WEDDINGS! BIKES! STATES! CHEESE!

it is now officially big kid time.

every single summer since i was like... eighteen or something, my parents have gone on some fabulous vacation without me.

like that time they went out to utah and took gorgeous pictures of thirty foot snowbanks and called me in the las vegas airport to let me know that my mom was playing the slot machines.

that was one of the scariest phone calls of my life, besides the one where my dad called me from the ER, completely drugged out of his mind and said, "my ankle is at a 22.5 degree angle and i can't feel it."

dad, what are you doing.

my parents are leaving at four o'clock in the morning, which is roughly six hours from now, for their biggest bike trip yet.

before you think that my parents are like, scary hardcore harley biker people, remember that they do the lance armstrong thing.

with my grandpa. who's seventy-seven, almost seventy-eight.

one hundred mile bike ride?

no problem. walk in the park.

this is my badass grandpa. 

when he was seventy-two, he rode his bike from vancouver to tijuana.

like, DOWN THE ENTIRE WEST COAST OF AMERICA.

so this all begins with my second cousin kyle. kyle is built like a footballer, has bright red hair, a really deep voice, and i haven't seen him since i was fifteen. 

he's getting hitched. which is awesome.

WEDDINGS. DRINKS ALL AROUND. (see what i did there? yeah. i quoted a movie.)

he lives in oregon. so for two years we've had this oregon wedding looming over our heads.

and my entire family has been like

are you going?

who's working and can't go?

will aaron have a big kid job? can he go?

are we flying?

what other family will be there?

will we all get the same hotel?

what's going to happen?

how fancy is it?

this was like, two years ago.

well now they're getting married in TWO WEEKS and everyone is like, well shit, that came up kinda fast.

but not that fast for my parents and my grandpa, because they've been planning this big fat western bike trip... thing.

to be perfectly frank, i don't know too much about it, since i'm not badass enough to hop on my bike and head to oregon for the wedding of my semi-distant relative.

so my parents are heading to this place that has the word otter in it in minnesota to hook up with my grandpa's bike group.

you didn't think that my grandpa rode alone when he winters in arizona, did you?

nah. the bro has a huge posse of badass old people that like, mountain bike and shit.

so in minnesota they're meeting up with some of my grandpa's old biking friends and they're going to ride around.

then they're going to drive somewhere farther west. get out and ride around.

then even farther west.

get out and ride around.

are we sensing a pattern?

my mom has maps upon maps and bike routes upon bike routes and hotels and motels and places to stay and food and GPS things and mile trackers and trails and just all the things you need to practically ride your bike to oregon.

honestly, i have no idea where they're staying and biking. my mom has this teeny tiny ancient flip phone with a limited number of minutes and i was like, dude you better call me every night when i get home from work and she was like, oh okay i'll try and i'm like, i don't even know what state you'll be in every day so like, make that a real thing where you like, actually call me?

she'll probably forget. and i'll worry needlessly. 

i don't know, man. ever since my dad called me to tell me the angle of his broken ankle after he fell off his bike (when it wasn't even moving) i just get worried.

not to mention my mom broke her elbow riding memorial day weekend. 

but hey, it happens when your parents are biking badasses.

i'm going to wake up tomorrow for work, eat breakfast alone, go to work, come home, wake up my brother, and we're going to go work out.

then we'll spend all day by ourselves, and it'll be that way until july 11th, when me, my cousin, my uncle, and my grandma fly out to oregon for the wedding for five days.

i'm pretty stoked.

but i'm also kind of clueless about how this is going to go also.

my grandma is insisting that we stay in indy the night before, which means i need to take an extra day off of work, and our flight leaves at some ungodly hour like six in the morning, and we're flying through denver, then arriving in portland in time to rent a car, drive to salem, and attend the before wedding barbecue.

i think we're then all staying in the same hotel and i'm in charge of bringing my parents' wedding clothes so they don't have to worry about them biking across idaho or something crazy like that. 

about fifteen minutes ago my dad says, "these are our wedding clothes. please pack them. i don't want to go to kyle's wedding naked."

my grandma has been obsessed over what to wear to this wedding. she's worried about the weather. and her legs. and the formality of it.

i've decided to wear the dress i got in stratford, england. if it gets cold, i'll put on tights and a cardigan and it'll be absolutely fly.

after the wedding, which i sincerely hope has awesome vegetarian food, we're going to crater lake in washington state for like... two and a half awkward days.

i've never been to washington state, making it the forty-second state on my list of states that i have been to.

then this magical thing happened when we packed up bikes into my grandpa's truck this afternoon.

my grandma: we're flying out through denver and coming back through las vegas.

me: WHAT

my grandma: yes, las vegas.

me: NEVADA. I'VE NEVER BEEN TO NEVADA. THAT'LL BE MY FORTY-THIRD STATE.

my grandma: you keep track?

my dad: forty-one states and seven countries.

me: SOON TO BE FORTY-THREE, SUCKAS.

i'm pretty stoked.

and i just really love weddings and scenic places like crater lake.

AHHHH IT'S SO PRETTY

but hopefully there won't be snow. because it's july.

the only thing i'm not looking forward to is getting back at three o'clock in the morning on friday morning, and then going to work at seven. 

that'll be a treat for the kids that i work with.

so my parents just had my brother and i downstairs and went through the whole this is all the shit you're in charge of speech and i got a little bit too emotional.

me: INTENSELY HUGGING MY DAD

my dad: okay emily you can let go now

me: KEEPS INTENSELY HUGGING MY DAD

my dad: i will use the hug release buttons.

which is where my dad pokes my sides and i squeal because it tickles so much.

my mom was doing that thing where she wanders around the house and talks to herself about every little thing that's out of place, like the comforter that somehow ended up in our dining room. and she went through some pretty comprehensive meijer coupons.

now they're safe in bed, my grandpa is sleeping in the basement, and they're taking off at four in the morning, leaving aaron and i by myself until i leave him all alone when i fly out to oregon to see the union of a family member that i barely know and his fiancee.

to be perfectly honest, i enjoy it when my parents abandon me and i'm completely alone.

not that i don't enjoy the fact that my brother mows the lawn, cooks for me, is much better at cleaning the bathroom, and is great to talk to when i eat lunch. and he's my work out buddy.

but i also really like doing these particular things when my parents are gone for long periods of time.

1. walking around the house in my underwear.

2. singing at the top of my lungs.

3. lounging around in my swim suit until two in the afternoon.

4. showering with the door wide open.

5. wearing the same outfit every single day.

6. feeling like an adult when i go grocery shopping.

7. eating whatever i want whenever i want. mostly breakfast for dinner.

8. i forgot number eight. probably eating poptarts at awkward hours or something.

i can't do many of these things if aaron is around. so i'm really hoping that he starts working a whole bunch.

aaron, if you're reading this, i love you. and i'm sorry if i sing mumford and sons in the shower every single day.

it's my last post of this june GO! challenge. how did that go by so fast?

time. it flies, man. before i know it, i'll be in oregon, hopefully hooking up with a cute hipster man with a beard that likes iron and wine and appreciates nabokov and has a thing for fine wine and cheese.

and then i'll fly home through las vegas to blog about it.

we had a great june, kids. let's have a great july, yeah?

ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE.

i'm taking the first step.

i currently have one episode of the first season of game of thrones left and i'm having problems accepting the end of episode nine.

i mean, we all knew that sean bean was going to die. it's sean bean.

but i'm currently sitting alone in my room putting king of the hill cartoons on my tumblr as a way to deal with my problems.

i'm also sending adam inappropriate texts.

since game of thrones has left me an emotional mess, this blog post is probably going to be a mess as well.

oh well. i guess we'll all just have to live with it.

my day started out with me labelling my alarm "GET OUT OF BED YOU LAZY SHIT" and having it go off at eight twenty so i could get up and go to the gym.

i got out of bed. looked at my phone. the screen was flashing GET OUT OF BED YOU LAZY SHIT.

well, i was out of bed. i turned it off and crawled right back in until ten.

last night i did an impromptu ab work out while i was cleaning my room and watching spiderman for the eightieth time. and as soon as i was done, i went downstairs and had a big piece of chocolate cake.

this is how i exercise.

so one night in alma when i had my full knee brace that went from my thigh to my ankle and i was particularly bored and lonely, i watched young adult on netflix. and it was a really good movie about a woman whose life has completely fallen apart. (she had trich, too, which was kind of neat.)

so she's like, thirty-six and she's living in this hovel of an apartment with a dog she barely takes care of and she sleeps on her couch and she eats last night's takeout.

and i'm sitting on my bed with my leg propped up on like, eight pillows with an ice pack over it and i'm like, this is my future.

i kind of felt like that today when my alarm was like, GO WORK OUT and i was like, nah, bro, ima just sleep some more.

i spend a lot of time laying in bed at night thinking that i'm going to work out every day (which i did for two weeks) and that i'm going to eat better (which i never do) and that i'm going to lose ten pounds and feel good about myself.

and that i'm going to move to england and that i'll get accepted to the programme that i want to get accepted to to move there, and that i'll leave with a masters. and that if i love it enough, that i'll stay in england. 

then i wake up in the morning and nothing changes.

last night i had a migraine so i napped until eight in the evening. instead of having fried rice for dinner like a responsible adult, i had two pieces of toast and a poptart. 

i did manage to clean my room and sort my laundry. i then did that impromptu ab workout to make myself feel better, followed by that big piece of chocolate cake.

i've really got my life together.

i also watch the same movie over and over and cry every time that i watch it. when i watch TV shows, i get so angsty that i roll off of couches and i beat my head against walls. 

it's hard moving into the adult world.

now it seems like my entire life is trying to figure out what i want to do after college.

i know exactly what i want to do. i want to move to england.

how i plan to get there is through a programme called teach for united kingdom, which is exactly what it sounds like.

teach for america, but england.

every time i say that, i think of this.

so i'm planning on applying for this programme, getting a visa, and living in england for two years to teach impoverished british children, hopefully in york, but probably in london. after two years i'll leave with a master's degree and if i like it, i can stay as long as i like.

sounds great! mostly to adults!

random adult: what do you want to do with your life?

me: i want to move to england, i'm planning on applying for this programme. (explain programme.)

random adult: that sounds so great! (to my parents) your daughter is going to go places!

conversation i had with my aunt today.

my aunt: what are you going to do?

me: change the world.

because i sure as hell want to. but then i always stay awake at night thinking how the hell am i going to do that?

there are so many things in this world that i want to do. so many things that i get totally overwhelmed and i can't function. then, just when i think i can do all of these things, i remind myself that i'm mortal and that i'm going to die.

i was reminded of that today. today i went to a memorial for my father's cousin who died before the age of sixty.

i don't have infinite time to do all the things i want to do.

i want to live in england.

i want to teach.

i want to be a mental health advocate that makes a difference in people's lives.

i want to work at TWLOHA.

i want to travel the world.

i want to write bestselling novels.

my biggest dream is to be a professional blogger.

after three years of being in alma's education programme, two majors and two minors, and seventy-two hours of teacher placement, i can no longer get a teaching certificate from the state of michigan. i'm out of the education programme and they won't let me student teach. i have one class left, and even though i shrug it off because it potentially makes it easier for me to apply for teach for UK, i'm upset.

teaching is what i've always felt i've wanted to do with my life. i feel as if i can no longer do it, and quite honestly, i feel like i don't necessarily want to do it. 

most of this is anxiety. i feel as if i have too many anxiety to control a classroom. i worry about the direction that education is heading more than the normal person. and i know a lot. my parents are teachers.

there are two things that i truly love. writing books, and blogging.

i. love. blogging. why do you think i do this challenge every year? blogging is one of my absolute favourite things.

i didn't realise that professional blogging was a job until i heard about jenny lawson. i read her book and i loved it. 

my hall director knows that i like to blog. he (i'm assuming it was him) told our PR and marketing department at alma that i enjoy blogging, and they asked me to write a post about the process of becoming an RA as a guest blogger. they then asked me to cover alma's moustache challenge.

shortly after that was posted to my college's blog, i was asked to blog for the student life office.

i run a weekly blog called "just down the hall". i write about alma from the eyes of what i am; your regular RA and student.

in "just down the hall" i've posted about exam week stresses, joining choir, participating in no shave november, the vagina monologues, and campus events that i've attended. i write about my mundane life, rather like i do here, for prospective students to get an inside look at living at alma from the perspective of me, an overworked student who loves every minute at school.

i get paid minimum wage per post. 

i see this as my proud first step to being a professional blogger.

but when i lay awake at night and think about moving to england and losing ten pounds and actually going to the gym and applying for jobs, this thought always crosses my mind.

what the hell is step two?

before i left for england, i spent some time with my grandparents. we talked about the decaying education system and i told my grandpa that i wanted to be a professional blogger. if i could do anything in this world, i'd be a professional blogger.

he laughed and told me that it wasn't a real profession.

i told my mother this the next day. and i was upset. 

it's never fun when someone shits on your dreams.

she told me that my grandpa just doesn't fully understand how the internet has shaped our world, blah blah blah. 

but he's not the first person to say that a professional blogger isn't a real profession.

you know what? maybe it's not. maybe it's not because it doesn't make any money. i'd like to say that that doesn't matter, because it shouldn't. i want to be happy and do what i love.

but i'd also like to be able to pay my bills and have kids and a running car and good insurance. 

i make it a habit of telling people that they can do whatever they want with their lives. i believe that people can do whatever they want with their lives. i want to believe that, i really do.

i want to believe that if you want to live in africa and work at an orphanage, you should jump on that train and go. if you think that being a prostitute would be the greatest thing in the world, go for it.

whatever you want to do, i want you to do it.

but i don't always believe that for myself.

I WANT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL BLOGGER. I WANT TO LIVE IN ENGLAND AND BLOG AND WRITE NOVELS AND HAVE A FAMILY.

but i never think that i can do it.

i want to do. so badly. but can i actually do it?

you know, i can.

i can live in england. i can become a huge mental health advocate. hell, i'm already a part of the way there. i can write novels and submit them to places, even if i paper my room in rejection letters. 

i can professionally blog.

the first step to doing anything is to actually take that step. i've had this blog for over three years and i love it. i blog for my college and i get paid a little bit to do it.

i'm always having visions of me living in a small apartment with a hedgehog named hamlet and a tortoise named thorin oakenshield. and i still eat leftovers and watch late night TV and possibly sleep on the couch and wear the same outfits twice in a row, and i drive a shitty car that has subway wrappers in the back of it and empty starbucks, because that's what happens when you're in your twenties and trying to be a real adult. 

and in those visions i'm a professional blogger. 

i don't know how i'm going to do it, but i'm going to be what i want to be.

my name is emily. i cry when i watch the lion king, TV shows ruin my life, i eat peanut butter toast for dinner, i talk about trying to be an adult when i'm not all the time, i listen to indie folk music, i want a tortoise that i can't afford, i study english literature at a small private school, i'm a mental health advocate, i'm afraid of a lot of things, and most of my heart is in another country that i hope to live in one day.

my name is emily and i'm a blogger.

and i hope to keep it that way.

everybody poops.

so picture this.

my family has a screened in porch/three season room type thing off the back of our house that faces our pond and my aunt's memorial garden that my mom spent like, four days working on.

it's my family's favourite part of the house because it's like... outside. but with a table. and without the sun.

anywhoo, last night this big storm blew in and my mom, my dad and i are standing in the safety of our porch and we're watching it rain. scratch that, we're watching it pour and the wind is sweeping rain across the pond and you could barely see the hospital that i live behind.

(i have noticed that i live halfway between a hospital and a funeral home. i'm not sure how this bodes. but i also live behind a chocolate factory, so that's neat.)

so we're all standing there not saying anything and i'm all hot and sweaty because i just got back from a three hour swim meet in the sun where i scream and cheer for children and dry their tears and stress over them, and my mom kind of looks like a prairie dog because she's kneeling backwards on a chair like, wow the rain is so pretty and my dad has his hands behind his back like some contemplative vampire.

and then i'm like, should i blog about pooping?

reactions.

me: should i blog about pooping? i mean, i've had to poop for like... three hours.
my dad:
my mother:
my dad:
my mother: YOU TOTALLY SHOULD. THERE'S AN ENTIRE CHAPTER ABOUT DEFECATION IN MY ANATOMY BOOK, IT'S RIGHT HERE ON THE TABLE, I THINK IT'S CHAPTER THIRTEEN. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT MASSIVE BOWEL--

my family.

so i'm going to blog about pooping.

why?

because everybody poops.

have you ever just like... sat around and thought about how everybody poops? yes? no?

i bet you have.

i don't really understand why pooping is such a taboo thing, kind of like periods and sex. like, your body has waste and you gotta get rid of it. but it's hard to poop in public bathrooms because of taboos and you know... plopping noises.

my freshman year at alma i had a community bathroom and one time i had poop like, RULLLLL BAD and right when i was about to go this girl came in and started to brush her teeth and take off all of her makeup and i just couldn't go until she left.

and believe me, her nighttime routine was like, FIFTEEN MINUTES and i sat in that stall for FIFTEEN MINUTES with my cheeks clenched like, "please dear god leave please dear god leave LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE"

and when she did it was one of the greatest poops of my life.

i've also noticed that whenever you have a really great poop, you're always like, oh my god, that poop was so great i will never have a poop that great again and then three weeks later you say the same thing because you forgot about the previous one.

after i talked with my parents about blogging about pooping last night, i had one of those poops because i'd had to go for like... three hours. at least.

my parents also discussed this.

me: i've had to poop for like... three hours.
my dad: you should probably go.
me: i've been holding it in because i didn't have time to poop at work.
my mother: did you know that your anal sphincter is the only sphincter in your entire body that you can control? it's the reason that you didn't poop your pants at the swim meet!
me: well that's good, i'm wearing coral coloured shorts.

my mother the anatomy teacher.

we then talked about those poops that just... come upon you.

you know, you're sitting in class, on the computer, doing something mundane, or maybe you're doing something really important, and all of a sudden...

IF YOU DON'T POOP RIGHT NOW IT'S JUST GOING TO COME OUT AND YOU CANNOT EVEN STAND IT BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO POOP RIGHT THE EFF NOW

i forget what my mother called those. massive bowel somethings.

those are the worst, man.

that happened to me on tuesday at a swim meet. we had just finished warm ups and i was highlighting my heat sheet and suddenly

THE URGE TO POOP OVERCAME ME

and i ran.

in february, my friend barbara and i went out to dinner together in mount pleasant and saw silver linings playbook. it was an RA date because we both needed to spend time together. barbara was incredibly stressed and my boyfriend of two and a half years was in the process of dumping me as painlessly as possible, and we just needed the time together. on a date.

while we sat in the movie theatre, it had snowed six inches. we drove back to alma in a practical blizzard through eight inches of unplowed snow in the highway, and being the incredibly anxious person that i am, i was terrified. and driving like... five miles an hour.

after that perilous hour journey home, barbara and i sat on my dorm room floor and had some food therapy, and then she braved the snow to walk across campus back to her dorm. i turned on spider-man, got on tumblr, and did normal evening things.

you're wondering where this story is going in my blog about pooping.

about ten minutes after she left, my stomach felt funny. all that anxiety about driving had built up. and mingled with my food therapy.

rule number one of my life: when my stomach feels funny, i attempt to poop. sometimes this has kept me from vomiting. no lie.

luckily, in the dorm room that i inhabited for my sophomore and junior years at alma, i had my own bathroom. my lone suitemate was out, so i had the bathroom all to myself. so i sat down to poop.

and i had massive diarrhea.

YEP. I'M GOING THERE.

diarrhea scares me almost as much as vomiting. one time i did it at my grandma's house and i cried. i'm not sure what about it that's so scary, but whenever it happens, i have to tell myself, normally out loud, that it'll all be just fine, i'm just pooping a little more hardcore than usual.

so i sat there and i told myself that while i had the hershey squirts. and since my dorm door was locked and i live alone, i had my bathroom door open to break down social norms, and i could see spiderman on my TV so i literally sat there and pooped and watched spiderman.

when i was done, i went back to tumblr for about... fifteen minutes.

then my stomach did this weird rumbly thing and NOPE, BACK ON THE TOILET, BRO.

my appendix exploded when i was eight. i was in the hospital for a week and my bowels shut down for a while. once they decided to start running again, i had problems with diarrhea. (maybe that's why i hate it so much.) while we were on a very long car trip about two days after i got out of the hospital, my stomach bubbled unpleasantly. i told my mom, who told me that i was going to have diarrhea.

now whenever my stomach bubbles unpleasantly i'm like, EVERYBODY GTFO and i run to the bathroom.

so when my stomach rumbled again i was like, LOL NOPE and back on the throne. this happened four times that evening.

when i had a really bad ear infection my sophomore year at alma, i took awkward antiobitics. they always say that they can cause diarrhea, but i'd never really worried about it.

until i farted and oops. (i didn't totally shit my pants, i swear. it was like... a nugget. a very small nugget. and i showered.)

it reminded me vividly of my mother, who used to run marathons. sometimes, when she runs farther than normal, she poops in people's yards.

she's going to kill me for putting this on my blog.

but you know what? SOMETIMES YA GOTTA POOP. in someone's yard. because you're ten miles from home and running.

everybody shits.

some more than others.

when i travel, i don't poop as much as i normally do, and quite honestly, i don't poop as much as a normal person anyway. i know people that poop a nice healthy once a day, i know people that poop twice a day.

i'm more of a... sometimes i poop at night but it's mostly a kind of every other day oh i should probably poop now type deal.

i pooped yesterday and today, and it was quite awesome.

continuing more conversation from last night.

me: my poop was green the other day.
my mother: that happens to me when i eat blueberries. or when i travel.
me: now that you mention it, my poop was green in england...
my father: why haven't you blogged about this yet?

this morning.

me: i almost blogged about pooping last night.
hannah: your blog about york minster was really beautiful. but i would've read your blog about pooping.
me: i think i'll do it tonight.
emma: YISSSSS.

hannah had the chance to say "i'd read the shit out of it" but she didn't take it.

that's okay.

YOU'VE READ THE SHIT OUT OF THIS POST.

ahaha. emily makes a pun. about pooping. in her blog. about pooping.

so the entire time i've been writing this and watching spiderman and talking to adam about his glorious hair, i've had my mom's anatomy book on my lap.

maybe so i could open it up to chapter thirteen and be like, this is how pooping works!

but i haven't opened it up at all. now it's stuck to my legs because i'm wearing my cross country shorts from sixth grade that barely cover my ass and it's just... stuck to my thighs.

i will open it to chapter thirteen.

the respiratory system.

WRONG CHAPTER, MOTHER.

ahhhh chapter fourteen, the digestive system.

this is teacher's edition, so this chapter comes with five "did you get it?" questions. sounds legit.

so this is basically how my mom's textbook describes pooping.

"the rectum is generally empty, but when feces are forced into it by mass movements, the defecation reflex is initiated. the defecation reflex is a spinal reflex that causes the walls of the sigmoid colon and rectum to contract and the anal sphincters canal to relax. as the feces are forced through the anal canal, messages reach the brain, giving us time to make a deicision as to whether the external voluntary sphincter should remain open or be constricted to stop the passage of feces. if it is not convenient, defecation can be delayed temporarily."

to shit or not to shit, that is the question.

YOU ALL JUST LEARNED HOW YOU HOLD YOUR SHIT IN FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME WHEN A BATHROOM HAS NOT PRESENTED ITSELF.

i'm not really sure how to end this. it would be kind of poetic if i was like, "well i'm off to go poop now" but i already did that before i cleaned my room, hijacked my mom's anatomy textbook, and educated you all about pooping and shared my own poop stories.

share your poop story! everyone poops! it's time to talk about it!

then maybe i won't have to hide in a bathroom for fifteen minutes because it's socially awkward to plop when other people are around.

(i googled cartoon poop. but adam gave me this. we're pretty sure that's tom daley.)

i left my heart in york minster.

today i'm going to blog about the beauty of york minster cathedral.

when i was in england, i went to york minster, westminster abbey (the famous one where all the queens and stuff go), winchester cathedral, and canterbury cathedral, where the archbishop of the church of england resides.

all of those other cathedrals were beautiful.

but there was nothing like york minster. and it was the first place that i went to in england.

let's dive in.

i've posted about the flight to england and how intense that was. catch up on that here.

our plane landed in manchester, england, at something like seven in the morning england time, and then we made our way slowly through customs and then onto a coach bus, which was going to drive us two hours to york. we were to stay in york in a hostel for two nights.

i was not looking forward to staying in york because it was not london. i'd had my heart set on london for a long time, since i went there for three days when i was thirteen, really. our two days in york and three days in stratford seemed like they were getting in the way of my time in london.

i was carsick on the coach, so i fell asleep to keep from puking. and i woke up in the most gorgeous city i'd ever been in my life.

york.

york is one of the oldest cities in england. the oldest part of the city is circled by a wall that's over a thousand years old. the wall has public access and you can walk most of the way around it. it has five impressive gates. our hostel was just inside of the biggest one, mickelgate.

york's wall with york minster in the background.

we were instructed to stay inside of the wall after we dumped our stuff in the hostel. it was ten in the morning and we had all day to do whatever wanted now that we were in england.

so christina and i set off together. we walked along the thousand year old wall and into historic downtown york, where most of the buildings are from the fifteen hundreds. 

we had no idea where we were going, we were just walking.

and then all of a sudden, we came across this.

york minster cathedral.

to say it was huge was an understatement. i looked up and up and up but couldn't seem to get past the ornate wooden twenty foot door.

it had three towers, two in the front and an even taller one in the middle. it went up and up and back and back and just seemed to go on absolutely forever.

i stood there and stared at it with my mouth hanging open for probably ten minutes before we tried to see if we could get in.

not without paying.

so we moved on and i found myself looking back at it, at its immense beauty and size. i now knew how to navigate york.

1. find the wall.
2. find york minster.

the next day, our first entirely full day in york, we went into the cathedral as a class. i'd been looking forward to it all day. dr. aspinall paid our admission fee and suddenly i was standing inside of york minster cathedral. i could not catch my breath. or keep up with how fast i was taking pictures.

one of my favourite quotes of all time is this: "in my mind, i am eloquent; i can climb the intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. but when i open my mouth, everything collapses."

this is how i feel trying to describe york minster.

the ornate vaulted ceilings went up forever. the marble floor was pristine and echoed with footsteps and covered graves. (cathedrals are filled with graves, for many people believed the closer you were buried to the altar in a church, the more easily you'd escape purgatory and get into heaven.) 

the stained glass windows.

i could not look down and i could not keep my mouth from hanging open in absolute awe.

i feel that i can best describe the inside of york minster purely with the pictures that i took.

this does not even do it justice.

york minster cathedral was the most beautiful and holy place that i had ever been in.

during the rest of my stay in york, i found myself drawn back to the front of the cathedral, where i'd look it for a while. every time that i was on the wall, i'd try to find it, towering above york's skyline. i could not get enough of york minster.

when we went to stratford, i missed it. when we went to london, i missed it.

during my second full week in london, we had the opportunity to go wherever we wanted for a three day weekend. five of my friends and i had planned to go to edinburgh, scotland for that weekend. we took a train out of king's cross to edinburgh, a five hour train ride straight north. 

it was a pleasant train ride with rolling english hills and good music in my ipod. and then i noticed that the train was stopping in york. 

when we reached the york station, i craned my neck to look out of the window on the other side of the train.

i could see york minster.

i gazed at it while passengers transferred. when the train began to move again, i stretched my neck as far as it could go until i couldn't see york minster any longer.

then i cried. i sat on the train to scotland and i cried silently. 

i decided right then and there that i was going to leave edinburgh early on sunday by myself and go back to york. 

i needed to go, and i needed to go alone. 

edinburgh was lovely. scotland was beautiful. i climbed a mountain, went to great restaurants, looked at edinburgh castle, toured the city, took a taxi, and went into the elephant house, the cafe where harry potter was born. we stayed in a backpackers' hostel and it was absolutely fantastic.

but on sunday morning, i took the ten o'clock train from waverely train station to york, england. 

the train dropped me off at one in the afternoon, and even though i hadn't been there in two weeks and i'd only been there for two and a half days of my entire life, it felt like i was home, that i had never left at all.

i could see york minster from the train station. it had started to rain and i put up my hood and adjusted my backpack. i had everything for three days in scotland in it, and it was huge and heavy. 

i was here in york, completely alone and in the rain with a backpack. i pretended that i was backpacking through europe.

i went to the cornish bakery that i found on my first day there and got a cheap cheese sandwich for lunch. 

i then decided to walk the entire medieval wall, which was three miles around. i started at the gate by the train station, the one closest to york minster, and i worked my way around. hardly anyone was walking on it because it was fifty degrees and raining. my toms were soaked, my backpack was heavy, but i walked all the way around it, looking at the beautiful city that i had absolutely fallen in love with.

i loved clifford's tower. i loved the river ouse. i loved the medieval wall. i loved the shambles. i loved the ancient buildings, the thousand year old churches hidden among the sixteenth century buildings that had been turned into coffees shops.

i loved york.

and i loved york minster.

after walking three miles around the wall, i was soaked and freezing, and i found myself standing in front of york minster cathedral, gazing up at it in the rain.

then i went inside.

york minster had a bench next to the admission desk. i sat on that bench and gazed at the ceiling for an hour and a half before i decided to pay admission to go inside. someone inside was playing the organ and it was echoing toward the ceiling, reverberating off of the stone walls. people came in and out, bought admissions tickets, and i sat, dripping wet, never wanting to leave.

finally, i purchased a ticket for nine pounds, a ticket that will last me a year of free admission.

i do not believe i will go back within the next year, but i hope that i do. i have my ticket.

i wandered by myself around the cathedral, seeing what i had seen two weeks ago, taking it all back in. then i sat in the nave on a wooden chair and simply gazed ahead at the stained glass windows and up at the ceiling. i wasn't cold anymore, i was just numb with the overwhelming feeling of being back in the cathedral.

at four o'clock, there was an anglican service called evensong. it involved a professional choir that sang psalms of praise.

york minster cathedral, as do other cathedrals in england, invites people to attend their services without paying. it runs on an honour system; if you say that you were coming for worship, they will not charge you. you can get away without going to the service and simply wandering around the cathedral, but these ancient giant churches cost thousands of pounds to run per day. (york minster is twenty thousand pounds of upkeep per day to keep open. it was built in the fourteen hundreds.) if you decide to go in without paying, you have to deal with the guilt of going into one of these houses of god without helping it maintain its awesome majesty.

evensong took place in the choir part of the church. i sat down with a bulletin, unsure of what was about to happen. i'd never been to anglican service before. i sat among strangers and i could hear the choir in the distance, walking toward us, coming from the hall.

they sat down across from where we were sitting and sang their psalms of praise. the choir was a mixed choir; the youngest person i saw was a five year old girl. across from her was an old man. their voices were completely ethereal, rising up to the top of the cathedral, filling it up, filling me up.

when the service was over, it was hard for me to move.

i didn't want to leave.

i couldn't leave the cathedral. i just couldn't.

i had been there for four hours. i needed to return to my flat in london. it took a lot of willpower, but i grabbed my heavy backpack and i left.

the entire walk back to the train station to go back to king's cross, i kept looking back at the cathedral. i wanted to walk backwards the entire way. i wanted to look at it forever. 

i knew that there was a chance that i would never go back to york again, and i had to drink in everything that i could about it, and all that i wanted to drink was york minster.

when i got on the train, i took a seat where i could see the cathedral. i watched it until the train twisted around, snaking its way back to london, and i could no longer see it.

and i cried.

i have left my heart scattered in many places throughout england. i have calculated, based on the weight of a female human heart, how much of my heart is in england.

i left ninety-eight percent of my heart in england, and over half of that percentage is buried in the stones of york minster.

one day, i will go back and collect it from those stones.

i'm not really feeling two cups.

the obvious thing for me to do today is to blog about DOMA and prop 8.

here's why i'm not doing that.

1. i don't know enough about DOMA to blog about it.
2. i don't know enough about prop 8 to blog about it.

but i'm sure as hell happy that they're gone. 

love is love is love is love.

what i want to blog about is wendy davis and her filibuster last night. but i'm not blogging about that either. abortion is not a debate that i want to get into on my blog. ever.

but i will say this.

pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion.

today is a monumental day for america. and i am proud.

BUT NOW I'M GOING TO BLOG ABOUT COOKING.

so... i'm really bad at cooking.

as the twins would say, "RULLLL BAD."

my mother says that this is a mindset. that if i believe that i can cook, that i'll be an excellent cook.

i've believed for twelve years that i should've gone to hogwarts, i believed really hard, but instead i've spent three years at a private college, four years in a public high school, three in a middle school, and one in an elementary school since then.

no hogwarts. which sometimes still makes me cry.

my dad, the almighty chemistry teacher, takes a more chemical approach, and tells me that cooking is just following directions, like in lab.

remember that time i was a chemsitry major at alma for a semester? i try not to.

i'm now a happy english major and haven't touched a science class in three years.

but if you think about it, cooking really is just like... following directions and adding the right ingredients at the right time. kind of like potions class in harry potter, which always sounded fun. probably because there wasn't too much theory behind it.

more like... properties.

what are the properties of cheese?

1. deliciousness.
2. dairy.
3. more deliciousness.

or like carrots. have you ever looked at a bag of carrots?

ingredients: carrots.

that gets me every single time.

i've digressed.

i really suck at cooking. and it's honestly because i believe that i suck.

i think that i'm good at baking, but i'm not. i love to bake. but i suck at that too.

if it involves making and preparing food, i'm just kind of bad at it.

i bake with the twins a lot, mostly because they're super good at baking things.

exhibit a: yesterday i spent all day at their house watching the avengers, painting my toenails, and baking cookies, and then we went to coach our swim meet against arlington park together. while they were baking, i hovered awkardly in the kitchen, afraid of their hand mixer. which is broken, by the way. i was tasked to hold the cord in its proper place or it wouldn't turn on.

it then started to smell like a broken hair dryer.

i've decided i'm getting emma a mixer for her wedding. emma, if you're reading this, tell me what colour you want. target has some great colours.

while we baked sugar cookies, i did do something. i rolled balls of dough in my hands, put them on a cookie sheet, and smooshed them with sugar on top. and i actually used the handmixer for a little bit until it made me too anxious.

I DID A THING!

hannah and emma did the rest. and the best part was their mom came in and said, "oh emily, you're becoming a real baker!"

thanks. but i don't think you're quite right there, hannah and emma's mom.

for the past few years, my parents have been vacationing without me. which means that my brother cooks for me. normally this turns out pretty well, besides being unbalanced. as in... no salad. or fruit. or vegetables.

normally just a big casserole and we dig in. like real college kids.

i sometimes bake a cake when my parents are gone. which is something i can do fairly well because it really only involves mixing up a mix, putting it in a pan, and turning on an oven. but frosting it... that's another story.

this one time though, my brother totally failed in the cooking department. he was going to make homemade macaroni and cheese (which i have FINALLY mastered after last summer's fail) and he didn't have the recipe on hand.

so he made it up.

bad decision, brocean of the ocean.

he could've called my grandmother, since it's her mother's recipe. but no, he insisted that he knew it from memory. so he made it with one cup of milk instead of four.

we were scraping out black burnt noodles and cheese into our sink for a good half hour.

i've never effed up cooking that badly, i'm happy to say.

the highlight of my cooking career was fashioning baked pasta with only these devices: a plastic bowl, a sink, a microwave, and a dr. pepper can.

you bet your ass that i boiled those noodles in a plastic bowl in a microwave and i drained them through a dr. pepper can.

that's one of the highlights of my entire college existence. besides my eight page paper in less than two hours that got an A.

i think i can attribute most of my bad cooking to this.

1. i'm bad at timing things. like turning on the oven at the proper moment.
2. i never pick a big enough bowl. hence my first two disasters in making macaroni and cheese.
3. i'm afraid of knives.
4. i'm afraid of hot things. like toasters. and ovens. especially ovens.
5. i had a fifth thing but i forgot it. oh well.

today my mother was like, EMILY COME MAKE ENCHILADAS PLEASE 

and i was like, oh shit this won't turn out well

and my mother was like, YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO COOK WHEN WE'RE GONE FOR A MONTH YOU CAN'T RELY ON YOUR BROTHER YOUR'E A FEMINIST AND WE LEAVE NEXT WEEK

i love my mother.

so i went downstairs and found my mother with all the ingredients on the counter.

THAT WAS THE FIFTH THING. I NEVER CHECK TO SEE IF I HAVE ALL MY INGREDIENTS.

i remembered the thing!

anyway, my mom had all the ingredients on the counter and the directions and it seemed simple enough. pour the first four ingredients into a bowl. mix them up.

i got out a bowl. put a bunch of sour cream into the bowl, but not without first opening up a thing of sour cream that was absolutely black with mold, to which my mother said, "oh, yes, i guess that sour cream is kind of old" really vaguely.

one time we left applesauce in our fridge for so long it fermented. have you ever eaten fermented applesauce?

don't.

then i started to pour in all the cheese, and my mom was like, no need to measure two cups, just feel it and i'm like, mother i haven't been cooking my entire life, i don't know what two cups feels like unless i'm holding my boobs and she was like, holding your boobs is nice sometimes.

then she hands me a can opener and i realise i've only used them to open bottles, not cans. but i've seen people do it on TV, and i've seen my grandmother do it, so i should be able to open a damn can of sauce, i'm an adult.

then my mom confuses me by telling me, while she's talking on the phone to my grandpa, that i'm doing something wrong. she's like, waving her arms at me and pointing at the directions and at my bowl.

and i'm like, uh, no, first four ingredients in the bowl and mix. why do you want me to do this out of order?

so i point at the four ingredients and then at the directions that says MIX THE FOUR THINGS IN THE BOWL PLEASE and she just kind of shakes her head and moves away.

maybe this is why i'm bad at cooking. i don't cook the way that my mom cooks. which is to feel measurements and do things out of order.

i cook like my dad. like a chemist. or an english major.

how does an english major cook?

"i see these carrots are from africa. what is that significance to the dish as a whole?"

so i ignored my mother and mixed all the things into the big bowl. and then it was just a matter of shoving the stuff into tortillas, making them into enchilada shapes, and pouring enchilada sauce on them.

me: this sauce is really runny.
my mother: i expected it to be thick.
me: well now it's getting thick...
my mother: oh, we were supposed to stir it. oh well. pour two cups of cheese on top.
me: how much is two cups?
my mother: we've been over this. feel it.

so i dumped a bunch of cheese on it and shoved it in the oven, using both of my ovgloves, because ovgloves were made for people like me that are terrified of ovens.

i wear both of them when i make kraft macaroni and cheese.

when i put the enchiladas in the oven my mom clapped and told me she was proud of me.

i then hid in my room until they were done baking.

(but seriously, two ovgloves. the other christmas my mom got my dad an ovglove. and she got him an ovglove. and there has never been so much laughing that early in the morning.)

when we ate the enchiladas forty minutes later, my family told me that they were delicious enchiladas, and i blushed, because i didn't do all of the work, my mom oversaw everything and tried to get me to feel two cups of something, and i'm not too great at accepting compliments.

maybe when i finally learn to cook like a real human being, i'll be able to feel two cups of something.

until then, i'll just dump cheese into stuff because cheese is wonderful and everyone should eat it all the time. (unless you're a vegan. which as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, i totally respect.)

but honestly, i'll probably just settle down with a good husband who will cook for me.

i told my grandma that the other day and the look she gave me was priceless.

down with your gender roles!

also, ladies, if someone ever tells you to get back in the kitchen, you can always say, "sure, the room with all of the knives? i'll go right there and grab them."

and so i just blogged about cooking.

i am now totally in the mood to bake a mediocre cake and put sprinkles on it to cover up my bad frosting job.

HERE'S A YUMMY GAY PRIDE CAKE TO CONNECT COOKING AND DOMA GOING DOWN! WOOOOOOO!

(i also had to google "gay cake" to get it and it was a pretty wise decision. except the picture next to this one was shaped like a penis. penis cake for all.)

i started watching game of thrones. it ruined my life.

i'm caving. i'm finally blogging about game of thrones.

so like... spoiler alert or something.

YEAH. SPOILER ALERT. IMA SPOIL SOME STUFF. MAYBE. I THINK. IT'S POSSIBLE.

my parents and my brother have read all five of the game of thrones books. i'm supposed to, but i'm totally not into that genre. i'm currently finishing the sixth book in the odd thomas series, and odd thomas is my absolutely favourite, so that's a big deal.

i'm also trying to read blindness again and that's killing me slowly.

game of thrones just isn't my genre. i'm not really into that kind of fantasy with dragons and kingdoms and castles and stuff. not for reading, anyway. i tried reading lord of the rings, but i fell asleep in moria.

it was that bad. and i mean i was that bad, not the book.

(but i read the hobbit. go me!)

my parents had watched a bit of game of thrones on some burned discs that their teacher friends gave them. my brother had watched some at alma.

my basis of game of thrones i knew from tumblr. which really meant that i knew that there were a bunch of sad looking people covered in blood and killing each other.

the other week, my mom and i were at target perusing the DVDs looking for parental guidance, because she saw that movie in the theatre with my dad and fell in love with it. i was trying really hard not buy of monsters of men, but of course that was a fail.

and suddenly game of thrones season one was there like, super on sale. and sean bean was sitting on the iron throne looking all badass and my mom was like, we gotta get this for dad for father's day.

and i was like, ONLY IF YOU LET ME WATCH IT.

so we got season one like, super duper on sale. and i know that my mother is waiting patiently, strumming her fingers evilly, just waiting for season two to go just as on sale as season one. and then she'll pounce.

my mom is the thriftiest person that i know.

so we waited two weeks until father's day. i was BURSTING to tell my dad that we had game of thrones somewhere in the basement where we could start watching it. and then finally, father's day came and my dad was super excited.

we were all super excited.

as my brother says, "the family that watches game of thrones together stays together."

this actually proved to be rather problematic. because i work at night and my parents go to bed early. by the time i get home from work, they're like, but emily, we can't stay up that late.

also, my parents watched the first episode without me while i was at a swim meet. and i came home and my mom was like, oh yeah we watched the first episod of game of thrones and i was like, WUT.

me: YOU WATCHED IT WITHOUT ME?!
my mother: well yes.
me: but you knew how much i wanted to watch it!
my mother: well... we watched it.
me: YOU WATCHED IT WITHOUT ME?!
my mother: watch the first episode tomorrow afternoon and then we can watch the second one together!

this, of course, made me anxious. because i didn't want to watch it alone. and for good reason.

i have finished five episodes and i am very glad that i do not watch it alone.

most of what i know about game of thrones i know from tumblr. which are these basic assumptions.

1. DRAGONS!
2. the lannisters suck.
3. peter dinklage is neat.
4. boobs.
5. butts.
6. swords.

since my parents have read all the books that have come out, i know a decent amount of the stuff that goes on. like, i know that ned stark dies.

you should too, he's played my sean bean.

of course he dies. SEAN BEAN ALWAYS DIES. 

the red wedding was a HUGE internet explosion. and i learned a lot of information about that. but that's not until season three, so i'll keep quiet.

last... thursday? yes. thursday. (i have checked the twitter archives.) last thursday i went downstairs to watch the first episode of game of thrones that i missed with my family.

my mom decided to watch it again. which was neat. even though she was treating me like i was about eight.

my mother: i'll tell you when to cover your eyes.
me: mom, i watched american horror story by myself.

later, when the dudes of the nightwatch are going through the woods and there are scary dead people.

me: i feel anxious.
my mother: OF COURSE. YOU SHOULD FEEL REALLY ANXIOUS.

even later.

my mother: close your eyes, there are butts.
me: DAT ASS. DAMN.

i have a new phrase that goes something like this:

DOTHRAKI BOOOOOTY

i should start over.

first off, can we just talk about the opening credits? like, they're incredible. they're all animated and awesome and they go through the seven kingdoms (i don't even know what the seven kingdoms are) and the music?!

dat cello.

then it was these dudes wandering through the woods. and they came across dead bodies that actually weren't dead and then two minutes into the episode, this douche that i didn't like got his head cut off.

like, in normal television, it pans away. but nope, his head went clean off and there was a nasty sound and a huge spurt of blood and then his head rolled away.

you see, i don't have cable. i barely know what's able to be on television, let alone HBO.

so sometimes, when i watch HBO shows, i'm like, you can say that? you can show that? you can do that? WHY IS THIS ON TELEVISION?

you know, like khal drogo taking daenerys from behind while she cried. or yesterday's full frontal nudity.

and just all the boobs in general. lots of boobs.

as someone who fangirls over TV shows to the extreme that i beat my head against a wall until fell off the couch after the hannibal finale, i'm used to episodes ending in cliffhangers.

but not cliffhangers like this.

game of thrones is a full hour episode. there are no visible places for commercial breaks, and it is the full sixty minutes. but it feels like fifteen minutes because there's so much action and death and bloodshed and sex and drinking and jousting and sassiness, the sassiness mostly from tyrion's end.

like the fifth episode. or the first. or any of them that i've seen so far, for that matter. they just end.

it reminded me of the hobbit when suddenly it was like DIRECTED BY PETER JACKSON and you're sitting there like, WUT. NO.

last night's episode. i was like, NED BABY NOOOOOO and then suddenly it cut to the credits and i was like, are you shitting me right now?!

i've been live tweeting it, and my phone autocorrect is stupid most of the time. aren't most autocorrects? so i've been taking my computer down to the basement, setting up camp on our couch from the fifties, and i've been live tweeting from actual twitter.com.

do people actually use twitter on their computers? no? just me? cool.

most of my tweets are like, OMG NO I CAN'T EVEN and UGH I REALLY HOPE THIS PERSON DIES.

game of thrones has like... five good people. and the rest are absolutely despicable. i was pointing this out the other day when we were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner.

me: man i hate everyone on the show. nobody's good.
my mother: (staring gloomily out the window) yeah, and all the good people die.

gee. if the hannibal finale ruined my life, game of thrones is really going to kill me. along with everyone else. ha. haha. HAHAHAHA. (i made a joke.)

we had another discussion about this in the car going to my grandparents' house. you can say it's not fair that all the good people die, but it's kind of like under the dome. a lot of good people die in that book.

in real life, good people die every day. so do bad people. in the real world, good doesn't always triumph over evil.

no one is safe. so why should that be any different in literature and TV?

i mean, harry potter died in the seventh book. granted, it was only for a chapter, but he definitely died. he also had the choice to continue on into death or to return, and he really wanted to continue on into death.

so i'll be really upset when ned dies in the next few episodes. and when the red wedding happens, whenever i get there. but death is a thing that happens to everyone, not just the bad guys.

(that still doesn't mean that i won't scream and roll dramatically off of my couch into a temper tantrum, though. because i so will.)

and it's not just people that die in this show. in the episode i watched the other night, this jouster that's like, never lost or something? he was unseated from his horse and he lost. so what does he do?

HE TAKES HIS SWORD AND CHOPS OFF HIS HORSE'S HEAD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ARENA.

i screamed. real loud.

that was actually more upsetting to me than the raid that happened and tyrion bashed this dude's face in with a shield.

not sure what that says about me. i'm not even a horse person.

you know, there's so much i can say about game of thrones. how everyone hates everyone and backstabs and murders and there's copious amounts of sex and swords and how robert is a terrible king and you don't want to listen to him and how joffrey is just ugh and when he becomes king i'm seriously going to start a revolution because just NO, JOFFREY, NO.

there's so much to blog about. mostly khal drogo's glorious butt. which i get to see a lot.

but alas, i can't blog about everything. i am not superwoman.

instead, i am going to end this post here and go to bed, because i am tired.

tired and excited to watch episode six.

emily blogs about her long-ass day.

INTRODUCTION

last night i had a dream that i was in london with my friend santino, who for some reason i was calling dave, and we were going to the opera together.

this is something santino and i would actually do.


when my alarm went off at 6:44 and my phone yelled WERK WERK WERK at me i realised that i was not, in fact, in london, nor was i with santino.

both of these things made me incredibly sad. and i knew it was gonna be a long-ass day.

EMILY BLOGS ABOUT HER LONG-ASS DAY

this morning was one of those mornings where my dad and i ate breakfast in silence. i hadn't woken up enough to speak to him and he was busy reading about that snowden guy hiding out in sketchy countries after this whole NSA scandal, which i know nothing about, really.

my excuse for not keeping up with american news is the fact that i want to live in england.

but really, i should pay attention to stuff like this. since i'm kind of an adult now.

anyway, my dad was just lounging around drinking his coffee and i was eating stale lucky charms like a zombie. not like, BLARGH I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR HEAD OFF I'M IN THE WALKING DEAD zombie but like

i do not have a brain with which to function. i do not have the capacity to understand how stale these marshmallows in my lucky charms actually are. so i will continue eating them in silence.

that kind of zombie.

my mom got me a bunch of cereal because i really like cereal. at alma i eat it during every single meal. so she got me a bunch of boxes of cheerios. last year, when i moved out of my room and home for the summer, i found eleven empty boxes.

so cheerios are a thing that i enjoy eating.

this school year, i didn't eat as much cereal, at least not in my room. so i had all this extra cereal that i brought home before i went to england last month, and my mom put it in the pantry.

it is stale as hell.

so this morning i was eating really stale lucky charms and just not ready for the day because i had dreamt that i was back in london, and i had woken up in indiana.

this was not okay with me.

when i finished eating breakfast, i was able to ask my dad what "asylum" meant politically to understand a little bit about why snowden was heading to moscow or wherever he's headed to evade our military, and then i had the worst gas bubble of my life.

have you ever had a gas bubble that just suffocates all of your organs and makes your ribs crack and you just can't move without wheezing and wanting to die?

i hope to god not. but that was me this morning.

so i limped out to my car to head to work at seven ten and twisting around to back out of my garage was like, the worst thing evarrrrr.

i got to work and hannah and emma were walking around like zombies like me, although zombies without gas bubbles. emma and i made olan rogers "it's a monday" signs at each other and we yawned. we found four frogs in the pool and managed to get three of them out, but not before my frog escaped my clutches and hopped into the bushes before i could lob him over the fence onto the golf course.

yes, at work, it is common practise for the twins and i to hurtle frogs over a fence before eight in the morning.

in fact, we do that every single day.

please don't call PETA or anything. we're rescuing them for a highly chlorinated pool and just... making sure they get onto the golf course.

most of first practise was spent laughing hysterically at parker's whale noises that he makes when i make him do breath control sets. since it was monday and i felt like my organs were dying, i wasn't taking any crap from my kids and i gave them the hardest set i could think of: a joe bottom.

unless you have swum at alma college, this will mean nothing to you, and i really don't feel like explaining it. so just know that it's hard and that you don't want to do it.

second practise was spent with emma and i being frustrated with ten year olds that didn't listen when we told them to do breaststroke drill. i also spent the entire practise with my shorts up as high as i could wear them, which was about... up to my ribs.

i looked kind of like this.

except i had on my new swim suit, which is AWESOME, by the way.

it looks like this.

WHAT UP, DESSERTS?

the first time i wore it in the water i found myself surrounded by hungry eight year olds that were screaming about cheesecake. i have never been more afraid in my life, including that time i watched three episodes of american horror story in a row.

after work i made my brother drag his ass out of bed to go work out with me. i hadn't really worked out since thursday, and i was feeling bad about it.

i decided that it's essential that i get in shape this summer so that i can have the motivation to stay in shape over the school year. it's a gigantic pain in the butt, telling myself i need to go to the YMCA every day after work and ride the bike for forty minutes and then do an ab work out upstairs on the track.

but i'm doing it, and i'm honestly quite proud of myself.

i rode the bike next to this really old guy that was pumping it hard on level fourteen. my cross country predetermined stationary bike route had me at level fourteen for two intervals maybe... three times. but this guy kept plugging away and gazing at the TV showing "who wants to be a millionaire?" like it was going to make him rich if he kept going.

i stuck mumford and sons in my ears and rode hard. when i looked up at the TV to the left, it was an hour-long infomercial about insanity.

even though i pumped it out on level eighteen with my head buried for three solid minutes, i felt like a dweeb. because of that stupid insanity infomercial.

i consoled myself by reminding myself that i have a bulging disk in my upper back, my neck is currently out of alignment, i recently tore my meniscus, and i have a spinal nerve disorder in my lower spine.

which is why i can only ride the recumbent bike. so i'll ride the hell out of it.

when i went up the track to do my cool down walking laps and my short ab work out, there were these three burly guys doing intense abs on the mat.

there was totally room for like... five people. if they hadn't been spaced out awkwardly.

this is why we can't have nice things.

it reminded me forcibly of high school where you're trying to get to class and people walk three-people wide down the hallway and they take up the whole damn thing. and you can't squeeze through them because they're too close. and you're just like, seriously why i have places to go.

this still happens in college, by the way.

one of the buff sweaty dudes left without wiping his sweat off the mat, so i did that for him. and i did my little ab work out and still felt like a dweeb because the guy next to me was going to get an instant six-pack with the way he was going.

i then lounged around in my work out clothes for like... two hours.

my parents got home from their bike ride and i went downstairs.

me: yo mom i gotta go to target.
my mother: take me with you, i want to see if they have red camis.
me: sounds good. i should probably shower...
my mother: you look fine. you don't need to shower. go all nasty.
me: (singing) LIVIN' ON THE EDGEEEEE

i did end up showering. but not until like... two in the afternoon.

my mom and i went to target and i bought more shorts that aren't boxer shorts for swim meets and general professional ventures since i'm kind of an adult and i can't get away with only wearing boxers in the summer. my mom got lost looking for snack foods to take on vacation to oregon next week, and i spent a really long time looking at the two foot spoon that i've been wanting to buy for a year.

i mean, IT'S A GIANT SPOON.

I NEED IT, OKAY? FOR MY APARTMENT.

my mother caught up with me and mercilessly made fun of me for wanting a giant spoon in my apartment.

but then again, she was the one who told me the poem i wrote about spoons in ninth grade was really really good. and it's a published poem, so i guess that's legit.

halfway home from target we realised that we forgot to look at ant traps because my dad found a bunch of ants in our pantry, which is never awesome, so we drove to the hardware store, which always smells like oil.

you wouldn't think that my mom would get distracted in a hardware store, but she can. she made a beeline for the gardening supplies and then started looking at flags.

we have a flagpole on our porch. and we always fly a flag. like, always. when people need directions to my house i'm always like, "it's the one with the seasonal flag."

my mom never put out the summer flag. she's left the american flag up from memorial day, and now it's too close to the fourth of july to change it back.

i want to fly my union jack, but she won't do it.

we then bought ant traps and wasp killer because we have a hornet's nest lurking near our roof. my mom forgot her reading glasses so i spent five minutes standing in the insect aisle reading the directions for wasp killer surrounded by pictures of scary wasps and spiders.

do spider killer sprays have to be covered in huge pictures of spiders? like, why is that a thing?

when we got back from the hardware store, i was like, so i'm totally going to finish reading my book and then make a dent in my new pile of books and it'll be so awesome because reading is the shit.

reading IS this shit.

but netflix got the better of me.

arthur is on netflix. i was excited until i saw... the barney movie. 

i know, right?

i clicked it. went to a random part halfway through the movie. was promptly terrified. screamed a little bit. turned on merlin.

never mind that i've seen all of merlin and i should be working my way through doctor who. i just wanted to look at colin morgan.

did i tell you that when i was in england i saw him perform at the globe and i was literally a foot and a half away from him? i stood in the rain for three hours watching him perform.

i didn't tell you? oh. well now i did.

i was almost the creepy person that reached up on stage to touch him. i mean, i was really close to doing it.

but i didn't want to be that person.

my long-ass day is not over. i have ten minutes until i leave for evening practise, where i'll coach for an hour.

then i'm going to come home hot and tired and angsty and i'm going to watch the fifth episode of game of thrones and live tweet the crap out of it.

then my long-ass day will be over. and i will have blogged about it.

(my mother wanted me to blog about the weird people she saw at target when she was in the cheesepuff aisle. but i wasn't in the cheesepuff aisle with her. i was looking at my giant spoon and hungering for it. BUT IT'S TWENTY-FOUR BUCKS.)

(THAT IS ONE EXPENSIVE SPOON.)