against mental illness, it's that "just stop" is one of the worst things you can ever say to someone.

we did not choose to have a mental illness. we do not enjoy the effects of mental illness.

and no, we cannot "just stop" having a mental illness.

people with trich cannot "just stop" pulling out their hair. trich is an impulse control disorder, and the more you pull, the more impulsive it becomes, making it a cycle of damage.

whenever i want to pull my hair, the part where i want to pull from gets itchy, a kind of tingly scalp itchiness. i can rub that spot all i want, i can scratch it, but nothing will make that feeling go away until i rip that hair out. to someone with trich, there is nothing more satisfying than feeling a hair detach from your head, feeling the root lift up and out, and knowing that you got that hair out of there.

there is nothing more important than pulling out your own hair.

it's hard to concentrate on anything else but the feeling of needing to pull. all you can think about is ripping out hair. it is literally the only thing you can concentrate on. it is that impulsive.

there are people out there with trich that have it a lot worse than i do. i pull from my eyebrows, the back of my head, and the top right side of my head, where i normally wear bows. there are people with trich that pull out their hair to such a degree that they are bald and have to wear wigs. there are people out there who spend an hour in the morning arranging hair carefully around a bald spot. hair is a constant worry. hair is a constant necessity.

hair is such an integral part of how we see ourselves. we all have different hairstyles. we dye our hair, we braid it, we put it up, we curl it, we straighten it, we leave it down, we put bows in it. hair is so important with how we see ourselves.

you cannot feel like a whole and happy person when you know that you destroy your own natural beauty by ripping out your hair compulsively.

my hair is one of the few things that i truly love about my appearance. i am very proud of my hair and how i maintain it. sometimes it gets to the point where i become obsessive about my hair. i have to do it every single day. i can't simply shower and leave the house without doing my hair. i always need it to look nice and presentable.

i feel like i do this because i know that the alternative is to pull all of it out and be left with nothing.

not many people know about trich. i didn't find out what trich was until i was sixteen. for two years i thought i was crazy, pulling out my own hair. when i found out what it was, i didn't know what to do. i spent a week in a furious debate with myself, wondering who i could turn to to talk about it.

to this day, i have not met anyone personally with trich.

trich is a silent disorder. people that have trich are not open about it. we don't want to be seen as crazy. i don't march around shouting "I PULL OUT MY OWN HAIR." that's not normal. it's a slow and silent disorder. we don't want anyone to know our secret struggles. we don't want anyone to know that we wear wigs.

we don't want anyone to know that we struggle with self-esteem because our hair will never be long and beautiful as long as we struggle with this disorder.

because trich is relatively unknown and the exact cause of it is unknown, there's not much funding for research. in the mental health community, we're kind of that disorder over the corner sitting quietly like, "hey guys, i'm over here affecting three percent of the population, but you can get to me when you find out exactly what causes schizophrenia."

i have silently had trichotillomania for seven years. i will have trichotillomania for the rest of my life.

i am not going to be silent anymore.

i have this illness. but i am not my illness. trich does not define me.

my name is emily and i have trichotillomania.

my family is incredibly supportive. i see a therapist and we work on ways to keep my hands busy so i don't absentmindedly pull out my hair. i keep a log of when and where i pull and what i'm thinking about when i do.

today is october fourth, 2012, and i have not pulled my hair out in seventy-five days.

for the first time in seven years, i have full eyebrows. i have no bald spots.

seventy-five days. 

i have a paper chain on my bookshelf that marks my recovery. for every day that i don't pull, i put on a paper link in the color of my choice. for every day that i pull, i put on a white link.

my chain has no white links.

trich is something that i will struggle with for the rest of my life. but i know that if i can go seventy-five days without pulling that i can do anything.

i am not my mental illness.

i have trichotillomania. but it does not have me.

seventy-five days pull free.

trichotillomania awareness week is wrapping up. tomorrow we're wearing blue. so support trichotillomania and wear blue if you want. :)