the frisky african turtle isn't the important part of this post.

i was going to blog FOREVER ago. i really was.

but whenever i start a post out like that, you know what that means.

it means that it's going to be a huge conglomerate of stuff that i've gotten up to over the past two weeks and it's going to have fun headings.

let's just launch into it, yeah?

SO I DID THIS COOL THING CALLED TEARING MY MENISCUS

right. i should define the meniscus. from what i've gathered from various sources, most of them being IPHS majors that have taken human anatomy, the meniscus is a piece of cartilage in your knee that cushions the joint. so when that rubs away, you have arthritis.

i maybe sort of kind of... tore it.

how, you may ask?

here's the kicker: i was already on crutches.

remember that time i pulled my groin really bad and i iced my vagina with a veggie burger? yeahhh.

remember that time i pulled my groin again right before i left for florida? yeahhh.

remember that time i pulled my groin for the third time working out with barbara? yeahhh.

so i was already on crutches.

i was at a super top secret meeting off campus. and i was in a dress. always a good start. so i'm in this really small room full of tables and people's stuff is absolutely everywhere and i'm like, seriously guys i'm on crutches i cannot navigate this room at all because crutches take space and somebody called my name.

and i did this epic SOMEONE SAY MY NAME turn behind me.

and everything turned but my knee.

at the time i was like, huh. that felt weird. moving on with my super secret meeting.

at the end of the super secret meeting i was like, huh. my knee hurts. probably because it's the only one i've been using for two weeks. but you know what, my groin feels a lot better, i think i'm done with these crutches.

the next day, saturday, the twins came to visit me! woohoo! and i was like, look guys! no crutches! and we tromped all over campus. and had awesome stucchi's ice cream. and then i was on duty and we were watching perks of being a wallflower. and i was like, guys, my knee like, really hurts.

on sunday, after the twins left and we ran into my english professor at walgreens, i realized that i actually could not put weight on my knee. so i grabbed my crutches, my PMA brother colin, and we hightailed it to the emergency room.

this is how colin and i do hospital rooms.

after i got an x-ray and tried to steal the x-ray apron because it was lovely and heavy and the ER nurse asked me if i was random seizure girl from september (yes. i was.) they told me my knee was sprained and they gave me an ace bandage.

UH, NOPE. i knew straight off that wasn't okay.

i bought a knee brace and went to portland. but i already blogged about that.

when i got back from portland, i had an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon, who ordered an MRI because he was reasonably sure that my meniscus was torn. in the meantime, i needed to keep my weight off of it and wear this.

YEAH. HARDWARE.

the best part about that knee brace was that it kept my knee entirely immobilized.

the worst part was i had to take it off to pee.

after a fun jaunt in that knee brace, i got my MRI results, which showed a teeny weeny tear. and it was accompanied by the greatest four words i had ever heard.

1. you.

2. don't.

3. need.

4. surgery.

then my surgeon was like, i think you can start walking on it! and it was then that i realized that i hadn't walked without crutches in literally... two months. and when i did walk on it, holy crap did my knee swell up. and it turned purple.

i am now walking full time and i have this cool knee brace that's nowhere near as big. it lets my knee bend and it keeps my knee from dislocating. 

GO ME!

ALL THE COOL STUFF HAPPENED AT MY CARREL

it's been a rough year for me. i could list all the terrible shit that happened to me, but it would be depressing. eh. i'll list it anyway.

1. i was hospitalized for a week for seizures, which i had until december.

2. my boyfriend of two and a half years broke up with me.

3. my antidepressants gave me depression.

4. i tore my meniscus.

5. i strained my groin. three times.

6. my grandmother died.

let's just say i was ready for this year to be over.

the last two weeks of my semester was looking decently insurmountable. most of them do. but this year was looking extra sketchy, mostly because of my three ten page papers, my two finals, and my three education projects. on top of that, i had masterworks, which is this huge choir concert and i got all dressed up in this huge dress that was almost impossible to walk in with my crutches and i had to sit the entire concert behind the drums and nobody could see me. which was fine. i'm not that great to look at.

but anyway, i was totally living at my carrel.

here's a refresher of what my carrel looks like.

yep. my work station. with twitter open.

the biggest paper on my to-do list was my paper on john donne, 16th century metaphysical poet who may or may not have been gay, was a pirate, had a mistress, was a deacon in queen elizabeth's church, and was your run of the mill renaissance man and misogynist douchebag. i had procrastinated this paper quite heartily. i had specific books that i needed to check out for it and i couldn't carry any of them myself.

so i enlisted my new choir friend adam to help me. we wandered around and pulled all kinds of books off the shelves hoping that they would somehow help me write a ten page paper about a poem about john donne undressing his mistress.

the poem is disgusting, by the way. when he actually gets her naked? you don't wanna know.

i was already writing a ten page paper about frankenstein and a ten page paper about hair power (see previous post) so my carrel was absolutely covered in books.

alma college library policy dictates that all books not checked out must be reshelved within 24 hours. i had a stack of frankenstein books, a stack of john donne books, a stack of hair books, and a stack of feminist literature. i also couldn't return them without hands. 

so i wrote the library staff a really sweet and eloquent note that was this in a nutshell: yo. i'm on crutches. i need these books. don't reshelve them, pretty please?

i left it on the john donne stack and prayed when i left the library at one in the morning.

the next morning, the day before my john donne paper is due, i take the elevator up to my carrel, crutch my way over there, and i see that all of my books are gone. i start to panic. i'll have to facebook adam to have him help me get the books back. 

then i realize that someone had gone through and rearranged my carrel.

the note says, "Emily, in order to avoid troubles with the library bureaucracy, hide your books as demonstrated! Throw the white and pink slips away and carry on breaking carrel law. Good luck! Sincerely, The Library Defender of the Weak."

i made a new friend!

after starting on the paper and having books strewn absotively EVERYWHERE, i came back to find this note on my sticky-note to-do list.

my carrel is my life.

that fateful monday, i hardly left the library. i managed to get to class. i had lunch in the library. i almost had dinner there, but i wasn't sure about the to-go lunch policy for dinner. 

i finished the paper at one in the morning, right when the library closed.

ONE IN THE MORNING PAPER EUPHORIA.

the worst part about this whole paper ordeal was that i thought it was a damn good paper. i worked really hard on it. adam even drew me a little motivational cat and i taped it to my carrel.

it was a good paper.

apparently not. i got a big fat B on it with a note that said, "well, emily, it was a nice shot."

thaaaanks, professor.

the rest of the week was no different: two more papers and three education projects were had. and some serious finals studying for renaissance lit, which eventually culminated in me telling carrie that i color coded my life with black pen. black. like my heart.

she tweeted it.

BREAK WEEK IS ALWAYS FULL OF ANXIETY

skipping over the sob story of my older brother graduating from alma and how i cried halfway home after moving entirely out of my room with the help of adam, who i think scared my mother with his long hair and lip rings, i had a plan for break week.

1. unpack ALL THE THINGS!

2. do my shopping. preferably in one day.

3. say goodbye to the friends i had in fort wayne. sooo... the twins.

4. pack for england.

5. read my shakespeare plays.

it is ten o'clock the day before i leave for england and i haven't done much of that.

i did manage to go to target four times in five days. a new record. after searching every single target in fort wayne, they did not have rain boots in my size.

IT'S NOT MY FAULT I WAS BORN WITH BIG FEET, GUYS.

my cousin and i went shopping and i got a really cute infinity scarf, so that was fun. i then searched fruitlessly for someone to unlock the sim card in my phone so i could make it international.

after going to three stores and having my mother make about eight phone calls because i have too much anxiety to call businesses, we quickly realized that everybody has beef with virgin mobile.

no international phone for me!

on tuesday, i finally got around to unpacking. i left most of my stuff at school, but i still had a hefty amount of stuff in my room.

i have a lot of stuff.

once that was all unpacked, i was obviously going to read my shakespeare plays for spring term. you know, the ones in my stephen greenblatt annotated norton anthology of shakespeare's entire works that i got for ten dollars.

ha. haha. hahaa. HAHAHAHA. ha. 

i totally watched netflix. i also watched the lion king thirteen times in three days.

instead of packing, i found reasons to leave the house and to drive places. like going to target four times. having a sleepover with my cousin. going to the outlet mall. going to the library to check out a book i didn't have time to read. going to the bank.

i made the biggest cash withdrawal of my life, guys.

after i drove aaron across town to drop off a resume, we went to the pet store. you know, the one with the six foot long green moray eel. while i wistfully looked at tarantulas, i fell in love with the teeniest tiniest spur tortoise who took a nose dive into his water dish. SQUEE.

unfortunately, he was a hundred thirty dollars.

even more unfortunate, he was sold.

it was there that i saw the really frisky african turtle. from the title of this post. 

after all the breakdowns that i've had trying to get ready to go to england tomorrow, that frisky african tortoise has been one of the highlights of my week.

break down number one: emily tries to call radioshack and bursts into tears.

break down number two: emily tries to pack and realizes that she wants to take her entire wardrobe with her to england.

break down number three: emily loses her four hundred dollar brit rail passes.

yeah. i know.

i put them a super specific pocket of my backpack because i knew that it was going to be my carry-on and the perfect bag to take for my weekend in scotland.

they totally weren't there when i went through the backpack.

after lots of tears, anguish, self-loathing, and my dad calling my professor to alert him that i needed new tickets in stratford, i got my suitcase packed.

i am still completely lost as to what happened to those rail passes. but now i'm down four hundred bucks. 

i leave my house in twelve hours to head to the motherland for a whole month.

A WHOLE MONTH. IN ENGLAND.

today while i was doing laundry, i went out to talk to my dad about calling somone for me, since obviously calling businesses is a thing i can't do very well, and i stood on my driveway and i screamed and screamed and screamed.

then i thought to myself: i leave in one day. one. day. and i have been counting down for this moment since last year.

that's a long time, kids.

i'll be taking kip, my trusty dusty laptop with me. 

i have this idea in my head that i'm going to blog every day that i'm there. will that happen?

probs not.

but rest assured, i will return to america in one piece. if they don't drag me kicking and screaming home. 

WELL. I AM OFF TO THE MOTHERLAND! 

play nicely, kids. see you stateside in a month. :)

oh. this is me in my suitcase. obviously not packing for england.