and then i worked at kroger.

my father always told me that you should have a job that you hate for a while to remind you why you got your education.

i thought that that job was my coaching stint that i had for five summers. i've blogged about that numerous times. and sometimes it sucked, but it was mostly like, the greatest thing i could've done with my summer.

after i graduated from college, my parents had a habit of coming home from work and saying, "so, found a job yet?"

i didn't want to get into anything too permanent, because i'm only taking a year off before i go to england for graduate school.

so, with my big bad bachelor's degree, the first place i applied at was starbucks. then target. then debrands, the chocolate factory behind my house. then kroger.

guess who i got a call from?

kroger.

guess who had an interview at kroger? this girl.

interview selfie.

i was super nervous. like, did i really know much about kroger other than the fact that my mom sometimes lets me use her fuel points? nope, i really didn't know that much about kroger.

i went in for the interview with a nice lady named renee. i told her all about being an RA and how i was skilled in working with people and kroger seemed like a Friendly Family Community People Place.

not to be vain or anything, but she was impressed.

i told her i wanted to work in the bakery but i had no baking experience, i just loved it and i wanted to learn everything there was to know about baking and i'd be an enthusiastic and fast-paced learner. we shook hands.

a week later i get a call that says, hey emily we want you to work here but not in the bakery. wanna work in the deli, the produce department, or as a cashier?

1. cashier- WORKING WITH PEOPLE ALL DAY. PEOPLE WITH COUPONS AND SCREAMING CHILDREN. NO.
2. deli- MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT
3. produce- you can't go wrong with spinach, right?

sure, i'll work in the produce department.

i had a four hour orientation where i got my spiffy kroger uniform. (adam never has to worry about men hitting on me in it.) i drank my weight in the kroger provided sweet tea.

then i did six hours of computer training. i thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head.

then i showed up for my first day of work, a six and a half hour shift that was a half hour shy of me getting a half hour lunch break.

you know, i thought that working in the produce department was going to be just like... hanging out with vegetables.

holy shit was i wrong.

on my first day i shadowed drew, a guy that i went to high school with, and i washed so much lettuce that i thought my hands were going to fall off. literally. washing them in ice water. my hands have always been susceptible to cold and it was awful. then we loaded all of the washed vegetables into big tubs and ran them out to the wet rack, which got its name because of the fact that it's all the fresh stuff that gets misted.

does the rack warn you when it's about to mist?

no. of course not. ten minutes in i had soaked arms and wet glasses.

my second day on the job was memorial day. it was crowded and terrifying. people kept asking me where the garlic was and i didn't know. normally everyone has an assignment. drew works the wet rack. brian works the special promotions table. brett works the salad wall. everyone has a duty to watch out for the bananas. laura cuts the fruit.

you know, jobs. assigments.

we didn't have assignments on memorial day. i spent all day running around trying to load things onto my cart and put them out as fast as i could.

oh, let me tell you about the carts.

they're these big blue monsters. they have to have at least twelve items on them or corporate gets angry. besides that, you need to have all kinds of extra things on them, like those little slippery bags you put peppers into. you have a dry erase clipboard to make "lists" of things that you need to go get from the cooler, which is approximately thirty-five degrees, gigantic, and always unorganised and towering with pallets of vegetables and fruits fresh off the truck. then, you haul this huge heavy cart into the middle of the produce section and load things while people shop around you, get in your way, and ask you questions that you can't answer.

i spent an entire day cutting fruit. i mean, cutting strawberries for eight hours doesn't sound like fun, but let me tell you, it was the highlight of my week.

blake taught me how to do the salad wall. the salad wall is like my safe haven because everything is LABELLED. which means i know where everything is. i have a huge salad cart that's full of bagged salads, and the boxes are all labelled. i open them up with my trusty dusty box cutter and fill the slots with salads. the salad slots pull out and there's a little black tab that keeps everything pushed to the front. i slam the tab all the way back, lock it in place, load the salads, pull the tab back forward, and move on.

i do this with bagged salads, organic foods of every kind, mushrooms, and juice.

it sounds boring, but the salad wall is always in need. people are like "hey i want this southwest house ranch" then realise that they don't and put it back in the hearts of romaine section. so i get to move it.

when things get too dreary, i fluff them up. pull all the juices forward. make sure the mushrooms are in the right spot.

you'd be surprised how quickly you learn where things are when you tend a labelled wall every day for eight hours.

my first day i'd open a box of dole lite caesar and i'd stand there and be like, where are you where are you where are you before finally finding it.

now i'm like, dole lite caesar is right by the fresh selections endless summer.

wow, that was kind of sad.

my favourite part about kroger, besides the people (seriously, there are some great characters in the produce department) is the baler.

BALERRRRRR

in the back stock room, employees only, there's this huge green piece of machinery that crushes cardboard. the produce department goes through a lot of cardboard boxes and we load them onto a cardboard cart. when it gets full, someone notices and runs it down to the baler.

how to run the baler:

1. throw the boxes into the opening. try to make it even.
2. when it's full, bring down the door so you don't get your hands cut off.
3. press down the down button.
4. the baler goes CRUSH CRUSH CRUSH CRUSH CRUSH
5. when the door opens again, repeat.

it wastes so much time and it's such a destructive little machine. I LOVE IT.

i'm not that happy with the baler at the moment. on thursday a piece of  cardboard was stuck on the top. while i was trying to yank it out, i hit my elbow on the lip of it and almost passed out. it still hurts and i should probably make sure it's not hairlined fractured, but my work schedule is too busy for that.

i think the worst thing about working at kroger, besides the fact that it's just menial physical labour that i'm not paid enough to do with my bachelor's degree, is that the schedule only updates once a week on fridays.

like, i want to make plans. i can't do that if i don't know my schedule ahead of time.

there's also not a very fine line between full-time and part-time. full-time is forty hours a week. i'm part-time. so is my friend megan. i'm working thirty-two hours this week. she's working thirty-seven.

um.

when i get home from work, i'm always exhausted and hungry. the other day i was rooting around in the fridge and i found a fresh selections box of 50/50 spring mix. i spent all day loading that into the salad wall and i almost cried.

i love vegetables, but they're starting to infuse terror into my heart.

my first two days at kroger were the worst and i came home crying. i wanted to ask my manager if i could move to being a cashier.

now i've reached that point where as i'm stocking salads, i'm just thinking welp, just another day at work, which i think is a good mentality. i still kind of dread going to work, but it's not horribly anxiety inducing anymore.

plus, it's money.

daddy, congratulations, i've found the job that i hate to remind me why i got my education.

doughnuts shape who you are! and other myths about strange holidays

today is national doughnut day.

tumblr, on special occasions such as this, has a small icon next to their large tumblr logo at the top of the dashboard page. every time i refresh the page, there is a different little doughnut icon that i can casually scroll over. when i do, it tells me a doughnut fact.

or tells me that i am, in fact, a doughnut.

maybe i have been a doughnut all along. a doughnut disguised as a tall, short haired girl with a love of english literature and a hatred of joffrey baratheon.

i've been spending my day thinking about what i wanted to blog about, but all i can think about is national doughnut day.

1. do people actually celebrate national doughnut day?
2. if so, how?
3. i feel like if all they do is go out and buy a doughnut, that's kind of lame.
4. how would i celebrate national doughnut day?

like this!

it's amazing what you can find when you simply google "doughnut themed party". pinterest ensues.

(i should blog about pinterest later. mental note on how i'm planning my wedding and have an entire board set aside for one specific building.)

unfortunately, i can't celebrate national doughnut day by going to dunkin donuts, which is handily just up the road. but i can celebrate it by blogging about doughnuts and how they've shaped my life.

HOW DOUGHNUTS HAVE SHAPED MY LIFE

once upon a time, when i was a young lass in elementary school, fort wayne community schools did this really cool thing where if you got a super cool report card, you could go to krispy kreme and get free doughnuts.

I KNOW, RIGHT?

i don't mean to be like... vain or anything, but my brother and i are pretty smart. so in elementary school, every single report card we got was like A A A A A A A all down it except for handwriting.

damn it, handwriting. you still ruin my life.

whenever we brought our report cards home, we'd show them to our parents and they'd plan a time for all four of us to go to krispy kreme and get a dozen doughnuts. EACH.

we'd be excited the whole ride there. we'd watch them make the doughnuts. we'd pick out the kind that we wanted.

i always got chocolate with sprinkles, obviously. (i still do.)

when FWCS stopped doing this, i was absolutely heartbroken. i mean, i graduated from high school in the top three percent of my class. don't i deserve some doughnuts for that?

then krispy kreme went out of business and now you can only buy them stale at kroger and even then my mom still won't buy them for me because i'm old and make my own money or something.

"you are not a child, emily. you are a college graduate. if you want doughnuts, buy them yourself."

whatever, mom.

when i was a senior in high school, i began this dreary thing called morning swim practice, where i woke up at four thirty in the morning, picked up my friend emma, and we swam from five fifteen until six forty-five in the morning.

then, sleepy and hungry and not ready for a full day of school plus another swim practice and homework, we would swing through the burger king drive thru and get hashbrowns.

well, emma would get hashbrowns. i'd grab a super size dr. pepper and drink it all the way the way through second period until i thought my bladder was going to explode.

i had saved up money from my summer job and guess where i squandered it after i had that dr. pepper?

AT DUNKIN DONUTS.

as a sleepy collective swim team we'd meet there, get coffee, and chow down before school. one time i was so focused on my doughnut that i almost missed my national honours society meeting.

but it wasn't until i was a sophomore in college that doughnuts really changed my life.

it was the day that i discovered that you could buy cheap delicious doughnuts at walmart and i had plenty of money to buy them and plenty of gas to get myself there.

i know i've blogged about this before, but i went to walmart with a lot of RAs to get RA type stuff and once there, i was lured into the doughnut trap.

the end result of me buying those doughnuts: both of my back tires being shredded, me being late for my first teaching lesson at alma high school, almost missing lunch and not turning in a paper, 236 dollars in car damages, some angry shouting at a fraternity house, and chocolate all over my fingers.

yeah, doughnuts changed my life.

i am no longer going to be a teacher.

(that's correlation, not causation, by the way.)

the other day i was in desperate need of two things and my need was so real that i actually cried and posted about it on various forms of social media.

THINGS I WANT RIGHT NOW:

1. MY BOYFRIEND
2. A DOUGHNUT

the boyfriend was a pretty immediate need. he lives two hundred miles away. the proper term for that is shitty.

i don't eat doughnuts all that often, not since the happy elementary school days and my senior year of high school where i was often so tired i didn't know what day it was.

but sometimes i'll be sitting alone in my room watching netflix and generally being the boring person that i am and then i'll be like

OHMYGODINEEDADOUGHNUTRIGHTTHEEFFNOW

does this ever happen to you?! like, ever?!

since i can't celebrate national doughnut day by going all out in true ron swanson fashion...

... i probably won't get a doughnut today.

also probably because i work for five hours and ain't nobody got time for doughnuts when there are avocados to be stocked.

EAT YOUR DOUGHNUTS, KIDS. THEY ARE IMPORTANT AND CAN SHAPE WHO YOU ARE TODAY.

CELEBRATE THIS IMPORTANT NATIONAL HOLIDAY THAT CAN ONLY BE FOUND IN AMERICA.

the long haired man friend.

i had the perfect alma love story once.

we met at becoming a scot day. he told me that he saw me walking across the lawn and that he had to talk to me. so he said hello. we ate lunch together. we courted each other online all summer. when we moved in for freshman year, we started dating during orientation week.

we were the alma english major power couple for two and a half years.

SOUNDS SO PERFECT, RIGHT?

we're not together anymore. sorry to spoil the ending.

(but like, if you actually know me, this is totally old news. seriously. we've been broken up for like... a year and a half.)

who thought that i could have another alma love story? who envisioned that it would be possible?

it was. and it was nowhere near perfect.

picture this. it's pouring down rain outside and i've walked to bruske hall, which is the farthest dorm from mine, and i'm standing in my friend santino's room soaking wet. santino is showing me music and video games and i'm a little bit hangry so i'm laughing uproariously at everything and we're generally being loud and obnoxious, and then suddenly there's a guy standing in the doorway.

this guy has hair that goes past his nipples and he has double lip rings. really thick snakebites.

and i'm like, YO YOU'RE IN CHOIR WITH ME?

and he's like, YEAH I THINK I AM. and his voice is like, extra deep and i'm a little bit taken aback by how much like morgan freeman he sounds.

he chills with us for a while. i'm still with my perfect alma love story man, but things are rocky and i don't want to admit that. long haired guy tells me that his name is adam. i say hi i'm emily. we shake hands. he lives next door to santino. while i'm getting ready to go back to my room, i peek into his room and see that his bed is lofted to the extreme. i put my hands on my hips and ask him how he gets up into it. he does a series of strange gymnastics, makes it atop his bed, and says, "like that."

a little bit different than "i saw you walking across the lawn and i had to talk to you."

more like "who is this loud annoying chick practically screaming next door? i should investigate."

a few weeks later, my alma love story ends. i'm getting ready for the vagina monologues, wearing angry vagina related shirts, and testing the waters of red lipstick the colour of the blood of men's rights activists. adam and i have started awkwardly approaching each other in choir. choir is three days a week and sometimes before rehearsal, he'll come say hi to me. i want to be his friend but i'm really wrapped up in this whole mindset of oh my god my boyfriend of two and a half years broke up with me, what do i with my life. (the correct answer is fall in love with yourself.)

after the vagina monologues, adam and i are facebook friends. we're talking every day in choir. our huge end of the year choir concert is coming up and we're seeing more of each other. i've torn my meniscus and he's been escorting me to the library and getting me books. one day while i'm reading about john donne, he draws me a picture of a fancy cat and sticks to my carrel. we're becoming fast friends. he tells me he wants a sleeve just like his brother. i tell him i like his lip rings but doesn't that make it hard to kiss someone?

last week of term. we're eating almost every meal together. he doesn't accompany me to the PMA end of the year bonfire after our huge choir concert but i can tell he wants to. during exam week we watch movies in my room and have a heart to heart on my dorm room floor until three in the morning.

we sing together at my brother's graduation. he meets my parents and helps debunk my furniture. i hug him hard and tell him i'll miss him while i'm in england.

when i'm england, he is the only person that i talk to in the states besides my parents.

we text each other inappropriate things all summer. i tell him about my coaching job, he tells me about his foul-mouthed mother. every day that i don't text him, i feel like something is wrong. we're pretty much hard and fast best friends and i can't remember how i met him or how this all came about. he goes up north for a week and i miss him. i go to oregon for five days and he misses me. we plan on me visiting him and hanging out, but it never happens.

after RA training in august, adam moves back into his old room. i meet him in bruske and tackle him. best friends reunited.

adam makes it into big kid choir and i'm still in chorale, medium kid choir. i don't see him much on campus. we make the time to hang out. all three choir rehearsals are fun because i have an excuse to hang out with him. we spend a decent amount of time together, but not too much. at homecoming he meets my parents again and we hang out at PMA. he puts his arm around me and i don't mind it. on halloween, we watch the shining together and i get scared. he cuddles me and offers to spend the night in my room to make sure i feel safe. it doesn't feel weird.

but it is weird because we're not dating, right?

eveyone on campus has noticed that we're best friends that do more than best friends do. we are adamant and wear signs that say BEST FRIENDS NOT DATING to deter people. i can't tell you how many times i said, "oh adam? no, we're not dating." to people.

in october i realise that i want to date him. but i'm scared because i don't think i've quite gotten to the point of falling in love with myself. i'm afraid to enter a new relationship even though my perfect alma love story is already in a new relationship. i'm scared.

so is adam.

i start calling him my long haired man friend, because man friend is different than boyfriend. it catches on. we like it. people like it.

december third we have a super long choir rehearsal (eight until eleven) and adam walks me back to my apartment because it's slippery outside. outside of the door to the building, he tells me that he needs to talk to me. i invite him up and pour myself a big glass of wine because i know that something is coming. we sit on my bed. i put on soft music and gulp down the wine.

adam: what is this relationship?
me: i don't know.
adam: we need to figure it out, because i can't do this.
me: what do you want this relationship to be?
adam: don't pull that. what do you want it to be?
me: i don't know.
adam: bullshit. you know what you want this relationship to be. i've been in relationships like this with girls and it's never ended well. what are we? don't beat around the bush. what is this?
me: well if you asked me to date you, i'd say yes.
adam: (blinks and stares at me)
adam: what?
me: IF YOU ASKED ME TO DATE YOU I'D SAY YES
adam: are you fucking serious
me: ASK ME OUT
adam: WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME
me: YES
lindsey, next door and listening through the walls: YAAAAAS

facebook has a field day. my friend riley makes over a hundred dollars in bets that we'd start dating by the end of the semester.

all i can think about is how dumb this is, how adam is three years and two grades younger than me and i'm graduating in four months and then what? but then i realise i don't care because he makes me happy.

we have an unconventional relationship. we talk about weird stuff. i fart in front of him. when i hiccup really loudly in saga he yells "SHUT UP OR I'LL PUT YOU BACK IN THE HOME!" i have a habit of calling him an asshole. he points out my middle class privilege when i complain too much about my minivan.

this is so different than the courtship that my ex boyfriend and i had. the polite relationship that we had for two and a half years. this relationship is real and visceral and intense and vulgar and unexpected.

but it makes me happy.

adam, who i still call my long haired man friend, told me that he began to have feelings for me in april, but he let me fall in love with myself first, and that he would wait for as long as that took.

apparently, it took until december third.

(no apologies for how sappy this was, by the way.)

we don't do formal well.

this is a more accurate depiction of our relationship.

it's so cute! PAINT IT.

when you're in college, walmart is your friend.

mostly because your poor as fudge.

my last semester at alma was FULL of walmart visits. it always made me hate myself a bit because my parents and i are like, super against walmart.

ya know. the whole taking over of businesses and not paying their workers fair wages and other such things that just generally aren't cool.

but when you're in college, you're poor, so it's like HAYYY I NEED BOOZE LET'S GO TO WALMART!

on a particular trip with barbara and little emily, my apartment-mate, we were going grocery shopping and i was stocking up on yoghurt. (when i mean stocking up, i mean i bought about twenty-five cups of red velvet cake flavour. because that's normal.)

barbara, who's super crafty, was like, hang on i need some paint and we went into the paint aisle. i'd never been there before except to buy like, HUGE THINGS OF PAINT to paint HUGE THINGS.

mostly sheets.

then suddenly...

little emily: OOOOOH! IT'S A WEE BIRDHOUSE!
me: OMG IT'S SO FUGGIN' CUTE OH MY GOD
little emily: YOU GOTTA BUY IT AND PAINT IT
me: should i?
barbara and little emily: IT'S SO CUTE YOU GOTTA PAINT IT

it was like, three bucks. so i bought the wee birdhouse, got some more paint to add to my RA collection, and i went back to my apartment and painted it while drinking a bottled margarita.

if you're of age and haven't discovered bottled margaritas, well my friend, YOU SHOULD GET INTO THEM.

fast forward to a week later.

i am once again at walmart with barbara, once again stocking up on yoghurt. and suddenly we find ourselves in the paint aisle. and instead of looking at paint, we'e looking at all of the cool wooden shit that they have there that you can paint. and i'm like, DUDE I JUST GOT MY PAYCHECK

and so i left with three new birdhouses of various shapes and two wooden picture frames that now have pictures of myself and barbara and myself and my boyfriend, adam.

the next thing i know, i have painting leggings and a painting shirt. every time i paint, i put them on, stretch my arms, grab a bottled margarita, and get to it.

then i was buying canvases. and more birdhouses. oh god, the birdhouses!

this one found its way onto the apartment window sill.

the ones i hadn't painted were lined up on my bedroom window sill and on my closet shelf, along with my growing paint supply.

soon i had so many colours that i had to buy a bin to put them all in.

then i got about thirty different brushes and and a easel.

soon intense painting parties were ensuing. barbara would come over and we'd paint canvasses and birdhouses together.

birdhouse count: somewhere around 15 (it's hard to remember because i gave a lot of them away as gifts)

canvas count: 12

i hung them all up in my room, too.

don't get me wrong, i'm a really shitty painter. like, horribly shitty. my first canvas painting should tell you that.

adam thinks that india looks like a penis.

AND I KNOW THAT AFRICA IS SUPPOSED TO BE TEN TIMES BIGGER. IT'S ABSTRACT, OKAY?

i made a gigantic collage of all of my paintings. i painted one red and wrote I HEART VAGINAS on it and hung it by my bed. i have a meditative dandelion and a valley with daffodils in it.

i also have a white one that says FUCK in big, bold, black letters to remind me that life isn't permanent and i can always just say fuck it and move on with my life.

i became obsessed with painting. particularly birdhouses.

i painted one and put it at my carrel. i gave one to adam. one to my friend hannah. one to my apartment-mate kait. one to barbara. one to my boss. one to my english professor. another one to my thesis advisor. i painted my mother and myself a matching set that she has on our porch.

i could not stop painting them.

i painted canvasses and hung them up all over my walls. i took pictures and stuff off of my walls to make room for them. my painting shirt was absolutely splattered in paint and i spent more time painting than doing anything else.

(including studying and writing papers. because SENIORITIS IS REAL.)

me: GOTTA GO PAINT
adam: write your english paper
me: NOPE
adam: ...

so i've discovered that painting is good for the soul. like, it SUPER REDUCES STRESS. every time that i was like hella anxious, i'd paint a birdhouse. and it made me happy that i was doing something crafty and something calming.

even if it's painting obscenities onto a canvas.

seriously though, it's so calming painting obscenities onto a canvas.

i could've picked a different random hobby. one that was probably less expensive and less time consuming.

but you know what?

i feel good about myself and i will be damned if i don't love my vagina painting.

because vaginas.

twenty-three and almost put together.

guess what day it is?

tuesday june third.

otherwise known as EMILY'S TWENTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY.

last year i blogged about turning twenty-two and the whole gist of it was like "when you're twenty-two people expect you to have your shit together and maybe like, have an apartment and a significant other and all that good stuff".

last year, on my twenty-second birthday, i didn't have a real kid job, i was still in college, and i was single and not quite ready to mingle because my two and a half year relationship ended and i needed to fall in love with myself before i could fall in love with a man that probably picks his nose.

when you're twenty-three, what do people expect out of you? like, what are societal expectations for being a twenty-three year old?

i am twenty-three and i have these things going for me:

1. a menial, part time job at a grocery store
2. a pretty swell significant other (that i don't believe picks his nose?)
3. a sixteen year old minivan with a michigan sticker on it
4. a super low alcohol tolerance reputation at an alma pub
5. my very own bookshelf adorned with lots of books
6. A BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
7. little to no sense of financial security
8. a vague idea of what i'm doing with my life
9. this blog

i mean, that's some nice stuff going for me, right?

things i am lacking:

1. a real job
2. by real i mean where i actually use my english degree and i'm not stocking green peppers
3. my significant other being IN THE SAME STATE AS ME
4. living in my own place (though i do have a bunch of stuff to move into an apartment on a moment's notice)
5. actual ownership of my sixteen year old minivan
6. did i mention a real job?

soooo i legitimately just googled "societal expectations of being twenty-three" and what popped up was a summary of chapter twenty-three of great expectations by charles dickens.

the english major in me should be thrilled, but good lord, i hated that book. the only redeeming quality was miss havisham catching on fire and dying.

there are a lot of things i could be doing with my life, but what happened was i got hired part time as a producer at kroger, which is entertaining in its own way, but nowhere near what i should be doing with my life. but HAYYY IT'S MONAAAYYYYY.

i'm really starting to feel the whole "marry rich" thing. i'm getting a good vibe from it.

me getting hired at kroger is a gigantic post in and of itself, and don't worry, i'll make sure to post about it.

but here's how working on my birthday came about.

me: heyyy doug?
doug, the creepy supervisor: what's up
me: uhhhh do i have to work on tuesday... it's kind of my birthday
doug: lol

i worked a four hour shift today stocking vegetables and washing broccoli.

a very intense italian lady yelled at me for not having organic bananas that we were not the ripeness that she required, another lady almost ran me over with her cart while i was stocking cilantro, i accidentally put a bunch of cucumbers in the zucchini bin and some lady caught me, an old guy told me i was beautiful, and another old guy decided that it would be funny to start dragging my cardboard cart backwards while i was diligently taking it to the baler.

like, who does that?

who sees a college-aged girl dragging a huge-ass cart of cardboard down the frozen foods aisle and thinks you know what'll be really funny? if i grab the back of her cart and drag it backwards.

blake, this guy i work with, is pretty fun. he was kind of being an asshole to me in a friendly way and finally i threw some broccoli at him and i yelled IT IS MY BIRTHDAY AND I HAVE A BACHELOR'S DEGREE and then he was nice to me.

when you work a menial job, flaunt your degree. people start to respect you.

when i clocked out of my shift, i ran into my US history teacher and he nodded at me and said hello and all i could think was oh my god i bet he expected so much more out of me, i bet he expected me to have a real job that makes real money and doing real things and oh god what am i doing with my life

then i calmly reminded myself that kroger is temporary. (life is temporary, but let's not get all existential on my birthday.) i'm working at kroger to save up money for graduate school in ENGLAND so i can have a MASTER'S DEGREE and become the next JOHN GREEN.

maybe without the sharpie.

and without killing all my characters.

besides working at kroger today, i spent some quality time watching hannibal with hamlet, my bearded dragon.

he was being all cute, just sittin' on my lap like this

HE'S SO CUTE

and then suddenly he trembled a little bit and then

HE POOPED ALL OVER MY WHITE DRESS.

i put him in time out for that. 

it hasn't been one of the best birthdays i've ever had, but it's been a birthday, and birthdays are exciting and special. i got a new book and my momma is getting me a new bookshelf and i get to help pick it out.

a girl with a bachelor's degree in english needs a good bookshelf for all of her books, even the weird ones, like grasses of a thousand colours.

you know, that one play i blogged about forever ago about the dude that has sex with cats.

(pssst here's my badass birthday cake that should make you insanely jealous)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ME.

fifty shades of GALLOPING ABS?!

if you bothered to read the title of this post, i think you know where this is going.

once upon a time, and i mean last july, i decided that i was going to read fifty shades of grey.

this is always interesting for a number of reasons, the most prominent one being that i know absolutely nothing about sex, but i know enough NOT to google things i don't understand.

some things you learn the hard way.

my mother has read all three fifty shades of grey books. she enjoyed them. (NOT IN THAT WAY, YOU PERV. GET OFF MY BLOG.)

now that the pervs are gone, let's get back to july, where i took fifty shades of grey, which i awkwardly checked out of the library, to a public pool for some poolside reading.

i was planning on live tweeting my reactions. that didn't happen. the twitterverse has yet to thank me for this mercy.

so i'm lounging at this pool and i crack the book open and the first thing i realise that anastasia steele (steel? steele? i don't even care.) is the most annoying protagonist i have ever encountered. like, she eclipses katniss everdeen by a million lightyears, and if we remember to a few june challenges ago, i don't particularly like katniss everdeen unless she's pure jennifer lawrence.

basically anastasia: my roommate is aggressive and forward and i'm socially awkward and unhappy and oooh wow this guy is really hot and i like feeling sorry for myself in sweat pants and wahhhhh

basically me: PLZ STOP TALKING

i kept reading. what was worse than anastasia herself was the prose. like, you guys, i have a bachelor's degree in english (that's so weird to say) so i'm kind of a literature snob, but that doesn't stop me from reading all kinds of kids books and YA novels and other awesomeness. i don't exclusively deal with old white dead guys.

the prose in a nutshell was boring, uneducated, and made absolutely no sense. i understand that e. l. james is british, but her characters are living happily in america and probably shouldn't be speaking in british slang.

I DON'T KNOW, MAN. I SPELL THINGS THE BRITISH WAY BUT I DEFINITELY DON'T CALL THE BATHROOM THE LOO.

the prose was literally so bad that i couldn't even get to the sex part.

let's be real, that's what i was striving for. but i never even got there.

where is this even going, you ask me? why does the title of my blog say galloping abs? are there galloping abs in fifty shades of grey?

that is an excellent question. as i never even got to the sexy time part, i have absolutely no idea.

so i'm on tumblr like... all the time. tumblr means... fanfiction. fanfiction can be sweet, but it's mostly just erotic stuff. (and some of it is incredibly well written.) i've seen some weird thorin/bilbo shit that i wish i could unsee.

don't get me started on bible fanfiction. YOU DON'T WANNA GO THERE, KIDS.

(i've never read erotic fanfiction. i have stumbled across it. this is a friendly PSA.)

oftentimes, fanfiction isn't published, with the exception of fifty shades of grey and twilight. (LOL!)

my friend hannah is also on tumblr. one day, she and her girlfriend and myself and my boyfriend were eating lunch together and she was like, you guys i found this erotic book that's about ten times worse than fifty shades of grey and i have to read it to you

and i was like, WORSE THAN FIFTY SHADES OF GREY I GOTTA HEAR THIS.

allow me to present to you...

you can't go wrong with this, you guys.

so the characters in this segment are torolf and hilda. while hannah was reading, i couldn't figure out if torolf was a person or a horse. the cover obviously shows him to be a a dude, but like my title suggests... he has galloping abs.

hannah read an excerpt of chapter seventeen. here are some of the highlights.

"Hilda was sitting on the floor, her round, wet boobs still wet from the shower's water. She dried off the water with a towel, which then became wet."

we're off to a good start.

"As Hilda's buttermilk bosoms squished up against granite abs, Torolf alkmost had a dick aneurysm."

i think he should see a doctor about that.

in the next line, his penis is referred to as a meat wand. harry potter would be so ashamed.

"Her body was like a beautiful flower that was opening and somebody was pushing their dick inside it."

?!!?!?!!!!!!

"Then Torolf moaned, arched his back, and suffered from dick Parkinson's. He pumped in all of his hot pearlescent semen as Hilda spasmed with so many orgasms!"

IS THIS BOOK EVEN REAL OR

"Torolf was gone, escaped out the bedroom window. In the distance, Hilda heard the fading sound of galloping abs."

SO YEAH THIS IS A REAL BOOK AND YEAH I SPIT DR. PEPPER EVERYWHERE WHEN HANNAH READ IT TO ME AND YEAH I FOUND IT ON TUMBLR.

also, in trying to find a picture of the cover for this post, i found a dramatic youtube reading of it, and if you'll excuse me, i think i'm going to listen and die of hilarity.

update: my brother and i are both lying on the floor crying.

with my mighty english literature bachelor's degree, i can pretend to be an expert on old dead white guys that wrote vaguely important things. i'm pretty good at finding symbolism and metaphors and writing papers about literature and stuff. you know.

but maybe i should try my hand at erotic literature again.

my abs will be chiselled and galloping from laughing so hard.

also, you didn't think i wouldn't share the dramatic reading, did you?

HERE IT IS, KIDS. BE PREPARED TO FALL ON THE FLOOR DYING.

GUESS WHO'S BACK? (it's not slim shady.)

DID YOU THINK I WAS GONE FOREVER?!

you probably did, seeing as i haven't blogged since FEBRUARY.

i thought i was gone too. it's fine if you were like, "JEEEEEZ EMILY'S GONE FOREVER, NOW I HAVE NOTHING ENTERTAINING TO READ."

(for the record, there are SO MANY entertaining things to read. things that are far more entertaining than this blog. so read those instead. i would highly suggest sue monk kidd's the invention of wings.)

anywhoo. I'M BACK.

yeah, that's me. i haven't changed much. i have a nose stud instead of ring and it physically pains me and my hair is too long, but yep, that's me. 

so fast forward from a bunch of stuff that happened in february, march, april, and may, and zoom to today.

picture this.

i'm standing in a kroger super marketplace. like, one of those krogers that has furniture and a pharmacy and a jewellery store. 

i'm perusing through some cut salads. you know, those cut salads that come in a bag for lazy people. (my mother is not one of those lazy people. she buys actual lettuce and chops it up to make a salad.) 

and while i'm perusing these salads, i look at my phone and the little calendar on there says 1.

a big fat one.

and i was like, HOLY SHIT IT'S JUNE, IT'S JUNE, I GOTTA BLOG EVERY DAY.

what is this, like... my fourth year doing this? ja. fourth year in a row blogging every day in the month of june.

so here i am, blogging.

what i didn't tell you about that scene i just described, where i was perusing salads, was that i wasn't just perusing them.

I WAS TOTALLY STOCKING THEM BECAUSE I WORK AT KROGER NOW GOTCHA!

we'll get to that. i have another twenty-nine posts to talk about it in. also this is incentive for you to keep reading my daily blog posts to boost my morale and maybe get me hired in a real job doing real blogging.

keepin' it real, you guys.

let's rewind a little bit and do something that i haven't done before on this almost five year old blog of mine.

i'm going to make a list of things i'll blog about.

i know, i know, i make lists all the time. but honestly, the only time i ever make lists is on this blog, or when i go grocery shopping when i'm at college. 

i also make lists of things i'm going to blog about, and i save them to my computer under a heading that's like IT'S JUNE TIME AND IT'S LATE AND YOU CAN'T THINK SO THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BLOG ABOUT but i often don't share those.

but i've been gone for four months. that's a long time. a lot can happen in four months. and a lot of things did happen these past four months, which is why i now have so much to blog about and now you can get a preview of what's to come!

here is why a preview is a good thing in the form of an emily blogging list.

1. you can see what i'll be blogging about!

2. when you see what i'll be blogging about, you'll want to keep reading my posts!

3. when you see what i'll be blogging about, you'll never want to read my blog again!

4. when you see what i'll be blogging about, you'll call the police on me!

(i'm really hoping that i'm kidding with number four. hoping real hard.)

so here's some stuff that's happened in the past four months that i'll be blogging about. probably. maybe. i don't know. i'm not consistent.

1. well i kind of GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE SOOOOOOOO

2. bar crawling. yep.

3. new boyfriend?

4. last senior semester!

5. birdhouses. and paint. and more birdhouses.

6. orange is the new black because YES.

7. singing singing singing.

8. working at kroger. (lol.)

9. moving back home because that kinda sucked.

10. obviously my birthday because that's in two days.

11. whatever else i can remember from the past four months that i can make amusing.

number eleven reminded me of something. when i was meeting with my therapist at school, she was all like, 'why do you blog' and i was like 'why don't you' and she was like 'answer the question' and i was like 'because shitty things happen to me and i can make them funny and then people can laugh at my pain and tell me that i made them laugh' and she was like 'but you're still in pain' and i was like 'ehhhhhhhh whatever!'

moving on.

12. this really cool moth that i saw the other day. it deserves its own post.

13. ALL OF THE WEDDINGS BECAUSE EVERYONE IS GETTING MARRIED AND I'M NOT

14. my ethereal transition into a bitter old woman

15. some interesting times watching a cannibal on television with a lizard

16. uhhhhh graduate school

17. big kid life and how i haven't entered it

18. SOMETHING SUPER SECRET THAT'LL BE REALLY EXCITING.

eighteen things. i think that's enough, right? that gives me some wiggle room for something awesome to happen and for me to stop whatever i'm doing and be like, OH DUDE I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS.

like when i was pretending to peruse salads when i should've been stocking them and i was like, DUDE I GOTTA BLOG.

this blog was not about salads. maybe i've failed.

june snuck up on me, kids. i came home from work today and there was a birthday cake sitting on the kitchen counter and i was like, who's birthday is it? and then i was like, OH MY GOD, EMILY, IT'S YOURS, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

i don't have my shit together. (when do i ever?) but hopefully getting back into blogging will help with that.

i know that this post isn't really about anything specific, just a big HEY I'M BACK LET'S GET CRACKIN' kind of a deal.

BUT I'M BACK AND I'M READY TO BLOG AGAIN. i hope you're still with me, faithful readers. i really am sorry that i haven't blogged in this long. please know that it was physically painful and i just legitimately did not have the time, trying to graduate from college and everything.

i love you, dear readers, and i really hope that we'll get through this blog everyday in june GO! challenge together like we have for the past three years.

I'M BAAAAAACK AND LET'S BOOGEY!