graduation cake, bursted blood vessels, and some customer service complaints.

i've had a really eventful day.

guess what? you're going to hear about it! OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY.

so it starts off with how i went to work and i heard one of my favorite rap songs on the radio. but i'll talk about that later.

friday at the swim team that i coach at is fun friday. and hannah and emma and i had decided that we were going to get in the water with the kids, yes yes we were.

so we get to practice and we take the lane lines OUT. so the kids have the freedom to swim about. where we tell them to, of course. i can't loosen the lane lines. i get the wrench stuck. then i drop the wrench. then i give up and scream that i'm a failure. hannah and emma laugh and give me hugs.

we're becoming best friends.

so we send the kids swimming in circles around the pool. these kids range from ages eleven to sixteen. i think parker is sixteen. i should ask him about stuff like that.

so anyway, about halfway through practice hannah and emma and i strip down to our swim suits and we put on our caps. mine ripped. so i had to borrow a carroll cap. a carroll cap. 


i went to northrop, people. you better know it.

anyway.

so we get in and we swim around the pool with the kids for a while, and then somebody suggests that we play sharks and minnows.

here's the run down.

1. somebody's a shark. they tread water in the diving well. the minnows line up on the outside of the pool. out of the pool.
2. the shark says minnows away.
3. the minnows dive in and swim to the other side (the width. not the length) of the pool underwater.
4. the shark has to drag the minnows to the surface before they touch the wall. if this happens, the minnow becomes a shark until there is one minnow left.
5. the only rules are no biting, no suit pulling, no strangling, and no hair pulling.

we don't mess around with sharks and minnows. and hannah and emma and i, well, we're veterans.

i haven't played sharks and minnows since i was about eighteen. so i was excited. and out of shape.

bailey was our first shark. he starts catching the younger swimmers. hannah, emma, me, and some older kids are almost impossible to get. a running start from us pushes us almost all the way across the pool. and even though it kills my ears, i go deep. and i do not give up. i will wrestle with you underwater and occasionally forget the no biting rule.

we don't mess around with sharks and minnows.

so bailey began to realize that hannah and emma and i were getting tired. dive in, swim underwater, throw off some children, and then jack ourselves out of the pool. so he began to call minnows away as soon as we got out.

my dear readers, i am out of shape. and i cannot haul myself out of the deep end of a pool without a ladder as well as i used to.

parker eventually let himself get caught and one by one, he took us out. my intense underwater struggles were futile and all they got me was a slightly bloody mouth as he shouldered it.

after sharks and minnows with the older kids, it was time for practice with the little kids, the four to ten year olds.

we had thirty-six of them.


that's a lot of kids for four coaches and a lifeguard.

about ten minutes into practice it felt like my ear was bleeding through my cap. i touched it and it wasn't bleeding, and then it became unbearably hot. hannah checked it out.

i had burst some blood vessels.

like i said. we take sharks and minnows seriously.

after doing ring around the rosey with a cute six year old named charlie on my hip, i went home and wrote a rather strongly worded complaint to the FCC. you know, the radio and television regulation people.

on the way to work, i heard "monster" by kanye west on the radio. i love the song. i've been listening to it for two years. i work out to it. it's a profane song. i had never heard it on the radio before, and it was edited.

they did not edit out the phrase "rape and pillage a village of women and children."

i'm sorry. but as a feminist and as someone who knows rape victims, i believe that this is highly inappropriate and destructive.

i understand about free speech. i understand about music. i'm a music enthusiast. music is art. art cannot and should never be contained. but when you are listening to music on the radio, you understand that it is edited. and i believe that that song was edited improperly.

if you are a rape victim, you do not need to hear that on radio to remind you of it.

this is something i feel very strongly about. and i will not be silent about it.

i don't want to put a disclaimer on this. you can disagree with me all you want. but we are being raised in a rape culture where we teach women how to not be raped instead of teaching men not to rape women. nobody can stop this culture in music. but it can be stopped on the radio where things should be safely edited. where they're supposed to be safely edited.

now onto a lighter and happier part of my blog.

my beautiful cousin, adrienne, had her grad party at my house this evening. she lives in california most of the year, so our house was the hot spot for a small family gathering with pizza and...

casa salad.


if you don't live in fort wayne, you don't have casa. i am so sorry. because casa salad is the best damn salad you will ever have in your life, and it's catered.

there will be casa salad at my wedding.

look how clean it is! :)

i spent most of the day cleaning my room.

cleaning means i have to wear my teacher dress.

bonus points for me: i didn't have to change for the party.

soooo most of the party was adrienne's dad's side of the family. which isn't my side of the family, because adrienne's mom and my mom are sisters. when people started arriving, i hid on the porch with my dad until he had to go pick up the pizza. we didn't know many of these people.

i said this about twenty times:

"i just finished my sophomore year at alma college, i'm studying english and spanish education. i'm applying to study abroad in spain in the fall. i'm an RA. i'm coaching a swim team this summer. oh, where's my brother? he's studying spider behavior. no. sexual behavior. it's awkward."

my brother, the arachnologist. studying horny male spiders.

it was a fun filled evening full of too much pizza, which made me feel that my ab workout that i did was useless. i found this calendar thing for getting mean abs by doing this thing every day. it's got a june a schedule, and i was like, oh man, this is just like blogging. blogging, crunches. blogging, sit ups.

i wasn't ready for the push ups. i also swam a mile and a half, and i haven't swam since like... february of 2011, so i am sore as HELL.

anyway, it was a super pleasant evening with relatives. and stuff. some people i didn't know told me that i had a beautiful house. i do live on a pond behind a chocolate factory, so i guess that's magical.

i also live between a hospital and a funeral home. still not sure how i feel about that.

the evening ended with my cousin jessica and my aunt booty popping in my parents' bedroom and adrienne drowning herself in my perfume. in my room. i think that my guitar is going to smell like bath and body works for a good month every time i pick it up.

around the time that everybody left, my grandpa (we call him popsi. don't ask.) asked me if i had a compulsion to blog. i had to explain to him that i wanted to be a better blogger, so last year i decided to see if i could blog every day in the month of june, and now it's june again, so i might as well do it again.

but i do blog kind of compulsively.

i asked him what i should blog about it and he says, "well just blog about your day."

blog about my day accomplished.

now i'm going to show you adorable pictures of my family.

this is me and my daddy.
he's the coolest cat. ever.

this is me and my momma.
i'm seven inches taller than her.
but i'll never be as cool.

this is my family, minus my two cousins, my brother, and my uncle.
from left: my aunt beth, popsi, adrienne, uncle jim in the back, my grandma,
me, my mom, my dad, and jessica.

i really love my family. :)

and may the odds be ever in your favor.

if you took the time to read the title, you should know what this post is about. if you don't, well, you live under a rock and i'm surprised you have access to this blog.

this starts with me coming home from college. being an RA, i had to stay foreverrrr and i finally made the three hour drive home with all of my stuff and my fish (who died two weeks ago. feel sorry for me.) and my cactus. (atticus is fine. if you're wondering.) i got home around ten thirty and my parents and my brother were nowhere to be found.

they were picking my brother up from the detroit airport. because he'd been in peru.

so the next day i wake up and i'm like, look at this stuff that i have to unpack! and i come downstairs and my dad is reading the hunger games.

one thing before we fully get underway.

when i say the hunger games, i mean the first book. because it's called the hunger games. the other two aren't called the hunger games. so i am not talking about the trilogy. just the first book.

oh, here's my big bad disclaimer too.

i give no effs about spoilers. if you haven't read the books or seen the movie and you don't want anything spoiled, turn back now, because i'm not going to spare your feelings and i'm going to treat you like you know exactly what's going on. i'm the author of this blog and i can do that if i want to. kay thanks bye.


now that we've gotten that out of the way.

so my dad is reading the hunger games and i'm like, i wasn't going to read that until next year, when the hype died down, and he was like, well it's due in a week and it won't take you long. it's pretty good.

so i steal away to my room and i devour it in about three hours while listening to the new pornographers, so oddly, i associate "all the old showstoppers" with children murdering each other.

and guess what?

i didn't like the book. at all.

by page fifty katniss annoyed the piss out of me. by the time that she was in the arena things were getting good, but she was still annoying. peeta was a completely static character and i couldn't relate to him at all because as far as i could tell, he didn't have emotions.

i finished the book and thought, well that was kids killing each other, katniss was annoying, peeta was decently lame, and i have no idea where she's even going to get two more books from.

but here was the biggest problem that i found with the book.

i didn't feel the gravity of the situation at all.


think about it. these are twenty-four kids chosen against their wills to fight to the death in a huge arena where they'll probably be stabbed, strangled, eaten, or else they'll starve to death in the cold. and everybody in the country gets to watch it like it's the fuggin' olympics. just let that sink in for a minute, please.

no, it didn't sink in at all. not one bit. i wanted to feel just a fraction of what katniss was feeling, and i couldn't, because of how the book was written.

then i went into english major mode and i came up with this.  


i have attributed my hatred of the hunger games to katniss’s narration and its effect on the novel as a whole as perceived by the reader. 


italics to emphasize my thesis. and hatred is a strong word. dislike-age.


remember that i'm an english major?


in a nutshell, i couldn't feel the gravity of the situation that katniss was in because she couldn't perceive it herself as a character in a first person point of view.


this can mean one of two things.

1. suzanne collins is a genius and managed to capture this flawless narration and characterization and keep it steady, even in strife on katniss's part. like making out with peeta in a cave while he slowly died of blood poisoning.
2. suzanne collins can't grasp the situation either and can't find a way to write about it properly.

you can decide. and i'm not saying that she's a bad writer. i feel like one of the only people who can write about this subject properly is stephen king.

can you imagine if he got a hold of this material? think about it.

i finished it around one in the morning and i was severely disappointed. all of the hype! and i didn't like the book. was i becoming too hipster?


it's always possible. the other day i yelled at somebody over my foster the people album. the one that i had last year. they thought it was new.

so today, nearly two weeks after i had finished the hunger games, hannah and emma, the twins that i coach with, invited me to go see it with them. i wasn't going to say no. before i had even read the books the movie looked good, and i have this thing where i have to read the books before i see the movie, which is why i'm slogging through this beautifully written nobel prize winning novel just because i want to see the movie.

so i meet hannah and emma at carmike and we take seats in the back and we're eagerly awaiting the movie. i am absolutely praying that the movie is going to be better than book. i will actually be able to truly see the gravity of the situation, not just from katniss's little lens.

plus i just want to watch children murder each other cinematically. i mean, come on. i'm psyched about clove's knives.

so we get through the previews and there's one for the avengers, which i saw last friday. and i want to see it again because i've gotten a crush on mark ruffalo. like, hardcore.

you know you're getting old when all of your celebrity crushes are suddenly over the age of thirty and you're like, "damn i like that gray in your hair, man." but seriously, mark ruffalo, ladies. hottest bruce banner ever.

back to the point. the movie started and i remembered how much i love jennifer lawrence for being a badass and not being a stick, and then i laugh because gale is, as of yesterday, miley cyrus's fiance, and then the movie is totally underway.

as far as movies go (ahem, harry potter.) it was incredibly true to the book. i cried a little when rue died. peeta's camouflage was totally cray cray (did i just type that?) and cato terrified me. glimmer killed by tracker jackers was as absolutely disgusting as i'd pictured it, and through all of jennifer's lawrence's facial expressions...

i felt the gravity of the situation.


things i was disappointed in.

1. i appreciate katniss's forehead/knife battle. but it would've been much more awesome if she'd totally almost died in a pool of her own blood. like in the book.
2. what happened to peeta's leg being practically torn off at the end? that was the best part of the book.
3. and not that i really wanted to see it, but cato's death took about five seconds. what happened to twelve hours of agony?

i mean, nobody wants to see cato being torn to pieces by mutated wolves for twelve hours. but that was something i thought lacked in the book, katniss's ability to cope with listening to it. so they could've done something.

the people of the capitol were creepy. every time i saw the gamemaker i whispered, "you bastard" which caused emma and hannah to giggle.

oh, and when that mutt jumped out at peeta, i screamed, threw my arms up, and knocked my glasses off. then i panted like a wounded horse for a good five minutes.

i have never seen a horror movie, and probably never will. unless you count american psycho, but that was just funny.

my favorite part of the movie that didn't happen in the book: rue's dad flippin' his shit down in district eleven. you cannot restrict hope, gamemaker.

i've been told that the next two books aren't as great as the first one, and seeing as i didn't like it, that doesn't bode well for me. i'll probably read them anyway and possibly hope that katniss has gained some semblance of emotion. if being a victor hasn't given her emotion, well, she's probably a zombie.

after the movie was over, hannah, emma and i sat in the theatre and read all of the weird names in the credits out loud. about halfway through, all of the names suddenly became french and we really weren't sure why.

so this is the first time in the history of my existence that i have liked a movie better than a book. i don't know how i'm feeling about that.

but i'll tell you one thing: this nobel laureate prize winning novel that i'm reading? this movie better be worth slogging through the book for.

plus it stars mark ruffalo. so at least i have that to look forward to.

come on, ladies. for forty-four, he is verrrrrry attractive.

and he's the hulk. so. automatic badass points.

the day that i broke both of my heels. at the same time.

i suppose it's time for me to blog about the heels breaking incident of 2008.

this is exactly what it sounds like.

as you probably know, i'm a competitive swimmer. well, i was. i'm totally not anymore, not after swimming in college completely screwed up my back and at this rate i'm not getting it fixed any time soon.

competitive swimming timeline:

age four- prep team.
age five- big team.
ages five to sixteen- swim summer for blackhawk swim team.
ages seven to fourteen- swim winter swim at FWCY.
age fifteen- swim winter at TRAC.
age sixteen to eighteen- swim ALL THE SEASONS at NACS.
age eighteen to nineteen- swim and simulataneously coach autumn ridge.
age nineteen- swim college at alma.

i skipped high school. i swam in high school. on top of all this other stuff.

a typical winter season is from september until when high school starts (early november). high school goes from then until the beginning of february. then winter swimming continues from then until the end of  march.

then summer starts in may and goes until august. summer means long course. long course means outside. long course means 50 meters instead of 25 yards.

high school swimming means FUN FUN FUN FOR EVERYONE!

honestly. i absolutely adored all four years of high school swimming. it was great. even the practices at five fifteen in the morning where i got up at four thirty to drive downtown to practice. because i always bought doughnuts afterward. i really like doughnuts.

but here's the story of the heels breaking incident of 2008.

2008-2009 is my junior year of high school. i'm seventeen. my brother is a senior. he's eighteen. it's december 11th, 2008, and we're headed downtown to a swim meet against southside, if i do remember correctly.

so my junior year of high school is my awkward metal phase? so aaron and i are listening to disturbed. of all things, we're listening to distubed and we're driving to this meet and it's snowing. we're driving separately from my parents, because after meets, the team goes to wendy's to celebrate and eat burgers, and meets end around nine, and my parents want to go home and sleep.

so we're driving to this swim meet, and i remember this very vividly. this guy doesn't put on his turn signal and he's trying to turn in front us, causing us to wait behind him. by now we can't get around him without backing up, and he's just sitting in this intersection in the ghetto. seriously, in the ghetto. so aaron rolls down his window and screams something that i can't put on my blog.

and then we laugh the rest of the mile to southside. (yes. we swim downtown. in the ghetto. but we have one of the nicest pools in indiana, so no judgin'.)

for those of you that don't understand anything about swimming or swim meets, here's a fast tutorial.

there's an event called the 100 freestyle. or front crawl, if you're a cave person. that's four laps. after that event, there's a ten minute break where we can warm up.

then it's the 100 butterfly. or the michael phelps stroke.

the 100 fly is kind of sort of my thing.

so during the ten minute break i was warming up, getting ready to dominate. i didn't really have any competition from southside, and i was the only one from my team, and i was like, this'll be fun, i can just race the clock. so i'm just warming up, swimming some laps, gettin' pumped.

and then i see my good friend taylor sitting on the wall minding his own business.

and i think to myself, if i do a really hard flipturn, i can splash him and it'll be hilarious.

famous last words.

um. this is a flipturn.

it's not that great of a flipturn, but it gives you the point. so if you don't know what a flipturn is, watch it so you can understand the next part of this post.

right. so i'm going to do one of these and splash taylor. it'll be great.

i come in for the turn and i really crank my legs over, using all of my core strength, totally about to just dominate this turn and

SMACK.

i hit both of my heels on the metal edge of the pool.


i cannot properly explain to how much it fuggin' hurt.

so i surface and taylor is sitting there like "OMG ARE YOU OKAY EMILY ARE YOU OKAY" and i'm trying to not cry and i'm like, "yeah yeah i'm good i'm good" trying to channel my inner badassery, and inside i'm making this noise like a deflating cow.

i have an event in five minutes. i can't blow it. so i swim it off. shake it off. swim it off. it'll be fine. both of my feet hurt like hell, but it'll be fine, shake it off, swim it off, you're fine.

it's time for my event. i get out of the pool. ease myself onto the blocks. swim my race. win my race.

as soon as the adrenaline from my victory is gone, i crawl out of the pool like a slug, get to a bench, heave myself onto it... and start screaming.

the lifeguards come running over. i've already broken my foot in their pool and gotten my other foot lodged in a ladder, they know the drill. they stick each of my feet into a bucket of ice and tell me to sit. they fill out an incident report. i sit there and hug my towel and bawl my eyes out because i have never been in so much pain in entire life, and this is after my appendix exploded when i was eight.

i probably won't blog about that.

i scratched (that means i didn't swim) the rest of the meet. i couldn't walk to go to our after meet powwow. when i took my feet out of the ice buckets, both of them were purple and twice their normal size. i assured my coach that i had crutches at home (from the foot breaking incident of early 2008, that's not epic enough for a post) and that i'd be fine.

i walked out of the natatorium suspended between taylor and ryan. both of whom are least six foot four. that was a pretty big stretch for my arms.

so the next day was crutches and it was a friday, which means that i couldn't talk. (there's another post about how i didn't talk on fridays for six years!) so i couldn't tell anybody why i was on crutches. i got sick of writing it down, too. since both of my heels were busted, i'd crutch forward and then go onto my tip toes on both feet.

i've never seen anyone crutch like this to this day.

even on crutches with my feet in agony, i went to swim practice. turns out i could swim just fine, just couldn't walk.

i refused to do a flipturn.

and so the crutches went on for several weeks. by several i mean... something like... six to eight. christmas break was spent in a wheelchair. i crutched across three airports. my parents left me in my wheelchair in front of a painting in florida. i got taken on walks in the wheelchair. i sat in the shower every morning. i crawled to the bathroom and up to my bedroom.

and i still swam.

and baby, i made sectional finals.

i'm trying to picture what the other girls were thinking when i crutched up to the blocks for finals, knelt in front of the blocks, and did a half-assed start off the blocks at sectionals, the biggest meet of the high school season besides state. honestly. but i made finals. channeled the inner badassery.

just before sectionals, when it was clear that my heels weren't getting better, we went to a podiatrist. he gave me double aircasts.

you know, those big gray boots that you wear when you break your foot.

i had two.

please take a moment to appreciate this photo.

after sectionals was over, my parents didn't want me swimming. i was still afraid to do flipturns and i hadn't walked unaided in a good three months, so we just kept going with the aircasts.

i still crawled to the shower. aircasts make stairs very difficult, so i had to walk one step at a time, sideways, and holding the bannister. i became best friends with the school elevator. 

when my heels still weren't healing, i got an MRI. i had bruised my bone marrow. you read that right. i had broken my heels and bruised the bone marrow.

i should do a seminar in powerful flipturns. "how to make your turn rock the house."

finally, halfway through april, i took off my aircasts and found that my heels were almost completely better. then i had to relearn how to walk properly. then i had to wear heel inserts for two months and only wear tennis shoes.

but when i could wear shoes again, what did i do?

i bought myself a sixty dollar pair of converse, that's what i did. they're covered in sea creatures. and kind of fantastic.

the next week i went to new york city, where i did a lot of walking without my aircasts, which was bad. i wasn't allowed to sit at the top of the empire state building and the security guard yelled at me. i cried. when i stand for too long, my heels start to hurt. and they hurt the rest of the day.

this is me, aaron, and my daddy in new york. :)

i don't really know how to end this.

um. do good flipturns. don't break your heels, and not at the same time.

and if your friend is ever in a wheelchair and you take them on walks, sending them "bowling for trashcans" is not advised. my mother did that to me. everyday.

also, new york city is awesome.

"you have fun up there!"

i've been starting out a lot of posts with "remember when..." lately.

here we go.

remember all the way LAST june (2011. i know. forever ago.) and i was in a back brace and going to physical therapy and being an adult? and somewhere in there were a bunch of x-rays, an annoying MRI, a cavity filling, and a spinal injection?

never get a spinal injection. please. they tell you they numb your back. THEY TELL YOU. BUT IT'S NOT NUMB.

but anyway, that was my summer last year, remember that?

well if you don't, i certainly do.

so my cousin jessica started working full-time as this place called the woodhouse day spa, and our other cousin, adrienne is visiting this week from california, and we wanted a tour. from what we heard, this spa was like, super incredibly legit and practically built for royalty.

so last week we got a tour. an infinity pool. amazing spa rooms. an infinity pool. did i say that already? a quiet room to wait with your girlfriends before your massage. beverages. plastic surgery.


jessica, with her discount, booked adrienne and i for a fifty minute swedish massage today in the duet room. nothin' like gettin' a massage with your cousin.

i mean, i don't have a sister. so this was the next best thing. although i love my older brother dearly, i will not get a massage with him.

so adrienne and i showed up at two fifteen when jessica instructed, right when she got off work. then it was fun paperwork!

did i have anywhere that needed extra attention? my back.

did i have anywhere that caused me daily pain? let me think. my back.


after the paperwork was filled out, adrienne and i made a pact to leave on our underwear. it's customary to go completely naked underneath the massage robe, and jessica assured us that our therapists wouldn't see anything, but we made an underwear pact anyway.

sleeeeep time.
this is my only picture. sorry.

you don't break pacts like that, man. you just don't.

so we went into the HUGE changing room, found a locker, and slipped into our massage robes, which were white and fluffy. we held true to our underwear pact. then we were lead into a warm, dark room with cozy amber light that had a fire and relaxing music playing. it was labeled "women's quiet room" and i guess you sit there and be quiet before your massage.

adrienne and i sat on a couch. jessica joined us. adrienne and i each grabbed a pillow. and fell asleep.

then it was massage time.

my therapist's name was joe. he looked pretty good-natured. i told him straight up that under NO circumstances was he allowed to touch my heels, due to my heel breaking incident of 2008. you know, that day where i broke both of my heels at the same time and couldn't walk for five months.

i should blog about that.

when i told him that my back was nothing but a big mess of knots, he smiled. and i told him he could dig HARD.

the massage room was a small room with two beds, one for adrienne and one for me. we climbed on in, they dimmed the lights, and then suddenly joe was putting this weird night mask over my face.

and then he was massaging my head and i wanted to die of happiness.

i don't remember much of the actual massage, mostly because it felt so fantastic. it started with my head, then down to my shoulders, my upper back, and then each arm. then i got to roll over ungainly while trying not to reveal myself, and then it was my legs, and then my back.

so. i am not joking when i say that i have about twenty knots in my back, ten on each side of spine, one after another, from my neck to my butt. i just kind of live with it. my boyfriend has given me a three hour back massage on one specific area and he has not made a dent in these knots.

when joe started working on my back, you could hear him sigh. and i said, "have fun up there!"

after agonizingly wonderful pressure and knot relieving, they're still there, as big and as stubborn as ever.

once the massage was over and i felt oily, slimy, and exhausted, adrienne and i went back to the changing room where (separately!) we showered in this fantastically huge rainfall shower. it was like being in the greatest thunderstorm ever, but the rain was hot tub temperature and you were washing your hair.

"this is amazing! this is just like magic!"

um. i like gilderoy lockhart. he can always help explain easy to explain situations.

with my lovely friends and family discount and my tip to joe, who did not touch my heels and made my back feel about ten percent better, my total was seventy dollars.

so far, in the two weeks that i have been home, i have already spent a hundred and thirty on teacher clothes, and two hundred and sixty on my new ipod.

i am locking away my debit card where i won't find it until... until... august!


(i interrupt this blog to tell you that mufasa just died on my VHS. WHY DOES HE DIE EVERY TIME I WATCH THIS MOVIE. which is... about twice a day on average. WHY. we now continue with our regularly scheduled programming of emily blogging.)

so. i had my very first massage, i paid a bunch for it, now i'm broke, and you know what?

i am sore. as. hell.

at work tonight, when i was giving my older kids a breath control set (because i'm mean) my legs were extra super sore.

or maybe that was because my mom and i took a three mile power walk after dinner, where we saw three baby robins being torn to pieces by a dog and some crows.

then we found a dead fish in our flower bed.

must be the circle of life.

i'm just gonna leave this blog here. because it's kind of unsatisfactory, and mufasa is dead, and that makes me sad.

and my mother and i found a fish in our flower bed.

alma college christian leadership.

so remember that super long post that i wrote last month, where i talked about the titanic sinking and how i fell in a muddy ditch in the cold rain wth my boyfriend, and i ate some weird food and i learned how to chinese sword dance, and i read this awesome book and i watched lord of the rings entirely too much?

remember that post? and i talked about ACCL? remember? huh? HUH?

sure. of course you do.

so i vlogged today for the first time, because my ACCL friends and i have decided that in our facebook group, we're all going to vlog each other from our respective states. unfortunately, i'm not the first person to vlog from indiana. but anyway, i made a youtube account and i vlogged and i basically sat in my seventies arm chair and talked about my spring term and my birthday and how i got a new book and had a lion king and my boyfriend got me a storm trooper and how i was watching the lion king (which i'm watching now, go figure) and i was super awkward, had just gotten out of the shower, and hadn't even bothered doing my hair.

and then i said something awkward like "i think i'm going to blog about ACCL because it's my blog every day in june GO! challenge and um... i miss you guys."

and now that it's after dinner and i'm sitting here watching the lion king before work, i was like, "mannnn i need something to blog about, but nothing awesome happened today, i just sat on my porch and read blindness and listened to the new pornographers."

gosh this is the longest intro ever. I'M JUST GOING TO BLOG ABOUT ACCL.

so. ACCL (stop saying ay-cee-cee-el. it's excel.) started with everybody leaving campus and me being alone in my dorm building. and suddenly i realized that i was completely alone and i didn't know anybody staying for ACCL and i had that panic feeling that i get when i watch criminal minds at four in the morning, so i barricaded my door, called my mother on the phone, and cried.

i am a grown-ass woman, folks.

then i realized that all i had to eat for dinner was oatmeal. so like a grown-ass woman, i ordered my own pizza.

i spent the evening watching the lion king, and the next morning i woke up, went downstairs to make some oatmeal in the lobby and was confronted with vomit. ERRRYWHERE.

this was ACCL week. there was nobody on campus. i didn't have any residents. i was not going to be an RA. my hall director wasn't even around. and on my first morning of freedom, i had to be an RA. this did not bode well.

at four that afternoon, i went to the chapel basement, where i was instructed to go by my heavy duty schedule that looked like something from RA training. or church camp. and i found the rest of us sixteen ACCLers sitting on cushions on the floor.

we introduced ourselves by playing games. we talked about favorite kitchen appliances. i explained my strange almost obsession with spoons. because they're an appliance, right?

carol, our amazing chaplain, bought a whole bunch of food, and we had dinner. our three ACCL leaders, emmy, jennafer, and caitlin (a fellow RA of mine) split us into groups. each leader had two groups, a green and a purple. i was in emmy's purple group with justin and katie e. we called ourselves the phantom platypi, and we had dishes clean-up duty on friday, our last day of ACCL. we also had to lead two bible studies, starting the next day.

my bible study!
minus alyssa. :(

after dinner, i attended my first bible study, led by emmy. i had gotten an email from her, jennafer and caitlin, and they had told me that ACCL was super fun and that they thought i'd be perfect for it.

when i found out that it was about leading a bible study, i wanted to run with my tail between my legs. we had a session where we wrote our biggest fears about leading a bible study, and mine was this: if i've never been to a bible study, how on earth am i supposed to LEAD one?


the silence after that was read anonymously was palpable. or maybe that was just me freaking out.

ACCL got us up bright and early for breakfast in the chapel basement at eight thirty. we did fun energizers that involved screaming and shouting, and we did a devotional. i'd never had one of those either, at least not outside of church camp. then we had class time with our college president.

president abernathy, or as i like to call him, the abs, is pretty legit. i live next to his house. his kids are adorable. he's an english professor. he rides his bike around campus. he kayaks. he knows my name, my major, and that i'm an RA. basically, he's awesome.

but it's really weird when he's like, "okay, let's take out our bibles and talk about jesus!"

that whole concept was weird for me. i'm not an overly religious person. in my family, religion is kind of a private thing. and here at ACCL, everything was about jesus. we prayed before and after every activity. we meditated. we read our bibles. we recited scriptures.

i felt like a novice monk.

on monday afternoon, we had "safe play" training, where we had partners that navigated us through an obstacle course while we were blindfolded. i absolutely love being blindfolded because of kip, so was i very excited. we then crossed a river with planks while having various ailments: my legs were tied together and justin had his hands behind his back. and we had a human knot record of the year.

let this sink in for a minute.

1. we undid a human knot in less than a minute.
2. we undid a human knot in less than a minute without speaking.
3. we undid a human knot with half of the group blindfolded. those who we were not blindfolded could not speak. those who were blindfolded could.

ACCL jump before soccer!

yeah, we were pretty badass.

tuesday was once again bright and early, with fun energizers, devotionals, and class time. after lunch we played hardcore soccer and did various soccer games and drills with the soccer coach. it made me realize how terrible i was at soccer, and then i wondered why on earth my mother was qualified to coach my third grade soccer team.

afterwards, we sat on the chapel steps and ate popsicles.

by now we'd known each other for two days, and we were already bests friends in christ. that is not a sentimental statement. that is a solid fact.

that night we all ate dinner at carol's house, and it was one of the greatest dinners of my life.

on wednesday we got up reeeal early and went to habitat for humanity in mt. pleasant for our service project. i was kind of expecting to be on a roof nailing something, you know, building a house, but did you know that habitat for humanity has something called restore? it's kind of like goodwill. so if you're broke and need anything and everything for a house, check one out. i promise you, it'll be worth it.

we spent a good three hours clearing a storage building out. we moved hundreds of windows and... ceiling tiles. we moved hundreds upon hundreds of ceiling tiles onto a truck. we made an assembly line and sang camp songs, choked on dust, wore awkward gloves, and praised jesus when we worked together to move heavy pieces of furniture.

we're a good looking bunch. can you find me?
i'm the only one in a cardigan.

honestly, i don't remember our afternoon activity, but i know that we took our ACCL picture. we continued to talk about leading small groups and of course, had bible studies. that night for dinner we had a service dinner. you were not allowed to get anything for yourself, and you were not allowed to ask for anything. you had to be perceptive of the needs of those around you.

it was cool.

on thursday, after class, devotions, bible reading, and suicide prevention training (because even people that go to bible studies can be suicidal), we went to the park. we had a bonfire and we roasted hot dogs (veggie burgers for me) and we lost ourselves on the playground. i mean really lost ourselves. i have never felt so wild and free and in love with god in my entire life as i did running around screaming and swinging with my new best friends. it was a one of a kind experience, climbing all over the playground equipment.

and i slack-lined.

slack-lining.
like a boss.

justin (he's on the right) and his marvelous camera documented the whole thing. we took group pictures, we just had a so much fun it shouldn't have even been allowed.

friday was our last day. we got up early, ate breakfast, had our devotionals, had one last class time, had lunch, and we spent the afternoon singing and writing stuff on each other's pieces of paper. encouragements, prayers, anything. we had a puzzle where we wrote our strengths and weaknesses, and when the puzzle fit together, they complemented each other. we got in a circle and we prayed together about the awesome week that we had had, and how it come to a close too soon. we made bracelets to remind us of each other. we said tearful goodbyes.

ACCL was over. and it had been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

so, i'm going to leave you with some pictures of the week. and my vlog. in case you want to see what i said to my lovely ACCL friends.

veggie burger. on a stick.

strengths and weaknesses.

phantom platypi! unite!
with popsicles?

to all my ACCL loves, i love you more than i can explain. you guys are super amazing people. and i'm so happy that we got to spend this week together. :)

oh. here's my awkward vlog.

it wasn't a three this time.

so i'm sitting on my screeneed in porch, and jacob (the boyfriend not the best friend) is playing his guitar and singing something and it's thunderstorming and i'm looking for a rainbow and simultaneously taking an instagram picture when i realize

IT'S JUNE. I GOTTA BLOG TODAY.

if it's only the second day, this doesn't bode well for my go! challenge.

so far my day has consisted of nothing blog worthy.

1. i got up.
2. i ate some cheerios.
3. i showered.
4. i FINALLY unpacked my room.
5. i ate some lunch.
6. i fell asleep watching the royal tenenbaums. which really bummed me out, because i've wanted to watch that movie for four years, and suddenly i wake up and richie is trying to commit suicide.

oh man. if that was a huge spoiler, i'm deeply sorry. but not sorry enough to delete it.

absolutely nothing blog worthy.

so this kind of has to do with my birthday, which is tomorrow. tomorrow is a sunday. my last birthday on a sunday was my sixteenth birthday, and now it's my twenty-first. here's the thing about sundays.

1. stores are closed.
2. jacob has to go back to michigan.
3. i don't have to work. i suppose that's a good thing on my birthday. the last time i worked, my kids pushed me in the pool. with my clothes on. that was my eighteenth.
4. you have to go to church.

don't get me wrong. i love church. but in the summer, who wants to get up that early?

so i decided that my birthday celebration would be on saturday. that's today. unless you live in australia or something. and if you do, that's really cool, and you should write me a letter and we can be pen pals.

my aunt owns this really sweet dance studio. she totally like, built it from the ground up ten years ago. today is her dance recital, which is like, the biggest three day weekend of her life, and normally we have to help sell tickets, flowers, concessions, what have you. that means no birthday celebration for me. it also meant that she didn't get to come to my graduation. but that's okay. when you own a business, you pretty much rock.

jacob and i managed to squeeze out of selling dance recital tickets, or flowers (or candy like last year) by saying that we were going bowling to celebrate my birthday because you just can't properly celebrate a birthday on sunday.

initially, like, five months before today, i had decided that i wanted a big birthday party and all of my friends could come down from michigan and we could go bowling and have milkshakes and it would just be super awesome!

and then i remembered that we're all broke college students and everybody except me lives in michigan.

so jacob and i went bowling by ourselves.

first stop: my old house.

i am the only person in my family that is creepy and sentimental about my old house. i lived there for sixteen years and sixteen days, and i absolutely loved it. my mom and i had our favorite walking route, so jacob and i embarked on it, parking a good distance away from my old house so we weren't being creepy. i was thoroughly upset that they had removed the tree that i spen my summers reading harry potter in.

yes. i was one of those girls that read books in trees.

after i gave jacob the in-depth tour ("that house used to be yellow. that guy gave out good halloween candy. my best friend lived on this street. AH I JUST TRIPPED ON THE SIDWALK") we went to georgetown, which was pretty much like... childhood. back in the day, my mom and my brother and i would walk to the library, we'd stop at the mill and get bread, and sometimes we'd look at the puppies in the pet shop. on wednesday's the theatre had movies for fifty cents. and of course, we'd get ice cream at TCBY yogurt.

it was obvious that TCBY hadn't had a customer in a while. the college-aged girl that was in there looked so happy to see us i thought that she would cry. i have never been wished a good evening that enthusiastically by a food services employee in my life.

after jacob got distracted by the pipe store, we managed to go bowling.

the lady that gave us our shoes and took my money turned out to be an aide in my first grade classroom, and she remembered me. never mind that first grade was a good fourteen years ago. she knew my name and everything. when i told her that i just finished my second year of college, was going to go study abroad, and had gotten an internship, she just shook her head and said, "damn it i'm old."

she gave us a lane next to what looked like a seven year old's birthday party.

why we hadn't gotten a lane in the nearly empty other side of the bowling alley was beyond me.

this is where i want to remind you, my beloved reader, that bowling is not my thing. at all. i do believe that i have bowled a lower score than you can ever hope to achieve in your lifetime.

that's right. i bowled a three.  three pins. the entire game.


i was determined to beat jacob in bowling. but you know, when it comes to beating someone in bowling, that just never works out for me.

there was a four year old bowling next to me. he got a better score than i did. granted, he had bumpers. but still. he was also wayyy cuter than me.

i was very happy to learn that bowling isn't jacob's forte either, and i got decently competitive. jacob is not at all a competitive person, and every time that i got angry because of how i'd bowled or how he'd bowled, he just smiled and gave me a kiss on the nose. because that's supposed to make me feel better.

i was very happy that we had matching shoes, and when jacob told me he was thirsty, he wasn't lying. he drank an entire pitcher of water almost single-handedly.

two games went too quickly. it definitely wasn't the bowling extravaganza that i had envisioned earlier, with all of my college friends and milkshakes amd being out until midnight. it was just jacob and i, and we were in and out in forty-five minutes.

but to sound sentimental and lovey-dovey and what have you, it was perfect just the way it was.

and on the way home was listened to classical music like bosses.

it's been a good prep birthday day. tomorrow should be fantastic. i'm going to wear this really weird dress that i bought, and today, my mom made me a lion king cake.

i repeat.

MY MOTHER MADE ME A FUGGIN' LION KING CAKE AND I GET TO EAT IT AND LOVE IT AND IT WILL BE THE GREATEST TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY CAKE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, OKAY.


um. here are some bowling pictures.

i guess we're adorable?

this is jacob.
he's my boyfriend.

matching shoes!

attempting to bowl.
attempting.

yep.
we tied.

day one. the trip to wal-mart.

it's the first day of june. we all know what this means.

1. i make a list. (a list on my blog?! NO.)
2. IT'S MY BLOG EVERYDAY IN JUNE GO! CHALLENGE! YEEEAH BUDDY.
3. it's two days until i turn that magical age where i can consume adult beverages.
4. my lovely boyfriend is here for the weekend to celebrate.

you obviously knew all of these things going in. obviously.

so there's my mandatory list for this post. i have no idea when those became mandatory. i just realized one day that hey, i really liked to write lists, and it felt easier to describe things in lists rather than writing long, boring paragraphs and scaring you all away. i hope that my lists aren't scary.

so. this post. it's about wal-mart.

during my english reading writing and research class this past semester, we discussed feminist theory. we didn't go into detail about how to approach literature with it, but we talked a lot about feminism. and of course, dr. aspinall, with his pink pants and intense shakespeare knowledge, was a hipster feminist. meaning that he was a feminist before it was cool. somehow, after reading this very interesting poem about dead poets wandering around a brightly lit grocery store that i pictured as meijer, we talked about consumerism.

i'd never liked walmart. after we discussed consumerism and feminism and all kinds of fun stuff for an hour and a half, i decided that i would never go to wal-mart to buy anything. ever again.


i also promised myself i'd never drink alcohol, but i have a bottle of wine waiting for me in the fridge for sunday, so that worked out well.

this really starts out with me moving out of my dorm room. as a resident assistant, i had a double all to myself, and as a resident assistant that joined a sorority, my room was full of STUFF. i spent five days moving out, and the last day i spent a good five hours just hauling stuff to my car and shoving the rest in a storage closet, because i get free storage for living in indiana and going to school in michigan.

i could not continue packing my room before i addressed the issue of my extra bookshelf, which was holding up half of my bunk bed. it was filled with signs of one of my addictions: empty dr. pepper cans.

in the fair state of michigan, one can return cans and get ten cents back. this is not true on indiana. how is this fair?

in michigan, you pay that ten cents when you buy the can. not in indiana. here in my fair state, we just have a big recycling bin and we throw everything recyclable (that word looks weird) in it and the city sorts it for us. alas, no money. we recycle out of the goodness of our own hearts.

i needed to go to walmart to return all evidence of my addiction so i could continue packing. i also needed trash bags to put all of my stuff in for the ride home. (that turned out to be a big mistake. which helped break my ipod. rest in peace, brick.)

i had never returned cans before, and neither had riley, jacob's fraternity brother and fellow RA who's on my staff next year. he's from phoenix where they have the same system as indiana. so we got in my car and drove to walmart together with my incriminating cans in the back.

(please note that i have just completed an hour of zumba, my hair is pulled back as far as my short hair will allow it to be pulled back, and i am in exercise shorts, a jog bra, and a baggy t-shirt.)

the ride to walmart is uneventful. the indie station finally comes in just in time to play the offspring, which is not my favorite in the world. i was really hoping for some mumford, or of monsters and men. no such luck.

we pull into the parking lot and riley helps me carry my three bags of cans inside, which is nothing for him, because he's at least six five. and we run into betsie in her truck. she's going to be on our RA staff next year too. so we wave excitedly at her and run over.

her entire truck bed is full of cans and bottles.

me: that's a lot of cans.
riley: BEER CANS
me: we are not on campus. no RA mode.
betsie: it's from my parents, jeeeeez.
me: how much money do you think is in these cans?
betsie: enough for taco bell.

thinking like a true college student. i, for one, hate taco bell, but that's another post in and of itself.

so, we make our ungainly way inside of walmart, going through the wrong door, so we end up walking across the store with this incredible amount of cans filling up an entire shopping cart. we make it to the can dispenser place, and there are six dispensers. betsie kindly shows us how to put the cans in butt first and then when you're done feeding it, you press a green button and it gives you a receipt for how much money you earned.

total earnings: $2.90. not as much as i thought.

betsie, riley and i start on betsie's pile. i have a zumba song in my head and i'm shaking my hips. riley is heaving bottles out of betsie's full shopping cart and then suddenly, every single dispenser is beeping.

we filled up all the  bins with betsie's cans.


me: RILEY! GUARD THE CANS FROM EVIL!
betsie: TO THE CASHIER!
riley: is this now a space mission?
me: WE'RE OUT TO DESTROY THE RING!

yes, this was still during my lord of the rings phase. which hasn't quite ended.

we find a nice lady working the self-check-out lane and she gives me my three dollars and gets somebody to clear the bins for betsie. meanwhile, she cashes betsie's receipts, and she's already at twenty bucks. and we still have a lot more.

we get back to riley. we fill two more of the bins. betsie walks away with a lotta cash.

remember when i said that i would never buy anything from wal-mart again? um. yes.

i needed tash bags. we were already here. i had three dollars. so i asked the greeter, a nice old lady, where they were.

betsie: oh don't worry, i know where they are.
nice old lady greeter: aww, let me do my job!

did betsie know where the trash bags were? of course not.

of course, we found them after riley pined away for a really big TV, and then he bought one of this big tupperware bins, because he has store stuff too, being from arizona and everything. we decide, as we are literally dancing down the aisles, that we shouldn't be caught around people, so we go to the self-check-out lane. i buy my trash bags in spanish.

check-out: por favor, tome su artículo fuera de la zona de embolsado.

OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER. i've never used cash before at a self-check-out machine, and it's yelling at me in spanish. i just don't know where my cash goes. so what do i do?

what any sane person does. i start screaming back at it. in spanish.

people start staring at me. i am not hispanic. what i am is a sweaty white girl in work out clothes yelling at  an automated machine. in spanish.

riley: emily i think you should just pick up-
me: SILENCIO!

pretty much.

on the way out, the nice wal-mart greeter lady asked us if we knew where the bags were. when betsie said no, she chased us out of the store.

the story ends with how i bought my trash bags for ninety-seven cents and how we literally did zumba across the parking lot. i kid you not, betsie and i were doing zumba across the parking lot. and we stepped out in front of a truck and almost died. that was pretty awesome.

we followed betsie back to campus. we weren't sure what she was listening to but it involved a lot of hand flinging and hair tossing.

i got my mumford and sons. roll away your stone, if you're wondering.

on a completely unrelated note, i have found my tune for the summer, and it will probably frequently come up in the rest of this month's blog posts. prepare yourselves. and please, listen to it, it is my far the greatest thing i have heard all year.

yes. it is called "i just can't wait for booty."

let the blog every day in june go! challenge begin! and may the odds be ever in your favor. (that's another post.)