Friday, June 29, 2012

rugs of steel and storms.

it's been an interesting day.

so here's a list! YAY!

you totally weren't expecting that, were you.

1. when my alarm went off, i wanted to throw a knife at it. sarah walker/chuck style.
2. FUN FRIDAY. i've never been in that much pain doing a dolphin dart in my entire life.
3. nap ALL the time!
4. answer awkward questions about my ultrasound. because yes, that does involve sticking a wand up my vagina. and yes, i'm not mentally prepared for it.
5. credit union? my bank account is wayyyy happier than i thought it was.
6. go to the lake!

i didn't go to the lake in the traditional sense.

normally going to the lake is something like this.

don't pack until the last minute. find your swim bag. cram in a towel. which bikini do i want? does it truly matter? which one doesn't give me a wedgie?

my mom will yell "WE'RE LEAVING SOMEONE GRAB THE WATERMELON" and then i just kind of grab one out of my drawer.

and then it's running around, packing food, and heaven forbid we forget the veggie burgers, because i, the only vegetarian in all sides and dimensions of my family, need something to eat.

then it's an hour drive through the beautiful country of indiana.

did i say country of indiana? i mean the state of indiana, because indiana is country.

except where i live. and indianapolis. we're the only cities in the entire state, just about.

today was different.

my mother didn't know when we were leaving. i'm in my room endorsing my birthday checks because i don't have a single dollar in cash and my dad is like, COME ON WE SHOULD'VE LEFT HALF AN HOUR AGO

and my mom says all sleepily, huh? we're leaving? i need to make a salad.

we're very punctual people in my family. today just wasn't our day.

so i run into the credit union, and i'm staring at one of the tellers at my credit union, and i'm thinking, gee whiz, he really looks like that football player from middle school who's gained a lot of weight and is wearing a pink shirt.

i check his name tag.

totally that football player from middle school. and he's gained a lot of weight, has a beard, and is wearing a pink shirt.

i've changed a lot since middle school. this guy has no idea who the hell i am. which is just as well, i'd kind of like to forget who i was in middle school. just like you probably do too.

so he's working the drive thru, and i have to wait on this lady named christie. she's really nice and doesn't understand how i want my hundred dollars in cash to be dolled out. i really enjoy ten dollar bills, and i want five of them, and two twenties, and two fives. and i'm like, sorry, math isn't my strong suit, i'm not sure if that's right at all, and she's like, oh honey don't worry about it, did you want ten fives?

no. five tens, thanks. my parents are dying in our car in the parking lot because it's ninety-three degrees outside, can we move this along.

i did let that elderly woman go in front of me. i was being nice. sometimes being nice gets you crunched for time.

so then we're on our way, and i haven't checked my balance in a while, and i have SO much more money than i thought i did.

i perpetually pretend that i'm poor. then i don't buy stuff. it works great.

so we're heading out of town to the lake, which is an hour drive. and my phone goes off.

NYAAANTS INGONYAAAAMA BAGITHI BABAAA

lion king. you're not surprised.

it's jacob. he's in michigan.

jacob: hi i'm heading to your house right now!
me: ... NO.
jacob: what?!
me: i'm leaving for the lake, i'm still in fort wayne. i won't be back until eight thirty.
jacob: oh. i'll just hang out in kalamazoo. until six.
me: um. i love you?

literally two minutes after this, hell is released.

all day it's been rather cloudy, which is decently nice, because it's ninety-three degrees (which is better than yesterday's one hundred and six). and we turn onto washington center road to take the country part of it to the indiana highway.

and we face this solid wall of storm.

indiana is in a severe drought. SEVERE. it hasn't rained since march. we're nine inches deficient in rain. there's a burn and firework ban on the entire state. i'll repeat this sentence: it has not rained in indiana since march.

so here's this storm. we're at a traffic light, and this storm is getting darker.

me: that looks nice!
my dad: rain! yay rain!
my mother: HOLY AERUHGSKDJHGDG THAT STORM IS SO DARK WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.

it was darker than this. i swear.

i'm excited. i like storms. and we have no intention of swimming at the lake, just eating dinner with my grandpa and seeing the new trailer, because we got a new one. the old one was from the eighties, or the seventies, or the fourteenth century, and we're excited to see it.

we're sitting at this traffic light in the country. and the wind starts picking up.

and then it's this full blown dust storm. and we're in my car (which is really my mom's) and then i start to panic a little bit. because i don't want dust damage. there are rocks swirling around. 

when it hasn't rained since march, what is else is the wind gonna pick up? 

dust and dead grass, yup. and rocks. lots of rocks.

so the light turns green and we move forward, and this HUGE blast of wind almost tips the car over, i swear. i'm excited and i'm taking this picture on my phone with instagram and i'm tweeting it. my dad has both hands on the wheel and my mom is completely freaking out.

worrying runs in our family. she thinks we're gonna die.

i think we're gonna die, but i'm too excited to be upset about it.

dust. rocks. swirling. we're driving by these country houses and all of their trees are like, practically tipping over and all of the lights have turned on inside of them, because i swear, it was like god turned off the light switch on indiana and was like, it's night time now, kids, with some seventy mile an hour gusts to make you happy.

scary. as. shit.

then it starts raining. and as soon as it starts, we have to pull over because there are two cops screaming down the road in the opposite direction.

somebody's already in trouble. it's been five minutes into this thunderstorm and somebody's already in trouble.

my mom wants my dad to pull over. the wind is menacing. it's dark as all get out. it's pouring down rain. she makes him turn on the windshield wipers all the way. he does it just appease her.

my dad can drive through anything. weather doesn't scare him.

then my mom starts to worry about people. did jessica make it back from the store? did my grandparents make it back from larwill? is everyone alive? is everyone okay?

i'm in the back with my phone and i'm like, seriously, guys, it's a storm.

well, it was a storm. when we got back from the lake (which it was sunny there most of the time. it moved on quickly.) there were a lot of down trees. storm damage. a missing billboard.

our rugs, which we had hung to dry over our porch railing, were just peachy, thank you very much. wet, but very much still attached to our porch.

billboard, pffft! you weak thing, you. we hollenbergs have bathroom rugs of steel.

so that's my storm story. we almost but maybe kind of might've died. my cousin and my grandparents were safe. my house doesn't have trees, so no downed trees for us!

and indiana got some rain. that's right folks, we got some rain.

but we still can't have fireworks to celebrate our freedom. because that's what freedom is about.

setting off fireworks in your backyard. nothing says freedom better than that.


Thursday, June 28, 2012

the "i was attacked by a schizophrenic homeless man with a knife" story.

ANOTHER POST CRISIS!

so many blogging possibilities.

three days left in the challenge.

not a very exciting day.

i can obviously blog about the olympic swimming trials, because right now swimming is like, my whole life.

i mean, i coach the sport. and i sure as hell know more than the announcer dan hicks.

"it takes really great flexilibity to be able to side breathe!"

dan, i've been side breathing for years, and i can't touch my toes to save my life. nor can i bend my back in just about any position conducive to living.

while i'm watching the trials, my mom is talking about how she loves watching the breaststroke legs. you know, what i call "froggy kicks!" to the little kids. and she says, "goodness, emily, their knees don't come apart!"

and i go into a long detailed analysis about how all of your power comes from the snapping part of your kick, which involves the knees being together. i offer to show her on the floor.

so she lies down on the floor, and i grab her ankles like i do with my little kids, and i'm doing the whole "up/out/arooooound" mantra and her feet snap onto the bow of my shirt.

her toes unravel my bow. boom.

my mother's breaststroke kick may or may not have pulled down my tube top a little bit.

and i'm wearing a tube top because today, in fort wayne INDIANA, it was a hundred and six degrees.

the wrath of god has been blazing from the sky.

so after this all goes down and my mom is lying on the floor giggling and i'm thinking about how much actual breaststroke involves incredible long axis undulation, my mom says i should blog about this.

technically, now i have.

i tell her, "but mom, i was going to blog about the time that i was attacked by a schizophrenic homeless man who had a knife."

please tell me you're intrigued.

the EMILY WAS ATTACKED BY A SCHIZOPHRENIC HOMELESS MAN WITH A KNIFE story.

when i was in high school, i was in my church youth group. the summer i turned seventeen, it was mission trip summer.

every four years we have NYC. every MIDDLE four years we have a mission trip.

we spent a long time deciding where wanted to go. i was all for going out of the country, or at least to a state that i haven't been to, which is kind of difficult, because i've been to forty-one.

apparently, the last time my youth group went out of the country, things didn't turn out so well. there's a story about a bus and some mountains and it reminded me of the book "walk two moons" and pretty much the only CSI episode i've ever seen, and i wasn't too keen on that.

we settled with los angeles.

but emily, what goes down in los angeles?


homeless people. that's what's up in LA.

LA has a place called skid row, smack downtown. it's about five blocks.

that five blocks, at any given time, can have up to ten thousand homeless people.

you've read that correctly. TEN THOUSAND HOMELESS IN FIVE BLOCKS.

we were going to work soup kitchens, help out in shelters, clean up a camp, have a day off at santa monica beach, paint a salvation army, and on our last day, we ventured onto skid row at night.

general skid row rules.

1. if you're a girl, you stick with a man.
2. do not approach anyone that looks dangerous.
3. always have a car with a friend follow you.
4. do not accept anything from anyone.
5. always wear close toed shoes, the ground is covered in needles, urine, and feces.

i don't want this to be melodramatic. but walking through skid row, los angeles, at night, when the homeless come to life, was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

it was also one of the most terrible. i saw a woman smoking a crack pipe in a potra-potty. i saw homeless toddlers sleeping in shopping carts.

i stepped over a dead body.

time to lighten the mood. but when people say "there are starving children in africa!", i say, "there are plenty of starving people here too."

so. lightening the mood.

right. we have a red-eye flight, because that's cheap, and we're flying back in time. my very good friend sam that has a bromance with my brother, has never flown before, and he's terrified. we leave indy to fly straight to LAX at like, eleven at night. sam is so nervous he falls asleep. i drain the battery on my zune (ha. yes. i had a zune.) before we get there.

we get there at like... one in the morning. four in the morning fort wayne time.

we're picked up by gilbert romero, pastor of the church that we're staying at. we're going to east LA. shady LA. scary-ish LA. LA where you stick out if you're a white girl. but being the only white person at a 7/11 is another story for another post.

it's an hour drive to east LA, and we have to set up camp in the church. we have cots, and i pick the one next to my cousin/sister. we fall asleep six fort wayne time, three LA time.

wake up is in three hours. and we have a full day of fun christian mission work! YAY! god's work never sleeps!

first order of business: an outdoor soup kitchen smack in the middle of skid row.

i forget the name of it, maybe it was the jungle cafe? but there were beautiful murals of the jungle all over the walls. the back of it opened to a big courtyard where hundreds of homeless could congregate and eat. most of my group worked in the kitchen.

i was in the courtyard, behind a little hotdog stand. at my hotdog stand, i had a bottle of ketchup, some mustard, and a giant salt and pepper shaker.

i was alone in the courtyard at my little hotdog stand. my job was to pour condiments onto people's food.

the morning passed quickly enough, considering i hadn't slept. i was meeting new and wonderful people, and they were just so happy that i was putting condiments on their beans and salads. honestly, it just made my heart soar, knowing how happy i was making these people by dumping ketchup on their salad.

and then our schizophrenic friend showed up.

he definitely wasn't the first schizophrenic person i'd encountered that morning, but he was the most obvious. he was wandering around the courtyard with his food, twitching and shouting obscenities at thin air. it looked like someone was following him. he was small guy, only about five four, and really skinny and muscular. he smelled like urine (most of the people here did) and he had a graying afro.

he spotted me. and the condiments. he wanted some condiments.

i asked him if he wanted me to put the condiments on for him, or if he wanted to do it himself.

he told me he wanted to do it himself, and then he began to scream "BITCH BITCH BITCH BITCH" in a very high pitched manner, swatting at something.

i'm trying to keep it cool. there's nobody around except for other homeless, eating their salads and having a great time in the courtyard, getting their free meal. i'm a seventeen year old white girl in a spelling bee shirt and a baseball cap running on two hours of sleep.

he grabs the pepper. starts shaking it. he's shaking it hard, harder than i like. i'm focusing on the calm. i'm holding the ketchup, thinking maybe i can help him.

he starts shouting about how the pepper isn't coming out fast enough. he needs more pepper. i start to tell him that i can open the pepper more when suddenly he pulls a six inch knife out of his gym shorts.

a six inch knife.


now i'm starting to panic. this guy is definitely mentally usntable and he has a knife. there is nobody here to help me. i'm still holding the ketchup.

he takes the knife and attacks the pepper lid, you know, with the pokey holes. he's just attacking it, wrenching this knife through it, ripping it open. then he turns it upside down onto his salad and the entire bottle floods out onto it, making this huge pepper cloud.

he drops his salad and starts screaming "FUCKING RUINED MY SALAD! FUCK FUCK FUCK MY SALAD!"

and then he attacks me.

don't get too worried, dear reader. he didn't slash my face. or eat it, like miami guy. he ran at me with the knife, i may or may not have screamed, he ran into the hotdog stand, and before he could do anything other than brandish the knife in my face and shout obscenities, the owner of the soup kitchen grabbed him and threw him outside.

and thus, emily, our intrepid blogger, was attacked by a schizophrenic homeless man with a knife.

it's always cool when i'm like, oh hey did i tell you about that time i got attacked by a homeless guy with a knife and everybody is like, OH MY GOD NO TELL ME ABOUT IT and i'm like, oh hey it went down like this


and then everybody just kind of gets disappointed.

it was too fast, my life didn't flash before my eyes or anything. but there was a six inch knife in my face, and my only weapon was a bottle of ketchup.

i could teach ketchup defense lessons.

except... i never actually defended myself with said ketchup.

the rest of the week went without incident, unless you count the homeless kid that bit me at daycare when we were playing twister.

i also sneezed fifty-four times in a row while we were cleaning out a cabin in the mountains.

i bet you haven't sneezed that many times in a row. i thought my head was going to pop off.

so ends my thrilling tale. i'll leave you with a picture of my youth group after we painted the inside of a salvation army women's shelter.

i'm in the red shorts and black top. that's my brother next to me with the
big orange N. :)

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

i have feels, but by god, i DO something about it.

why do i always feel like i'm having an existential crisis when i'm about to blog?

unless i know what i'm blogging about.

like, YES I'M GOING TO BLOG ABOUT VAGINAS AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS

and then like, it just kind of flies out of my fingers and it's completely natural and everything is right with the world.

and then i'm not entirely sure what to blog about, and i run around and make lists and have anxieties and i just worry. how will i make a good post for you lovely readers if i have no idea what to blog about?

still trying to figure out why the student life office hired me to blog for them.

if i'm a woman of my word, i'm supposed to blog about odd thomas today.

i'd marry the CRAP out of that man. i really would.

see, but here's this other dilemma. i'm at work and emma is telling me how much she wants to read odd thomas because i'm tweeting obsessively about my odd thomas feelings.

because i get those. that's why i want to blog about odd thomas.

and she's like, okay, you can blog about odd thomas, but you can't ruin the book.


my odd thomas feelings come from the end of the novel. and i just need to commiserate with someone.

i tried with my dad. here's how this went down.

i walked into the kitchen yesterday. i was about two thirds of the way done with the book for who knows how many times, and i sit on the kitchen counter.

me: i'm having odd thomas feelings!
my father:
me: i just want him to be happy. why can't he just be happy?
my father:
me: and now i'm even more upset because they delayed the movie release! NOW I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2013!
my father:
me: and the movie is DONE! it's COMPLETED! gahhh i can't handle this!
my father:
me: i'm just going to go finish the book and cry.

pretty much.

right. it's awkward for me to type feelings. i want to type feels instead.

I HAVE ODD THOMAS FEELS, GUYS. I JUST DO.

i can't even look at this without
having feels.
right. odd thomas. i should probably explain who odd thomas is. basic book premise, right?

odd thomas is a twenty year old fry cook. he lives above a garage. he's very simple, and only wears jeans and white t-shirts. he has a great, quirky sense of humor, and calls just about anyone he meets "sir" or "ma'am". he has a bad childhood but doesn't really talk about it. he sees the hope and light in humanity. he only uses peach scented shampoo, has a very reliable body clock, does not own a car, and can make the fluffiest pancakes in pico mundo, the desert town where he lives. his soul mate is an ice cream store manager named stormy, and they're doing this unheard of thing called abstinence. they like to eat tacos together in the belfry of a church. he's spooked by guns.

odd thomas can also see dead people.

you know, sixth sense i see dead people bit.

odd thomas's lines on this: "the dead don't talk. i don't know why." "i see dead people, but by god, i do something about it."

this, as he says, results in an unusual amount of laundry.

this isn't like the ghost whisperer, i swear to god. but when he sees dead people and they try to communicate with him, he tries to help them move on to the other side. normally this means he catches the person that killed them. or he gives them nice moral pep talks about how awesome the other side is. that can work sometimes.

i don't mean he like, runs around like the BAU in criminal minds. odd has never set foot outside of pico mundo. he probably never will. but remember yesterday when i talked about him wrestling harlo landerson?

that's about as personal as he gets, duking it out in a pool, trying to catch a killer.

most of the time he just consults with the police chief, wyatt porter, who's like a father figure.

so odd is twenty. when i first read odd thomas, i was sixteen, and i could not get enough of it. luckily for me, there are three other books (forever odd, brother odd, odd hours) and three more are coming. but i reread odd thomas over and over and over because there was just something about odd that i could not shake.

every person that i've met that has read this book has fallen hopelessly in love with odd. he's a great hero. he's a tragic hero.

i think i just really like his outlook on humanity.

seeing the dead can't be an easy thing to deal with. sometimes it's fun. the ghost of elvis presley follows him around and practically lives with him. but then there are people like penny kallisto who come to him after being raped and strangled, and they want justice. and he can give it to them.

again, odd is twenty. i'm twenty-one at this moment, and when i reread odd thomas when i was twenty, i just kept thinking about how we were the same age. and thinking, even though odd thomas has never left his home, has never seen the world, has never done all of these things, he is so much older and wordlier than i'll ever be.

odd thomas has the soul of a ninety year old saint, i swear to god.

until stormy comes around. you can't expect an abstinent twenty year old to not have bad thoughts.

most of my odd thomas feels come from odd's childhood, and i don't want to reveal too much, because you're obviously going to go read the book after this post. there's a reason that odd's spooked by guns, and there's a reason he doesn't talk about it.

there's a reason he's lived on his own since he was sixteen and that he has surrogate parents.

there's also a reason that when he was sixteen he was dumped into malo suerte lake chained to two dead men, but we don't get that explanation.

we also never figure out why he ended up chained in a meat locker with a japanese contortionist, caught by evil men in porkpie hats.

i love odd most when he mentions weird things like this, odd things that have happened to him. we never get any explanation. he just kind of throws that in there and you're left thinking, jesus, odd, how on earth did you get into that situation?

and of course, his name is odd.

his parents claim that it was supposed to be "todd" or "dobb", but they've just always called him odd. and it's on his birth certificate. the best part is he doesn't mind it.

odd doesn't complain about much. except people being offended by alliteration, because he loves alliteration.

"a flipped fork flicked my forehead."

it's so hard to blog about my feels for odd thomas. odd thomas has been my favorite book for nearly five years. i love everything about it. i'm drawn to odd. i feel for him, i feel with him, and i'm just doing a terrible job of trying to describe this without ruining the entire thing for you.

in short, I JUST WANT ODD THOMAS TO BE HAPPY.


i don't think he ever will be. we'll see what the next three books bring. they give me hope that he won't die.

this is a big achievement.

last night i finished the book, and even though i've read it a good thirty times, i just cried and cried. odd thomas just makes me bawl my eyes out. he's so incredibly human and i just can't stand it.

i'm also having feels because they're making an odd thomas movie. seriously.

i'm terrified.

odd thomas is the perfect simple complex character. he is the most perfect human in the fact that he is human, if that makes ANY sense whatsoever, and they decided that they can just make this into a movie?

the only person that can play odd thomas in a movie is odd thomas, and the last time i checked, odd thomas is a fictional book character that i'm madly in love with.

so i get on IMDB and the project is underway, and odd thomas is being played by anton yelchin.

i've seen anton yelchin twice: star trek and an episode of criminal minds. i don't know about him. mostly because he just physically doesn't look at all the way that i pictured odd, even though we never get a description of him at all. odd thomas is a first person perspective, and not once does he describe himself, and not once does another character physically describe him.

but anton yelchin just felt wrong.

willem dafoe as chief porter i can see. stormy i've never heard of. the same with odd's mother. but whoever plays her, she has to be perfect. she's an extremely minor character but she shapes odd's life and moral compass more than any other person in the novel.

i have to remind myself that dean koontz (the author) wrote the screenplay, and he's happy with the movie. the movie is completed, and he's happy with it. he says that he has "found the perfect odd thomas" in anton yelchin.

say slowly and repeat until you believe it: dean koontz is happy with the movie. dean koontz is happy with the movie.

i want this entire movie to unravel and never be made. you just cannot turn my favorite book into a movie.

odd thomas is a book character. he is the best book character on the face of the planet. he needs to remain a book character.

ONLY ODD THOMAS IS ODD THOMAS, OKAY.

when this movie finally comes out, i will go see it. i will dread it. i will be an absolute wreck.

and if the movie is any good, i will cry myself to sleep. like i did last night. becaue i just love odd thomas that much.

and god, i just want him to be happy, if he can ever be happy. that's all i want for him.

i'm not really sure how to end this. i'm just having odd thomas feels. and i kind of sort not but tried to blog about it.

i will say that when i was sixteen and i had odd thomas in hardback (my version is paperback) i walked a mile with it on my head. secret talent?

and i'll leave you with a great odd thomas quote.

“More to the point, I know why soldiers, home from war, seldom tell their families about their exploits in more than general terms. We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we've witnessed of man's inhumanity to man, we simply can't go on. perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.” 

i also like this one.


“Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.” 


the cow explosion really was upsetting.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

everybody just wants my blood.

i want to blog about odd thomas.

i also want to blog about getting my blood drawn.

i can always blog about odd thomas tomorrow. he can wait. he has to wait because i love him.

so remember earlier when i blogged about going to see a doctor because of my irregular period? and i had to get blood tests?

yep, that was this morning.

so i have to fast for twelve hours.

if you know anything about me, it should be that i'm a swimmer, and because i'm a swimmer, i like food.

correction. i love food.

twelve hours of fasting isn't that fun. a normal person could come in and get their blood drawn between six thirty and eight, which are normal blood drawing hours.

sorry, i work from seven fifteen until nine thirty.

so they bent the rules and i could get my blood drawn at ten thirty. which gives me just enough time to shower and lounge around on tumblr.

so at work, i have a new swimmer. i walk right up to him and i say, "oh hey, i'm coach emily, and i haven't eaten in ten hours and i'm STARVING and i want a doughnut more than anything else in the world. which means that your practice is going to SUCK."

two turn fifties allll the way. sprint.

the worst part was when we gave all the kids suckers. i couldn't even drink water.

do you realize how thirsty you get coaching a bunch of seven year olds for an hour? and you're talking in this high annoying voice and saying, "I NEED YOUR EEEEEYES AND YOUR EEEARS ABOVE THE WATER PLEEEASE!"

goodness.

i didn't realize how thirsty i was until i got into the shower. my parents were out bike riding 56 miles to ohio and back, and i showered with the door open (to break down civilization, you know.) and it was the perfect time for me to win american idol.

at school, i don't care who hears me try to win american idol in the shower.

but my dad could be on american idol if he were remotely young enough. too many years of voice lessons. my dad has the clearest tenor ever. when he sings the national anthem at swim meets i get shivers.

it's not that i can't sing. i'm decent. but i feel inadequate around my father.

emily, our intrepid blogger, wins american idol with these songs.

1. skinny love- bon iver.
2. such great heights- iron and wine.
3. rivers and roads- the head and the heart. (i hit the high note on "change". yeah buddy.)
4. tree by the river- iron and wine.

jacob and i have an embarrassing video of him playing guitar and me singing tree by the river. and i'm wearing an awkward sorority sweatshirt and i keep licking my lips between verses.

anyway.

after winning american idol in the shower (yesterday i shaved to the classical radio station) and realizing how dry my mouth is, i put on something cute, decided to wear a necklace for the occasion, put a bow in my hair like usual, grabbed odd thomas and my appointment slip, and headed to the clinic.

i'm so happy it's a five minute walk. my hair took longer than i anticipated. if there's one thing i pride myself in, it's how i maintain my hair, considering.

so i walk there and i'm thinking about odd thomas frolicking around in a swimming pool with harlo landerson, which is where i left off, right at the beginning.

frolicking isn't the right word. harlo landerson has just raped and strangled penny kallisto, a twelve year old girl. odd thomas is trying to take him down and keep him down long enough to call the police.

but still. the idea of odd thomas in a swimming pool. mmmhmmm.

so i get to the clinic and the air conditioning isn't on. there's one lone woman in the waiting room. and it's sweltering. it's only seventy-two when i walk over there in my shorts and my short sleeved shirt, but i walked. so i'm warm.

i'm a sweaty person. it's gross. so i start sweating. when my mom and i do zumba together, we drip on the floor. yeup.

they call me back almost immediately, leaving odd and harlo duking it out in the pool. harlo will eventually escape, break into a house, try to use a small child named steve as a human shield, and eventually he and odd will end up throwing most of steve's worldy possessions at each other until the police arrive. odd will smash a panda lamp across harlo's head, but child rapists and murderers can't be taken down too easily, now can they. harlo landerson has a head of steel.

um. odd thomas is my favorite book. which is why i will be blogging about it tomorrow.

anyway.

so they call me back into the little room where last week i got my pulse and blood pressure checked. i sit in the pulse and blood pressure chair. and i realize that i've never had blood drawn before. i've donated, sure, when my iron is high enough (i'm pretty much anemic), but i've never actually gotten it drawn for testing to make sure i don't have a weird kidney disease. or ALL. because ALL can happen.

acute lymphoblastic leukemia. i'm paranoid about it. the likeliness that i have it is next to nothing.

but i'm paranoid about it.

so it's the super nice nurse that set up my appointment there to draw my blood. i tell her that i'm absolutely starving and i would murder someone for a doughnut. she assures me that i can eat as soon as i leave, and now she wants a doughnut and she'll probably go get one on her lunch break.

then she pulls out that huge needle and i suddenly turn into chuck bartowski. and i completely freak out.

you would think i'd be kind of okay with needles. my appendix exploded when i was eight and i had five different IVs. i've donated blood. i've gotten plenty of finger prickings.

then i remembered the time that i ran screaming around my doctor's office when i was seven and two nurses had to sit on me to give me my booster shot.

good times.

so i'm looking at this needle and i'm thinking, what happened to finger pricking?


and this nurse, she has vials ready for me. vials. because they're testing like, eight of my major organs or something, all because my periods don't come when they're supposed to.

she sees the look on my face. this conversation ensues.

me: i don't like needles.
nurse: just think about something else. like a cute boy.
me: my boyfriend. he's cute.
nurse: think about him, then!
me: he's visiting me on friday, i haven't seen him since the beginning of june.
nurse: aww that's sweet. why the long wait?
me: he lives in michigan- SEKURHGSEUHGSDJKFHGDS

that was her sticking the needle in and practically exploding my vein.

i continue to talk about jacob's wonderful existence in my life through clenched teeth. i guess that fasting makes you bleed quickly or something? because there is blood just splashing into these vials. like, pumping.

it's never that fast when i donate blood.

each time that she puts in a new vial, she twists and yanks on the needle. it feels like she's just driving it deeper and deeper into my vein.

once, a nurse stabbed a needle right through my brother's vein. this is going through my head as she talks about how she goes to ivy tech so she can figure out if she wants to do something other than nursing. each time that needle twists and moves, i grind my teeth together. and i try to think about my adorable boyfriend.

when i fill all five vials for all five blood tests, she yanks that needle out, slaps some gauze on it, and tapes it, and i'm on my way. she tells me to set up my pelvic ultrasound appointment.

it was really awkward when the nurse asked me if it was trans-vaginal on the phone.

um, yes, they're going to stick a cold wand up my vagina next week. i should mentally prepare myself for this.

so my parents got blood work done the same morning. they come home from biking from ohio and i'm like, MOM I CAN'T MOVE MY ARM IT HURTS SOOOO MUCH

and she's like, huh, mine's absolutely fine.

seriously?

the entire crook of my elbow is bruised. i have finally gotten to the point where i can bend my arm enough to adjust my glasses.

i don't want to sound like a complainer or anything. but i have a decently low pain tolerance. and i just really like to be able to use my right arm, since i am right handed. i couldn't pour my milk properly at lunch. and i had to read odd thomas in the most awkward positions to ensure that my arm was nice and comfortable.

it better be good by tomorrow. because my halloween swim suit came in the mail, and i am fully planning on getting in the water with my kids to test it out.

mmmm. new suit feeling.

i'll probably blog about my ultrasound and the test results. and don't worry, i'll let you know if i have acute lympoblastic leukemia.

or some weird ovarian cyst.

i'll leave you with a picture of how cute my boyfriend is.

general adorable picture on lake michigan.

Monday, June 25, 2012

this is for children.

okay. i could seriously blog about grocery shopping.

AGAIN.

twice in a row.

i could. i swear i could. because my mom and i went grocery shopping again. and some hardcore stuff went down.

like, customer service, my mom yelling at some poor kroger worker, a really obese toddler, and a coupon that didn't register.

IT WAS THAT BAD.

but i blogged about grocery shopping yesterday. so i'll make a list of what i did today so i can figure out what i want to blog about, even though i have a pretty good idea.

1. i got up and went to work.
2. i read odd thomas. MY FEELS. MY FEELS.
3. i eated a big cheese bagel.
4. i watched the hunchback of notre dame.
5. i went swinging with alison.
6. i watched the lion king.
7. i went hardcore grocery shopping. i will probably post about this eventually.
8. i went to work.

so. um. disney movies.

DISNEY MOVIES.

DISNEY MOVIES.


so i kind of love them. like, a lot. i mean, come on. if you've been with me on this blog for a while, you understand my complete and utter obsession with the lion king.

i have other disney movie obsessions. but the lion king kind of trumps everything i've ever been obsessed with, sooo.

and disney movies are NOT just for girls. no. they are not. when jacob and i saw black swan and i cried the entire drive home because i was so mentally unstable, it was he that suggested that we watch a disney movie.

my dad's favorite disney movie is the little mermaid. you can judge him. i don't. he also cries every time he watches up.

don't judge him for that. you know you do too. if you have a heart, you will cry when ellie dies.

because ellie is awesome. and she and carl are absolutely adorable. and i want a love as strong and as pure as theirs.

it's like america. but south.


what movies are quoted more than disney movies? honestly. try to think of one.

maybe... animal house. when appropriate. and animal house is a completely inappropriate movie.

i was playing disney trivial pursuit when i realized how many disney movies i hadn't seen. it also reinforced the idea that of the disney movies i have seen, i've seen them a lot.

today at practice emma quoted finding nemo, and you know what i realized?

these kids that i was coaching. finding nemo came out before they were born.


how's that to make you feel old?

but that's not what this is about. this is about the fact that disney movies aren't movies for kids.

they just aren't.

at least not for kids to understand.

my biggest prime example is the lion king. and i know everything about the lion king. i am the authority on the lion king.

wow. i love how vain that was.

okay. so we're going with the lion king. i'm going to go all lion king obsessed english major and give you some themes.

1. MURDER. specifically in the form of regicide/fratricide.
2. exile.
3. blame and shame and guilt in a big happy burrito.
4. did i mention that SCAR MURDERS HIS BROTHER AND DESTROYS HIS ENTIRE KINGDOM.

for those of you that don't think that scar is the worst disney villain, i'm sorry. but scar is, as far as i know, the only disney villain that has actually succeeded in his murderous plans, single-handedly demolished a child's childhood and future, and then destroyed his entire kingdom.

this is not a children's movie. children do not understand exactly what simba is feeling. he spends most of his life believing that he's responsible for his dad's death. and you know what, mufasa is the light of simba's life. mufasa is everything to him, and he lives in exile, believing that he ended the only good thing in his life.

and scar is over in the pridelands destroying everything the communist way. oh please. goose-stepping hyenas and rising underneath a communist crescent? you can tell this is 1994.

CRESCENT MOON! CRESCENT MOON!
oh disney, you thought we wouldn't notice.

and mufasa dying was probably like, the most traumatic part of your disney childhood, wasn't it?

i am twenty-one years old and i still scream MUFASAAAAAA every time scar murders him. murders him.

this is not children material. roger ebert agrees with me. the lion king is not a kids' movie. we can sing hakuna matata and love the characters, but this is hamlet with cats. murdering, scheming, cats that kill their brothers for power and demolish kingdoms and exile nephews who will forever live with guilt and shame.

i didn't understand any of that when i was a kid.

so today i was watching the hunchback of notre dame. i was kind of on a disney singer kick, because i believe that gaston and clopin are the two most underrated disney singers ever.

seriously, listen to gaston go "i'm especially good at expectorating" and you'll understand. the man can sing.

and clopin. listen to that high note.

"the beeeellls oooooof nooootreee DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME"

that sounds about right to me.

after i watched hunchback, i read roger ebert's review. he said he was worried, and he has the right to be. i've never read the book, but quasimodo is deaf, mute, has red eyes, is completely unruly, and for all i know, could possibly eat people. he's definitely not the nice tender quasi that disney gives us.

in the book, frollo's a pretty good guy. phoebus is the antagonist.

disney gives us a good phoebus and a bad frollo.

i think what makes this movie not a kids' movie, again, is the theme. it's one of the few disney movies that's decently driven by religion, and that's not a bad thing. it's part of the time period. they're merely being accurate to history.

but does anybody notice at the beginning that frollo is about to throw a baby into a well?

half of frollo's awesome appeal is tony jay, god rest his soul. that man has the voice of a villain. and what a villain he is.

there's nothing scary about quasimodo, and roger ebert agrees. we get used to his face and his misshapen-ness, and he has a certain charm. we love him. he's great. he's such a nice guy.

with frollo raising him, how did that happen?

"shall we review your alphabet today?"

"d- damnation. e- ETERNAL damnation."

the worst part of the movie, for me at least, is the festival of fools. i love the song topsy turvy (because clopin can sing, man. he can SING.) and i love esmerelda dancing. she's a lovely dancer. she's a beautiful character to watch. she's spirited.

she's a badass woman.

but i cannot for the life of me watch the people of paris tie down quasimodo and throw food at him. i just can't. they choke him. they spin him. they break a watermelon on his back.

this is true human cruelty. mob mentality. and it just makes me feel shameful, inadequate, human, powerless. i cry when i watch this scene.

i just can't handle it. i don't know if children can either. maybe they can't.

but i certainly can't.

red. hooded. creepy.
and oh man, the song "hell fire". it's a gorgeous song. tony jay, preach it, brother. but oh my goodness, frollo running around with faceless red hooded figures chanting in latin, and him practically screaming about burning esmerelda alive and the spell that she's cast on him?

goodness gracious, disney. that song is terrifying.

i will give hunchback credit for having a fantastic message. it has a wonderful message about hope and beauty being within and friendship. it's a great movie.

but it used to scare me as a child. seriously. it did. frollo is menacing. and so are his personal demons. and he was seriously going to drop a baby into a well. and let's not forget that he sets a house on fire. with a man, woman, child, and baby inside.

yesterday i watched beauty and the beast on VHS. that was exciting. it also has a beautiful and fantastic message, but there are two wolf attacks. a gigantic ax that glints in the moonlight.

and you know, a gigantic mob marching through the woods yelling "KILL THE BEAST! KILL THE BEAST!" with knives and swords and guns and axes and pitchforks and god knows what else. mob mentality strikes again.

creepy gargoyles. stabbing. scary rooms with portraits that have scary eyes. and you know, gaston falls into an abyss. because that's okay.

but this is the part where i praise disney. YAY DISNEY!

disney has this uncanny ability to make "everybody" movies. the lion king and the hunchback of notre dome are not children's movies. but they are movies that can be enjoyed by children.

but the best part is they can be enjoyed by adults too. they have just enough oomf, humor, what have you, to get you through it and to have you enjoy it.

like i said, my dad's favorite disney movie is the little mermaid. he looooves that movie.

i personally love the adult humor. especially in aladdin and beauty and the beast.

jafar to jasmine: speechless, i see. a fine quality in a wife.

oh disney, you didn't.

oh yes we did.

um. i love disney a lot. but seriously, there are some parts that just aren't for children.

like that. i was never okay with that as a child.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

higher standards, lower prices, heavier carts, more of the elderly.

this has nothing to do with this post.

but when do my posts actually start out with what i'm going to blog about?

um. right.

so i saw the avengers for the fifth time today. THE FIFTH TIME. it is completely safe for you to start harshly judging me. i mean, i'm sure you do anyway since i blog about my life, and this post is definitely about to be judge worthy.

get ready to judge.

but it was really awesome seeing it with my brother and my parents. aaron knows everything about everything about theavengers from comic books.

and my mom now officially loves mark ruffalo. not as much as me. but she can definitely see why i'm attracted to him and how suddenly i want to watch ALL of his movies.

but anyway. this isn't about the avengers, again.

this is about grocery shopping.

i've definitely mentioned this in posts before, but i've never devoted an entire post to it. but can i call this an entire post with a completely useless avengers intro?

whatever. this is my blog. i do what i want. and i want to blog about grocery shopping with a pointless avengers intro to prove to you just how awkward i am.

so today my dad got me up at nine. why, i don't know, since sunday is my day off and i enjoy sleeping. i was under the impression that we were going to church.

this impression instantly vanished when my brother was still in the shower and church had started five minutes ago. i stripped out of my skirt and put on shorts and began to lounge around on tumblr.

because that's how my life goes. i lounge in my seventies armchair and get on tumblr. and of course, i was already thinking about what to blog about. nothing was coming to mind. because it was ten thirty in the morning, i was up and my hurrs wuz did, and i had absolutely nothing to do except just sit around on tumblr and look at pictures of mark ruffalo and see if anything happened in the braille tag. not much goes on in that tag.

so then my mom yells up the stairs something along the lines of "WHO WANTS TO GO GROCREY SHOPPING WITH MEEE"

and i'm like, yeah sure okay.


i don't normally go grocery shopping with my mom. there are a few circumstances in which i do.

1. i'm bored out of my fuggin' mind.
2. i haven't seen my mother in a while and i just want to talk to her.
3. i think i can persuade her to buy me something she never buys me.

like teddy grahams.

most of these things applied to me this morning. wasn't entirely sure about number three, but i was bored, and i hadn't seen my mom in a week.

so we get into her little stick shift (that my dad calls rojito. little red.) and we get on the highway to head to meijer because we're buying produce and meijer is obviously where you get the best produce at.

my parents fully embracing my vegetarianism changed our grocery bill. and our diet.

now. my mother has mastered the art of grocery shopping. if grocery shopping were a sport, she'd be an olympian. when i was a child (i probably still am.) my mother would sit at the kitchen table and cut out coupons.

she has some form of maroon coupon wallet. i associate it with the smell of grocery stores, the squeak of cart wheels, and bright fluorescent lights.

i think i just managed to make grocery shopping sound decently aesthetically pleasing.

but anyway, back in the nineties, my mom kept up with "grocery store wars". she ad matched like there was no tomorrow. if it wasn't on sale, she wouldn't get it. if she got something and it didn't register as being on sale, she'd talk to the clerk about it. she pays attention to the check out screen. if she was mistaken and the item really wasn't on sale, she'd put on her shopper face and say very clearly, "well if it's not sale i don't want it, please take it off my charge."

and just like that, a poor cup of yogurt would go back onto the shelf.

my mom doesn't mess around with grocery shopping.

my mother also can walk about a million miles an hour. she's also very small (five three) and can slide through small spaces. my senior year of high school, after a swim meet, my dad and my mother and i went grocery shopping. she left my dad in charge of the cart and then she was gone, zipping through meijer, sliding between people and generally defying the rules of physics.

my father and i coined the term "focusivity" that day.

focusivity: having an air of defined purpose that allows for no distractions, nonsense, and general physical rules set down by gravity and modern science.

when i grocery shop with my mother, i spend a lot of time holding coupons. stores don't ad match anymore, so she'll shop at several grocery stores sometimes to get the prices that she wants.

today, she had me push the cart.

why, i'm not sure. i'm clumsy with the cart.

1. i always manage to get one with a jank wheel.
2. pushing carts for too long hurts my back.
3. they make my calves seize up.
4. i can't corner worth a damn. (titanic reference!)
5. shopping carts, for some odd reason, make my heels hurt. as if they understand the heel breaking incident of 2008 and delight in reminding me of it.

so i wasn't that excited about pushing the cart. and while i parked by the produce and my mom started combing over some blueberries as if they were the most interesting things she had ever seen, i wondered about how she had gotten so good at grocery shopping.

how does one shop alone and not be awkward?

how does one walk with purpose and not seem angry and harried? i always seem that way.

HOW DOES ONE KEEP TRACK OF COUPONS AND AD MATCHING?

basically, when would i be good at grocery shopping like my mother?!

probably never. life is sad like that sometimes.


while we're shopping, it's crowded with people just getting out of church. i'm trying to maneuver the cart, and my mother is streaking off between people, going down aisles i can't see, and i'm just trying to be polite with this big heavy cart loaded with fruit and vegetables. people are squeezing by me and i totally hit a traffic jam of children. there's room for one cart, and these four kids move right into the gap and just stand there and i'm leaning on this cart thinking, my mother is about to abandon me in the bread aisle. please move so i don't lose her forever.


my mother is short enough that i've lost her in department store racks. this has always been a concern for me.

the dad sees that his clueless kids are giving me adult separation anxiety. he makes them move. i find my mother perusing the cereal.

and then the unthinkable happens.

i got her to buy me golden grahams!


in exchange for cheerios. you win some, you lose some. but i never got golden grahams as a kid, ever. when they have them at school, i tweet about it. i get that excited.

i don't think there have been golden grahams at my house in a good ten years.

there are four more incidents in which i get stuck in impossible cart manuevering stunts and i have to wait on some elderly people. i see someone that i think i might've gone to high school with. my mother forges ahead, warrior shopper, ready to conquer the world of meijer. i run behind her, trying to turn the heavy cart, wondering if someday this will be me and my daughter.

no. my daughter will probaby be the one forging ahead and yelling, "KEEP UP, MOM, GOSH, YOU'RE SO BAD AT GROCERY SHOPPING."

when we get in line, my mother is piling stuff up onto the conveyor belt. the women has a system. a system of putting things on the belt. we find out that our can of lemon supreme frosting has a broken lid, and i'm sent away to replace it with a new one. my task: get this done before it's time for her to finish checking out.

i don't run. i walk with vigor. i'm good at walking with vigor. so i'm while i'm walking with vigor and dodging people and clutching this sad can of frosting, waiting to put it back for some unknown person who will be upset that it's jank, i pretend that i'm my mother.

i am on a mission. a mission to get a good can of frosting. and i will not be awkward doing it.

i trip into an old lady.

mission failed.

check out goes smoothly. my mother does not have to harrass the cashier about prices and coupons. we get about three hundred dollars worth of groceries for ninety-six dollars. we brought our own bags, and when those were filled, we use paper.

if my entire family would just become vegetarian like me, i swear we could save the planet.

but the best part of our shopping trip is when we're about to leave. the guy behind me that's piling his stuff on the conveyor belt is a sad, older looking gentleman. he reads the nametag of our cashier and as i'm pulling away this is what goes down.

old meijer shopper: hi caroline, how are you?
caroline: oh i'm just fine, how are you?
old meijer shopper: you know, tall, old, fat, the usual.

i feel like my life is going to come to this at one point.

i don't understand why i can't grocery shop well. when i go myself, i'm nervous. i feel judged. people stare at me, or at least that's how it seems. i can never find the food that i want to find in a timely manner, and i have to pluck up the courage to ask someone.

seriously. i'm incredibly extroverted. i walk up to strangers all the time and start talking about serial killers. but no, i can't ask someone where to find vitamin water without having a serious debate in spanglish in my head.

maybe my mother can give me classes on how to grocery shop.

if this is going to happen, it better happen soon. because i'm moving out in two years.

wow. that was melodramatic.

i'll just leave you with this.

MEIJER. HIGHER STANDARDS, LOWER PRICES.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

"she marinated us!"

it's time for the leigh-ann palmer post!

i was just sitting on tumblr and scrolling through my dashboard and thinking about why i didn't blog about leigh-ann palmer last year.

honestly. it's a thing that happened. that happens every year. every june.

last year, instead of leigh-ann palmer, i blogged about... blogging. and my parents asking silly questions about blogging.

"that wasn't rhetorical."

right. well this year, my parents aren't leaving for utah. in fact, they just came back from biking all around the east coast, and my brother is home, so now, for the first time all summer, my entire family is under one roof.

but anyway.

leigh-ann palmer.

here's the run down. and here's where you say, oh god, another big swim meet that emily hates? and she's going to blog about it? damn. i've read it all. good night.


but please, dear reader, this is different from pete johnston. so keep calm and keep reading my blog.

leigh-ann palmer was a three year old girl that drowned at avalon's pool in 1994. she would be my age. the second year that i coached, the meet was a really big deal because she would've graduated from high school. we released balloons.

because of how small she was at the time of her drowning, this meet is for ten and unders. instead doing eight and unders and nine tens as one age group, the kids swim with their true age levels.

six and under, seven, eight, nine, and ten.

leigh-ann palmer is never a fun meet for coaches. in fact, it's infinitely worse than pete johnston. it's longer. hotter. and with small children.

in 2010, the year that i graduated, the meet started at eight thirty and it did not end until three thirty in the afternoon. it was also ninety-eight degrees.

i almost walked out. so did a lot of people. i actually fell asleep in the locker room.

but this year was different. probably because the twins and i get along so well and we just love working with our kids.

and we carpooled. like adults. or maybe like children.

wake up time: five fourteen am. i made old fashioned oatmeal downstairs without my glasses on, which is probably why it exploded all over the microwave. i stuck the big gooey mess in the fridge and proceeded to shower.

shoulda shaved. didn't. didn't care.

when i got back downstairs in my coaching shirt, i had to clean out the microwave. and i had to pack all my food, my camp chair, and my bag with my big clipboard that says COACH EMILY and extra pens and high lighters and stuff.

the twins arrived at six. we put our camp chairs, our tarp, and our coolers in the trunk.

our tent didn't fit in my trunk. oops.

so hannah squished in my back seat and became BFFs with our tent. she tweeted about it. it was a day of tweeting.

number one tweet was a quote from nine year old haley: "she's not SERENADING us, she's MARINATING us!" (hashtag #thingskidssayatswimmeets.)

i live behind starbucks. (and a chocolate factory!) so we pull in through the drive thru. and we're like, THREE LARGE JAVA CHIPS, PLEEEEASE.

we get to the pick up window. i hand them a five from each of the twins and my debit card. the lady looks in my car and stares.

starbucks lady: where ya'll going this early in your matching shirts?
emma: SWIIIIM MEEET
hannah: only swimmers get up this early for competition.
me: we're the coaches.
starbucks lady: god love ya. i can't work with kids.
me: we're not sure why we do.

hannah's when we had our starbucks: we really love our kids. we do this for our kids.

i didn't love kids when i drove all the way out to the fuggin' airport for this meet. this meet is in the middle of nowhere.

we got lost in the neighborhood. just like every year. and some angry lady from poco was tailgating me while i was trying to dodge parked cars. she didn't smile when i waved at her.

but we were the first coaches there, and we set up the tent and the tarp by ourselves with only two casualties!

mandatory starbucks picture.
seven am.
1. my java chip spilled. but only the whipped cream spilled out, thank god. i need that java chip.
2. i also got a blood blister on my pinky trying to raise the tent. pinch pinch OWWW.

we had a swimmer there when that happened. i jumped up and down and screamed "EXPLETIVE! EXPLETIVE! EXPLETIVE!"

did i say that we only had two casualties? those were MY casualties.

but i think hannah might've stubbed her toe at one point.

we had a fast warm up where emma and i accosted ryan, a recent graduate of my high school that both of us swam with. i had the pleasure of watching ryan swim at state, and i have a shirt with his name puffy painted on the back. if it was possible, ryan had grown to six foot seven since the last time i had seen him.

he was wearing an eight year old girl's robe and had his toenails painted.

summer swim coaches have no shame.

there was a heat sheet fiasco and i actually got a decent look at leigh-ann palmer's mother. it broke my heart when she said that she would've been twenty-one next week.

and then the meet was off.

we had nineteen children all under the age of ten. sixteen of them were girls. i wasn't going to complain. boys under the age of ten are almost impossible to control. i know this from experience.

before the meet started, the twins and i were showing the girls our pictures from our cupcake baking extravaganza yesterday. and we were listening to hakuna matata on my phone.

because of course, i have the entire broadway sountrack on my phone.


and then once the meet starts, it's coach emily time!

i'm standing at the far end with the girl's eight and under medley relay, and i realize that i'm seeing like, five people from my church. and they're all smiling at me because i'm jumping up and down and i'm screaming GO GIRLS! GO! TWO HAND TOUCHES! GO GIRL GO GO GO! but seriously, church people. awkward.

my voice is gone, by the way. seven hours of cheering will do that to you. and dancing. i made up a dance for all four strokes. with singing. even the seven year olds were embarrassed by me.

the sun rose too fast. i took a break to put on sunscreen and chow down on blueberries with emma, after violently ejecting two girls out of my chair.

coach emily does not enjoy wet little girl butt prints in her camping chair. neither does coach emily's daddy, whom the chair belongs to.

by the time that the meet is fully underway, hannah and emma are realizing that we are absolutely covered in girls.

so what do we do?

we start singing annie. you know, miss hannigan. right? please tell me you know annie.

"little girls, little girls, night and day i eat sleep and breathe them."

"some women are drippin' with diamonds. some women are drippin' with pearls. lucky me, lucky me, look at what i'm drippin' with! littttttle girrrrls!"

look it up. kathy bates is incredible.

when the girls weren't around, we sang the part that went "if i wring little necks surely i would get an acquittal."

we can't sing that around our children.

because these kids are small and it's their first big meet for a lot of them, as soon as you have down time and you go and sit in your chair underneath the tent, they converge.

"coach emily! what's my next event?" "coach emily, what event are they on?" "am i swimming freestyle?" "coach emily, did you see my backstroke? was it good?"

goodness, gracious, children. i am trying to eat food.

while i was chowing down on a bag of pretzels, a bunch of the girls started to scream.

yep. you would scream too.
we had found a cicada in the larval stage. he was valiantly trying to climb into my cooler.

the girls wanted to kill him. so i guilted them by saying, "what if bugs were really big, and they said, 'euww it's a human, let's step on it?'"

they got reeal quiet. the power of being a pacifist vegetarian.

so mr. stone and i put the poor little guy on a used pizza plate and transferred him to a tree where he could be happy, shed his shell for a little kid to pluck, turn into a cicada, and hum away the end of summer.

am i the only one that picked cicada shells of trees and collected them? someone? anyone?

speaking of pizza, coaches get a "meal" ticket. good for one hotdog, a side and a drink, or a piece of pizza and a drink.

obviously, i don't do hotdogs.

pizza! and emma being cute.
so emma and i go and hunt for the pizza. we get there six minutes before it's due to arrive. it's eleven in the morning and we've been here for over five hours. we're ready for our damn pizza. so we wait them out. and we get our pizza.

we eat it in the snack area like good coaches. we throw away our plates.

swear to god, that pizza made me hungrier.

so i went back and ate MORE pretzels. and string cheese. because swim meets are made up of pretzels and string cheese.

they were making sno cones at concessions. they were a dollar, no tax.

i used my ONE remaining dollar to get a lime sno cone, and it was absolutely disgusting. i gotta get myself to a bank.

but i did feel pretty awesome with my bright green sno cone, cheering on my kids. and the ice cooled me off, no matter how nasty it was.

we only had one girl cry when she missed an event. so i gave her a big hug and i told her that everybody missed an event at least once, this was her first meet, and everything that she had done had been awesome, and i was super proud of her.

i was told by a parent that hannah and emma and i were great female role models and that we had a passion for swimming, and she was so happy that we were her daughter's coaches.

i was highly flattered. and she's right.

swimming is a passion. it's too crazy to be anything else.

we had a great time cheering on our kids, giving high fives, and singing the single ladies song in front of the bathroom. ryan wouldn't join us. especially when we started on the dance.

at the very end of the meet there was a coaches relay. there weren't enough of us, so we sat down and watched as the orchard ridge female coaches absolutely dominated.

i don't know how old julie is. probably older than my mother. but that woman has a hell of a breaststroke.

the meet was over by one fifteen. LEIGH-ANN PALMER SUCCESS.

on the half hour drive back, we waved excitedly at truckers. two of them waved back. we danced in my car. and of course, when we got to my house, we had to look at the pie that we had made yesterday.

it was supposed to have set in two hours. we had kept that thing in my fridge for a day.

we cut into it in my kitchen. it started to bleed cream. we poked at it and giggled.

our caffeine had worn out. pies bleeding cream was undoubtedly hilarious.

i gave the pie to the twins and we gave us each other a big "we survived leigh-ann palmer" hug.

it was a good day.


Friday, June 22, 2012

CUPCAKE POST! CUPCAKE POST! and it's vegan.


i want to start this off by saying "there's a GIRL in ze castle!"

because i'm watching beauty and the beast on VHS. and i've just kind of always wanted to start a blog like that.

there's a GIRL in ze castle!

but this post is about baking sort of not almost but not quite vegan cupcakes.

the recipe is vegan. but we didn't have non-dairy milk. so they weren't entirely vegan.

so the twins arrive at one, after i've tried to desperately clean the kitchen while snarfing an entire box of kraft mac n cheese at the same time. and we bring my computer downstairs and get on pinterest to find the recipe for floating chocolate vegan cupcakes. and then hannah tells me that indiana has a state pie.

that's right kids, indiana has a state pie. and it's a sugar cream pie.

we gotta make it.

yummmm.

so we go to kroger to find nutmeg and half and half. we used to have half and half, but my mom just made homemade ice cream last weekend. my dad, the almighty chemistry teacher, has a lab about "colloidal suspensions" which means making ice cream in a bag in big bad chemistry terms.

my mom twenty-fied that recipe. and instead of shaking a bag, she churned it. we're that nerdy in my house.

but we were out of half and half.

we go to the new kroger. hannah and emma have never been there before, and i'm just excited that i'm not awkwardly grocery shopping by myself. hannah is a price matching queen.

"hey, em, what's the unit price on this nutmeg?"

like a boss.

after much giggling and falling over each other, we make it back to my house, and we decide that we better start baking the pie because it has to bake a lot longer than the cupcakes.

so we dig in. on goes the lion king broadway soundtrack.

hannah and emma aren't shy about much. after i showed them where stuff was, they were wholly in command of the kitchen. they managed to find the vinegar when i couldn't.

me: i know we have vinegar somewhere!
emma: you have to. your mom bakes and hoards cake mixes.
hannah: and your dad is a chemist.
me: yeup. must have vinegar.

for the record, hannah and emma don't use mixes. mixes are shameful. these vegan cupcakes didn't involve any type of mix at all.

mixes are my thing. i can't cook to save my life. and i can bake with a mix. if i work really hard.

i'm curdling milk. hannah is mixing brown sugar and apple sauce. and emma is mixing up cocoa powder and flour. and i'm taking pictures and saying, "hang on, i need to take these for my blog."

it really sounds that pathetic in real life too.

while this is going on, we're also making a pie. i'm trying to open the pie crust, which is a big fail. we stick it on a baking sheet, and all of a sudden emma has appeared with the all of the ingredients in a bowl like she was just born with them in her hand, and then hannah is pouring it into the crust. and then we're just supposed to slice up some butter and drop it on the top.

we have a white liquid pie with butter floating on top of it. weird. real weird. and hannah puts on our ove gloves and the pie is underway.

hannah. whisking. or stirring.
or something.
then emma and hannah are combining everything for the vegan cupcakes and they hand me a spatula. stir stir stir! whisk whisk whisk!

sing CAAAAN YOU FEEEEL THE LOOOOOVE TONIIIIIIGHT.

i'm not going to lie. this vegan cupcake batter looks awful. it's like... this super awkward brown color that may or may not be the color of poop. and it's gloopy.


really really gloopy.

uh, yeup. doesn't that look appetizing?
i'm nervous about this. but i stick in a finger and it's absolutely DELICIOUS.

seriously guys, vegan cupcakes. that's where it's at.

we decide to make mini cupcakes, because those are cute, and i have a mini cupcake pan and some mini cupcake liners. hannah is spraying them with cooking spray over the sink, and she's afraid that the cooking spray is going to blow them away.

how sweet. cupcake liners blowing away in a mist of oil.

HANNAH AND EMMA HAVE CUPCAKE SCOOPERS! LIKE ME!

by now, emma has taken the pie out of the oven and she's lining it with aluminum foil so that the tips don't burn. i didn't even know that you could do that with a pie.

and now we're listening to the inception soundtrack and sticking cupcakes in the oven.

we're listening to the inception soundtrack.


do you understand the epicness of this? our cupcakes are now the most epic things to have ever been concocted in my kitchen. because of inception. BECAUSE OF HANS ZIMMER.

eventually we start to get hungry. so what do we do?

emma was REAL stoked about that
homemade ice cream.
we grab the homemade ice cream from the freezer. so now we're sitting in my kitchen, eating homemade ice cream, listening to inception, and baking vegan cupcakes.

about halfway through our baking extravaganza, my brother came home for the weekend!

YAAAAY!

he took a decent look around the kitchen, and then he went upstairs and shut his door.

just as well. we had started a sock hop in the kitchen. inception was over and we had started it on disney songs.

"let's get together, yeah yeah yeah!"

perfect sock hop music.

next was the frosting. we weren't having any of that canned stuff. emma was boiling flour and milk into... paste. yep, paste. it was really nasty looking. then she whipped some stuff and some things for a long time in my mixer and then suddenly we had the airiest, most whipped, and most delicious frosting i had ever eaten.

our 100 calorie vegan cupcakes were no longer 100 calories.

life is too short to watch what you eat.

so our mini cupcakes were adorable. they were fluffy and moist and delicious.

but our second batch of cupcakes were... wet. flat. weird.

we had turned off the oven without knowing it.


so of course, because there's no eggs, this cupcake batter is fine. so we lick the cupcakes out of their wrappers.

CUPCAKE GOOP YUM!
om nom nom. cupcake goop all over your face, dancing to disney music, whipping frosting.

we've been baking for almost three hours at this point.

we have a crap load of frosting and only two batches of cupcakes.

oops.

while emma is still perfecting the frosting, hannah and i start in on a mix.

shameful. i know.

i channeled my bruce banner and i whisked the cake batter by myself. no mixer for me! RAWR! HULK! BAKE!

then we were watching sandra lee videos while the pie cooled in the garage fridge and the rest of the cupcakes baked. sandra lee, disney music, way too much laughing and giggling, zumba moves in the kitchen, and much dish washing.

sad cupcakes. :(
our last batch of vegan cupcakes kind of caved in on themselves. they were super bright and puffy, and as soon as we took them out of the oven, they suddenly just... sagged! it was the saddest thing!

we filled those suckers with frosting.


yum yum yum FROSTING.

fatty frosting. even yummier.

the cupcakes from the mix were yummy too. and nice and puffy. and the twins had this really awesome frosting knife, so hannah did a fantastic job of frosting them while emma and i sat at the table and talked about the gorgeous nature of mark ruffalo.

more yum, my friends.

the twins came over at one. they left at six thirty.

KEEP ON BAKING TILL THE WORLD ENDS.

did i just make a britney spears reference?

good lord. i've eaten too much vegan cupcake batter.

so here are some pictures. and a video that we took.





we're so cute! :)

emma. frosting paste.
cream pie.
the finished product!

ghetto blogger video much?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

i may or may not be burdened with glorious purpose.

it's one of those days where i just have no idea what to blog about.

when i think about blogging, i just want to write about vaginas, losing faith in humanity, and mental health awareness.

i've done two out of three.

i just really enjoy talking about vaginas.

and you don't want to hear my rant about me losing faith in humanity. really.

i should've been born in the twenties.

so what on earth should i blog about?

here's a list of things i did today. to start with.

1. i went to work and was unreasonably tired.
2. i showered before ten o'clock. like a boss.
3. i went out to eat with my grandmother and my cousin. no vegetarian options.

do you know how hard it is to ask for something to be made without meat broth?

4. i saw the avengers for the fourth time. i think i'm finally avengered out.
5. i stuffed my face with pringles, grabbed an umbrella, and headed to my second least favorite meet of the season: pine valley.
6. i stood around while it thundered. and i watched my kids swim with growing unease. lightning and water are too good of friends for my liking.
7. i celebrated when the meet was cancelled.
8. i walked around yelling "I AM LOKI. AND I AM BURDENED WITH GLORIOUS PURPOSE."

can i be burdened with the glorious purpose to blog?

that's what this feels like.

i gotta blog.

i have no idea what to blog about.

i'm sitting here listening to ghetto rap with a dr. pepper and an empty can of pringles. alone in my house. wanting to marry mark ruffalo.

could my life be any more pathetic?

I AM EMILY, AND I AM BURDENED WITH GLORIOUS PURPOSE. TO BLOG AND WIN SOCIAL MEDIA.

yesterday i saw this picture of loki as a girl.

it said "i am a fangirl and i am burdened with glorious feels!"

amen, cartoon picture. i am burdered with glorious feels as well.

see, everything blog worthy is going down tomorrow. not today. today i just did the same old boring thing i always do.

you know, seeing the avengers. again. eating food i shouldn't be eating. not doing the dishes.

but i haven't watched lord of the rings. or the lion king. i should get going on the two towers again. while i'm thinking about it.

but TOMORROW. tomorrow is going to be awesome. and i'll probably blog about it.

SPOILER FOR MY PROBABLY POST TOMORROW.

1. fun friday at work! yay!
2. i get to coach prep team. the cuteness level will spike and i will become instantly maternal and want to kidnap children. this happens to me at airports.
3. hannah and emma are coming over and we're going to bake vegan cupcakes.

for the record, i'm not a vegan. i like cheese too much. way too much.

4. my brother comes home for the weekend, leaving his horny spiders three hours behind in michigan. if he brings one back, i will kill that bastard before he can say "spider sex".

tomorrow is going to be a good day.

now i'm thinking about fun friday, which reminds me of practice this morning.

so i coach the older kids. the thirteen and overs. we have (had. shit got cancelled.) a meet tonight, so i'm expecting a big practice. since we don't have evening practice.

i get one kid. one girl.

emma and i lost the diving ring of destiny. the ring has been destroyed. wherever sauron of the diving rings is, he's dead. and his tower is gone. along with his orcs. i never saw frodo.

so anyway, i have one girl. she's a great girl. i've never coached her before, and i like her a lot. and kind of getting back to the diving ring, i found this teeny little lime green fish, and i kept it in my bag.

the fish toy of destiny? one fish to rule them all? and in the darkness bind them? right?

so i decide that this will be fun to drop in the water and have the kids find in the middle of practice. but i just have the one girl. she's not that enthused.

while she's warming up, emma and i drop the fish in the deep end. and we realize that the fish doesn't have a name, and it's just sinking to the bottom of the pool all sad, and i have this tremendous titanic moment, and that's when i realize how sad my life has been all along.

we named him sherlock after that sad incident.

so it's hot. indiana is seeing the longest and hottest drought since dinosaurs came through or something. so it's hot. it's been about ninety-seven on average the past week. so i decide to get in and do a turn seminar.

when it's just me and her in the lane, i felt like a pedophile.

humbert humbert will forever control my life.

NEW HALLOWEEN SUIT!
so after practice i notice that my suit is dead. i've had it since high school, so high school and college swimming killed it. totally. the butt is saggy. it's getting thin, which makes my boobs look strangely angular and awkward. and the fabric wore out in the right strap, so everybody can see the elastic.

i'm a retired swimmer. but i needed a new swim suit.

so i got online and i got a halloween suit. because i love halloween almost as much as christmas. BECAUSE HALLOWEEN ROCKS, OKAY, STOP JUDGING ME.

now i can discuss vegetarian perils because this blog is just a hot mess and we're both on this hot mess roller coaster, yeah!

so i went out to eat with my grandma and my cousin at the noodle bowl. noodles are pretty much vegetarian friendly. i have high hopes for this restaurant. jessica raves and raves about it, i've never been there, and my grandma is excited.

we get there and i look at the menu.

see, i hate going out to eat at restaurants i've never been to before. common vegetarian fear.

fear confirmed. everything has chicken and beef or shrimp (i'm allergic) and all kinds of fun stuff.

luckily, there's a sign that says "these dishes can be made vegetarian."

HOOOOOOORAY!

so i get these japanese udon noodle stuffs with vegetables. the waitress asks me if i want tofu, but tofu weirds me out, so i say no. and then she says that the house soup is made with chicken broth.

no one can escape the ill-fated meat broth! no soup for you!

so i get a house salad. and forget to ask for no tomatoes. my entire family hates tomatoes. my daddy, being a scientist and having a masters in chemistry, knows the exact chemical that we despise. it also happens to... synthesize? when cooked.

so ketchup and tomato sauce are in. raw is out.

anyway. my grandma gets some appetizers. she gives me the egg roll because it "should" be vegetarian friendly.

when you don't know, you cut that sucker open.

out spills beef. my grandmother is confounded. but then it doesn't bother her, because in my years and years of vegetarianism, she has never prepared a vegetarian friendly meal for me in my life.

but my noodles were delicious. no chicken broth. and the broccoli was superb.

moving on with my train of thought that has nothing to do with noodles and being a vegetarian, i had this really important question that i was asking myself the other day.

if you are a man and you are engaged and your fiancee dies, are you technically a widower? or does that only happen when you're officially married?

this is a serious life question for me because odd thomas and eli newton. and this also reminds me that this morning i did the single ladies dance in the shower.

it always appropriate to do the single ladies dance in the shower.

good lord, the things that happen when i don't know what to blog about.

this is just coming out of my fingers, kids. i have no idea what's even happening anymore.

so i'm going to stop writing and watch the two towers, okay?

okay.

I AM EMILY AND I BURDENED WITH THE GLORIOUS PURPOSE TO BLOG.




post script: i mean it is ALWAYS appropriate to do the single ladies dance in the shower. even when you are not a single lady.