the novel novel.

you know when you're little and an adult crouches down and asks you what you want to be when you grow up?

most of the time you're like A PRINCESS! or A FIREFIGHTER!

i was the firefigher person.

i'm very afraid of fire. this hasn't worked out well for me vocationally.

about the time i was five, i told grown ups that i wanted to be an author. i wrote my first little picture when i was five. it was called see spot run. (i do think this is slightly ironic because my first poem was published in a magazine called see spot run.)

now that i'm technically an adult and most people just ask me what my job is, i tell them that i'm an administrative assistant at a really cool ballet school.

adultier adult: is that what you want to do with the rest of your life?
me: probs not.
adultier adult: what's your dream job?
me: author.

when i was a little kid, i just assumed that whatever i wrote could get published. now i'm a lot older and wordlier and i understand that getting published is actually really effin' hard. and it's very discouraging.

kind of like:

dr. vivian, one of my favourite english professors, helped me write my senior thesis, which was a novel. he told me that before he had his doctorate, he was working as a janitor and writing in his spare time. he decorated his walls with rejection letters.

i have a large fear of rejection. i don't think i'm at the point where i can even submit something out of fear of rejection, let alone decorate my walls with all of the rejection letters.

i'm not that badass yet.

over the years, i've written a lot. i've finished about fifteen full length novels and have probably close to forty unfinished ones. i wrote my first full novel when i was twelve.

DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT IT, I WILL NOT TELL YOU ABOUT IT.

my freshman year of high school, after spending middle school writing mediocre novels that should probably be thrown into the sun, i had a great idea for a book. like, a SUPER GREAT IDEA.

i threw myself into it. stayed up until two in the morning. neglected my homework. thought about it constantly when i wasn't working on it.

i have never thrown myself into a book the way that i threw myself into this one.

i named it "come on aileen", which was only partly after the song. it was mostly because the main character, a seventeen year old girl named aileen, was told by every single character in the book at least once, "come ON, aileen!"

aileen is one of those chronically late people.

334 pages in four months. i had never been more proud of anything in my life. here was a novel that i liked and that i could publish! yaaaaaas!

about eight months later i went back to reread it, and like i do with everything i ever write, i hated. i did some basic editing for punctuation and grammar and missing words, but not much content editing. then i left it alone and refused to speak of it again.

... guess who found it the other day.

temporarily taking a break from my daredevil netflix binging, i opened up come on aileen. i had it password protected and i still remembered the password.

and i sat down and read the whole thing.

IT WAS AWFUL.

i have always been my hardest critic. but the fact remained that i was fifteen when i wrote it and after having written countless more novels and having obtained an english degree in literature and creative writing, i've slightly honed my craft.

i read the whole thing and cringed. i changed some stuff. i laughed a lot at the absurdity of how i had written it. and i figured that there was nothing to be done, this was just going to be a fun relic from 2006 when all of my characters had flip phones. (they were so cool!)

but then i really thought about it. aileen, my main character, has been one of my favourite characters. her brother, kip, whom i have blogged about before, has been my ultimate favourite character that i have ever written. i liked him enough that i wrote a sequel from his perspective that's even worse than come on aileen.

they were good characters. they were in a good story.

they deserved a better book.

i sat in my chair, staring at the open book and thinking about the implications of rewriting this book.

1. i've never rewritten a book before.
2. do i even have time to do this?
3. I HAVE SO MANY PLOT HOLES TO FILL?
4. technology has advanced soooooo much and i should probably like, account for that.
5. WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING.

after four hours of crippling indecision i opened up a blank word document and went for it.

come on aileen, take two.

i set to work immediately. i have a habit of listening to one song over and over while i write a novel. originally, come on aileen was written to "painted by numbers" by the sounds, a swedish band. i made a playlist of just that song, cracked my knuckles, and went to work.

then i realised that i actually like, really hated that song? and it was like, super weird deja vu that i just couldn't shake. it creeped me out.

my mind was like, "omg i've written this before. why is this different. wait. i'm in a different house. this is a different song. WHAT IS HAPPENING. you're just rewriting a book. it's fine. OH MY GOD I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE STAHP."

besides, my new version didn't have the feel of the sounds. i'm currently writing it to "tompkins square park" by mumford and sons.

i dove in as deeply as i could, taking more liberties than i did the first time i wrote it, such as naming aileen's best friend's buick "grandpa fucknuts". if there's one thing that her best friend would name an old buick, it would be that. plus, who wouldn't want to drive to high school everyday in a car named grandpa fucknuts?

come aileen take two definitely has a different feel than the first one. it's not nearly as desperate and i think the characters are a little more formed. i've made some pretty big plot changes to account for oversights. like, really big oversights. but hey, i was fifteen and i wrote it in this crazy frenzy that i wish i could replicate.

i'm trying not to let rewriting this book stress me out. i'm trying to tell myself that i'm writing it to write it, to get it out, to hone my craft, to give a lot of good characters a good book that they deserve. i'm not out to publish anything. i would like to be out to publish it, but as soon as i get in that mindset, it's over.

writing novels as a hobby is exhausting and relatively unfun. but i don't really think i could do anything else with my life.

want a hobby that's emotionally crippling and makes you irritable and addicted to coffee? write novels.

THEN REWRITE THEM. I'M NOT DYING OR ANYTHING.

the birthday post!

welp, it's june third, and you know what that means.

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

as i said earlier in this challenge, my birthday is something that i look forward to a little too much. (i don't even know why? i don't even really do anything fun for my birthday anymore?) and i try to play it off by saying that i don't care about my birthday.

like last year, when i turned twenty-three, i was all like "ugh i'm not looking forward to my birthday because twenty-three is such a weird age" when in reality i just told you that my birthday was coming up.

smooth, i know.

this birthday felt a little more special than most birthdays. i suppose my next birthday is going to be pretty intense because it's like QUARTER CENTURY, FEEL OLD BUT STILL BE YOUNG AND VITAL.

but i've been looking forward to this birthday for about ten years, because twenty-four is my favourite number, and now i am twenty-four.

i have 365 days to be my favourite number! i get to live it! I GET TO LIVE MY FAVOURITE NUMBER!

like in how i met your mother when marshall is like, THEY LIVED THE STAR WARS, TED.

i woke up this morning, on my birthday, and i thought two things.

1. i feel the same. go figure.
2. i could wake up next to my man friend every day.

last night i went to michigan to see my long haired man friend for the first time in two months. we are now back at my house and he is laying on my bed behind me currently talking about marvel superheroes with my brother.

besides having my man friend here to celebrate my birthday, what else could i do to make it special?

i got my free starbucks drink. the perks of starbucks rewards.

i got my birthday doughnut. after three bites it started to taste like fish and i was like ????? and then i was like !!!!! and i didn't finish it.

to be fair, it was from kroger. i wanted to get dunkin donuts on the way to my house, but my phone directed me to a dunkin donuts that no longer existed and instead dumped me off at a kroger. so... kroger fish doughnut.

my mom has this really cool habit of making my brother and i really badass birthday cakes. and even if it wasn't badass, it was always homemade. she bought a store bought cake for my seventeenth birthday and i was genuinely disappointed.

EMILY'S BIRTHDAY CAKES OVER THE YEARS

1. ballet shoes
2. a fishbowl
3. a goldfish
4. a princess castle
5. a golden snitch
6. a lion
7. a stegosaurus
8. a bumblebee

a few days before my birthday, my mom was like, "soooooo i know this is a special birthday to you because you're like, living your favourite number or whatever, so i need to know what type of cake you want because like, i work full time and i need to actually make it for you?"

so then i was like, OMG THIS MY SPECIAL BIRTHDAY AND I NEED A SPECIAL CAKE THAT I WON'T REGRET OMG THIS IS SUCH A BIG DECISION.

if you know me well at all, then you know that one, i was anxious about this, and two, i've been completely and utterly obsessed with daredevil lately.

me: can you make a cake that looks like charlie cox's ass?
my mom: i don't have a butt pan.
me: (googles butt pan)
me: WHAT HAVE I DONE

spiderman butt cake. for your viewing pleasure.

since i couldn't have a cake shaped like daredevil's ass, i went to the internet and consulted pinterest for other superhero cakes.

i found out a few things very quickly.

THINGS EMILY FOUND OUT ABOUT SUPERHERO CAKES

1. daredevil doesn't exist. which makes sense. because let's be real, that movie from 2003 was AWFUL.

2. most stuff is like, IRON MAN! who's cool, but tony stark is a dick.

3. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE! that's cool, but it's missing black widow and my mom ain't got time for that.

4. WHY THE @#%#$% IS BATMAN IN ALL THESE AVENGERS CAKES?

i understand that batman is a popular superhero. he is pretty much the DC equivalent of daredevil, but with like... mountains of money. he's cool. he has a great film franchise going.

BUT HE DOES NOT BELONG IN MY MARVEL CAKE.

i am very passionate about this.

marvel sits over here. on the throne of glory.

DC, at least for me, doesn't even get to come into the throne room.

fight me.

i spent a decent amount of time staring at these blasphemous cakes. then i texted adam on my high and mighty marvel throne like, WHY IS BATMAN HERE and he was like, well batman is popular and i was like, WELL I KNOW BUT HE SHOULD NOT BE IN MY MARVEL CAKE and he was like, i think you're taking this a little too personally and i was like, BATMAN NEEDS TO LEAVE MY CAKE AND GO CRY IN HIS MONEY.

i dropped the idea of a superhero cake. decided to go for something a little easier and less anger inducing.

my favourite animal is the lion, and i had my lion birthday cake for my twenty-first birthday. so then i thought, what other animals do i like?

owls. i like owls.



looking up owl cakes was an experience. there were some really cute ones, some absolutely terrifying ones, and a bunch that mom definitely did not have time to do.

LIKE, THIS SHOWED UP? THIS ISN'T EVEN AN OWL?

but i found one! and my mom was like, "that's chill. i can do that."

phew.

long story short, i've had a good birthday. this morning i woke up next to my man friend, drove three hours to fort wayne and had a weird doughnut and a free coffee, spent a lot of time cuddling with my man friend, and took a nice walk. i celebrated with both sets of my grandparents and had a really nice glass of blackberry merlot.

and i got to have this awesome owl cake.

it's been another year, it's been another birthday, and another day where i found weird and terrifying things on the internet.

next year: quarter century.

THAT will be a post.

post-grad weirdness.

today in adulting with emily: weird habits that you develop after college.

in college you develop a lot of strange habits. i had a lot of weird habits in college. most of them came from the fact that i lived by myself for two out of the four years, and my last year i lived in an apartment with my own room, so i could be weird if i shut the door.

i was also weird in the living room. we were a weird apartment.

some weird things that i did in college, particularly my senior year:

1. wandered around in my boyfriend's sweater, eating yoghurt, and hoping that this would help me complete my senior thesis

2. strained a box of macaroni and cheese in my bathtub while wearing a business suit and high heels

3. found a packet of poptarts. in my bed. more than once.

4. carried a stuffed animal around with me during the last week of classes

5. skipped around the library at twelve thirty in the morning

6. ignored my homework by painting birdhouses

7. ate frosting from the can for dinner

i had some really good times in college. 

now that i've spent a year in the working world, i've developed some different habits. these have also been influenced by the fact that i still live with my two parents and my twenty-five year old brother.

WEIRD HABITS THAT I'VE PICKED UP SINCE ENTERING SEMI-REAL ADULTHOOD

1. showering with the lights off.

honestly, this is something that i started doing in high school but i most definitely did not do it in college. my bathroom at home doesn't have any windows, so as soon as you shut the door, it's pretty much pitch black.

there's something really nice about listening to music way too loudly, lathering up your hair, and NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE ANYTHING that's really relaxing.

until you get shampoo in your eyes or put conditioner on your loufa. then it's not so relaxing.

2. hoarding poptarts.

since i will be moving out in the next two months, it has occurred to me how freaking expensive poptarts are. it has also occurred to me how much i eat them.

like, a lot.

i go grocery shopping with my mom for a few reasons. one, i like to spend time with my mother. two, if we go late enough at night, i have some influence over what she buys. and three, it's preparing me for when i'm grocery shopping for myself.

i now spend a decent amount of time looking for poptarts coupons and looking for sales. then i can run up to my mother like POPTARTS ARE ON SALE, LET'S STOCK UP! because soon, i won't be able to afford them.

also, when we only have one packet left and i don't want my brother to eat them, i hide them in my lunchbox so i get them ALL TO MYSELF.

3. going to bed at ten and getting up at seven thirty.

i spent the past school year working at a ballet school. i was the morning administrative assistant and opened up the building for the academic day. this required me to get up at six fifteen every morning and be at work at seven twenty. now that it's the summer and i don't need to be at the ballet until nine, i've been going to bed at ten and getting up at seven thirty.

SLEEPING IN! I CAN SLEEP IN UNTIL SEVEN THIRTY!

this is genuinely exciting to me. and it feels really good. like, it actually feels like sleeping in.

4. peeing with the door open.

this is by far the weirdest one and i don't really know when it started.

my mother has been peeing with the door open for most of my life. i don't run into her because in both of the houses that i've lived in, she's had a master bathroom in which to do this, but occasionally she'll use the half bath by the kitchen. you'll be walking toward the basement and it's like, OH HEY MOM, I SEE THAT YOU'RE PEEING.

i used to shut the door and latch it. then i spent a few years just casually closing it where it wasn't latched and occasionally it would open a wee bit, but not enough to see in.

now i just don't bother shutting the door or even turning on the light.

it's like, i have to pee! there is my bathroom. i will enter the bathroom and pee. and there's absolutely no thought about bothering to turn on the light or shut the door.

the worst part is i live in a household of four people, including me, and this does not deter me one bit. my brother's room is directly across from mine. between our rooms is our bathroom. my brother will be sitting at his computer and i will get up and pee. without closing the door. (he can't see in.)

the other day i did this and he shouted, "YOU'RE AS BAD AS MOM, WHEN DID YOU START DOING THIS" and i was like, "DON'T DULL MY SPARKLE, BRO" and he was like, "YOU ARE LITERALLY PEEING WITH THE DOOR OPEN FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ME."

it's not like i'm a nudist or anything. but nude cruises are on the rise and i would like to take one.

i just... i don't know. i just don't shut the door anymore.

i mean, i close stall doors in public bathrooms. that's weird. but if i'm home... nah.

some habits that i should probably actually get into would be exercising regularly, controlling the amount of netflix that i watch, reading more books, and vacuuming my room more than once a year.

we all have weird habits. i knew a guy that collected his toenails in a jar.

... i really hope you don't do that. that's a little too weird.

reel that in, son. reel that in.

round five. bring it.

I'M BAAAAAACK!

before you yell at me or say "jeez, emily, where the hell have you BEEN this spring" just let me say that i have been asking myself the exact same question.

where i have been, an honest answer:

i have been working two jobs so that i can move out of my parents' house.

i have also been... well i've been watching a metric shit ton of netflix.

metric shit ton is a valid unit of measurement, as long as you say that it's metric.

my old free netflix, that i was bumming off of my ex's high school friend who masqueraded as "sam sucks cock", booted me off after three blissful years of free entertainment. i struggled for a month without it.

i made it a whole month. you have to give me credit.

then i caved and bought it myself and i've had it since november.

during that time, i've watched all ten season of grey's anatomy twice (NO JUDGEMENT, IT'S A GOOD SHOW), plenty of movies with my long haired man friend, a few episodes of some guilty pleasure stuff like hoarders, and all of daredevil season one about seven times.

that's an entirely different post.

honestly, when you work two jobs and your wednesdays and thursdays are twelve hour days, two things happen, the first being that you don't have time to blog, and the second being that nothing really exciting happens.

there were definitely moments in my life when i was like, "YES! THIS WAS SO GREAT! I WILL BLOG ABOUT THIS!" and "great" can replaced with "weird" or "funny" or "emotionally crippling". (example: YES! THAT WAS SO EMOTIONALLY CRIPPLING!)

that happened in college.

i've now spent a year out of college in the working world and i can tell you that i don't have these moments very frequently. case and point, it hasn't happened since my last post, which is dated back in january.

it's june first.

once again, june snuck up on me like a sneaky little bastard. you would think i would get used to it, since my birthday is at the beginning of june and i always anticipate my birthday a lot more than i should. (i'm the type of person that tells people that my birthday isn't a big deal as an excuse to mention that it's my birthday because in reality, I'M PUMPED.)

like, if i've been looking forward to my birthday, which i have been for the past month, you would think that june wouldn't have suddenly appeared.

but it did! i woke up this morning, shut off my alarm, and saw the little calendar on my phone said 1 and i was like, HOLY EXPLETIVE IT'S JUNE!

then i went and i worked out. we'll see how long that lasts.

june means that i do my blog every day in june GO! challenge, so here we are, yet again, in the inaugural first post of said challenge.

it's year five, you guys. this is the fifth year that i've done this.

raise your hand if you've stuck with me all five years!

congratulations, you don't have a life and neither do i. let's go get a drink.

as is the usual fashion with the first post of the month, i have apologised for my lack of blogging as of late (another new years' resolution gone to waste) and now i will give you a preview of what you might expect from the upcoming month if you care to keep reading what i have to say about a variety of subjects.

THINGS I MAY OR MAY NOT BLOG ABOUT. STAY TUNED.

1. my birthday. that's a given. (this one is almost special!)

2. my foray into the world of linguistics.

3. graduate school???

4. my van lives to see another year and another large chunk of my income.

5. how working two jobs makes me feel badass and also like a starving artist.

6. moving out of my parents' house? like... soon?

7. charlie cox's perfectly sculpted british ass.

8. on that same note, MARVEL'S DAREDEVIL.

9. wedding season. this has been covered before, but i'm becoming even more bitter in my older age.

10. hamlet. my lizard, not the douchecanoe prince of denmark. (tumblr will note that hamlet is the original fuckboy.)

11. anxiety and depression and maybe something else along those lines, we'll see.

12. the inflatable 5K that i'm training for! (once i like, pay for the registration.)

13. the new novel i'm working on. (GASP.)

14. how editing novels really kind of sucks? like, a lot more than i realised?

15. weird habits that you develop as an adult once you're out of school. like hoarding poptarts and peeing with the door open when people are home.

16. harry potter because i can't stop crying about it.

17. this weird chiropractic treatment i've been doing that's almost science fiction and definitely derogatory.

seem interesting? no? that's cool, you don't have to hang around. i'm surprised you still are. let's be real, i'm surprised i still am.

but i always come back! i take a four month hiatus and i ALWAYS COME BACK.

i made this blog my freshman year of college when i was 19. i will be 24 in a little more than 36 hours and it's still going strong. it might waver here and there and nobody's really sure what's going on, but it's still here, i'm still here, and obviously you're still here.

we have some work to do this month. as i say every june, it's a busy month. it's probably the busiest of the five months that i've done this challenge.

but if i've done it the past four years, i can do it again. and last challenge i got in a car accident and still blogged, so i've set myself a precedent.

(actually, now that i think about it, i wrote the post before the car accident and just posted it afterwards in a painkiller stupor. so the bar is not set as high as i originally thought. like the bechdel test. ankle high and nobody's willing to step over it.)

we're back at it. thanks for sticking with me and i hope you stick around this month.

let's do this thing.

i will leave you with two pictures.

here i am if you forgot what i looked like, or maybe you're new and haven't gone through my past five years' of posts. (no, i'm not the lizard.)

and here's this bumper sticker because it's weird, i don't understand it, and i'd probably put it on my van.

grab a sandwich, get swept up in a movement.

today's post is brought to you by "weird shit that happens to emily that she seriously can't make up".

seriously. i was going to blog about x-men and how i've been binge watching it and crying over homeless charles xavier. but then THIS THING HAPPENED.

let's just jump right in.

okay. so i'm a high school swim coach. my old high school, to be exact. i swam there for four years. it was awesome. now i'm their assistant swim coach and it's seriously the best part of my day. i love every minute of it.

on saturday, we had our summit athletic conference, or SAC. it's a bunch of teams lumped together by location by IHSAA (indiana high school athletic association) and we all swim against each other and one team is the conference champion.

snider always wins. always.

i go in with relatively high hopes for our mostly newbie on the mend team. i get to the natatorium early so i can have a parking space (the parking lot is tiny for the number of people that come to these events) and i'm knitting while my kids are arriving. my head coach and coworker, ben, arrives.

ben's a really chill dude with earrings and a beard and a super cute daughter. we complement each other super well. i worry about everything. he calms me down. he worries about nothing. i point out stuff he should probably worry about. we're hoping to go to a few coaching seminars this summer and build the team up.

early in the week, i had asked the natatorium staff if there would be a hospitality room to feed the coaches during the break in the middle of the meet for diving.

nat person: yeah, catered by subway.
me: will it be vegetarian friendly?
nat person: uhhhh probs not
me: LOL THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS TO ME.

so ben texts me on friday and he's like "yo i'll just buy you jimmy johns" and i'm like "HELL YEAH JIMMY JOHNS" and ben's like, "i'll pay because i'm married with a good job" and i'm like "HELL YEAH JIMMY JOHNS" and ben's wife is like "WHY AREN'T YOU BUYING ME SANDWICHES?!"

so saturday rolls around. the meet starts. we're doing pretty well. we have some great swims. some other kids have some great swims. i'm hanging out with dwenger's coach because i was in his wedding. things are good.

diving comes. ben calls jimmy johns to have them deliver my sandwich. five minutes later he comes up to me like, jimmy johns won't deliver because the nat is too far away.

let me make this perfectly clear.

jimmy johns is 1.6 miles from the natatorium.

REALLY, JIMMY JOHNS? REALLY?

i've had pizza delivered to me while i was in the ER. i was literally in a trauma room with doctor's poking me and they delivered the pizza directly to me. i wasn't having that "too far to deliver" bullshit.

so ben gives me two fives and says, "hurry back" and suddenly i'm on a mission.

drive to jimmy johns, get a sandwich, and be back before the meet resumes.

i grab my bag and run out to my van, knowing full well that i'm going to lose my magnificent parking spot that i got to the meet an hour early for. set my GPS for jimmy johns because downtown fort wayne looks something like this.

i know that jimmy johns is at wayne and calhoun (the street the nat is on). at some point in time, over by wayne street, which is one way, calhoun was one way. i have vague memories of them doing construction to make it two way, but when you move to michigan for college, you kind of forget where and wheb these things happened.

my lovely british GPS is telling me to turn onto washington (one way), then onto harrison (one way) and then onto wayne (one way) to make a big square.

it's one thirty. traffic isn't too bad. but there are a lot of cop cars around and i'm a little worried about that.

i'm following an SUV that also looks like it needs a sandwich. on either side of wayne street there's metered parking. and i'm like 'ayyy i'm only gonna be in jimmy johns for probably a minute and a half so i probably don't need to pay' but then i realise that there is literally NO PARKING AVAILABLE.

does everyone need jimmy johns as much as i do? is that why both sides of the street are parked up?

the SUV and i roll around the block again and as i'm panicking about where to park, a couple cop cars pull up and turn on their lights. something weird is happening.

i continue on wayne street and haphazardly park on the left side of the street, right next to a cop car and very illegally.

me: i'm sure this will be okay
me: if this isn't okay i'm gonna get a parking ticket
me: maybe i can cry and get out of it
me: i just want my sandwich
me: this will take two minutes it's gonna be fine
me: THIS SHOULD BE FINE, RIGHT?

i get out of my van, step into ankle deep snow in my toms, and the wind blows my van door wide open. good thing i'm not parking in actual metered parking because i probably would've taken the meter out.

then i wrap my coat around me and head as fast as i can toward calhoun street and the coolest downtown jimmy johns i've ever seen. there's a dude about my age walking with me and he has some earbuds in and he looks pretty chill and like he could use a good sandwich.

right when i get to the street to cross it...

ALL THE COP CARS COME. THEY ALL HAVE THEIR LIGHTS AND SIRENS ON. THEY ARE SWARMING. and my first thought is SHIT I'M GONNA GET A PARKING TICKET.

but they blow right by me and chill earbud guy and start blocking off calhoun street. which is my direct path back to the natatorium.

and then... i see them.

marching down calhoun street. thousands of them. thousands of people.

it's an effin' right to life march.

thousands of people are walking down the street. they have pictures of the pope and pictures of nuns. they have crosses. they have catholic and lutheran school signs. they have pictures of dead babies.

i have literally walked directly into a pro-life march.

earbud guy: what the hell is going me?
me: no idea.
random marcher: I LOVE FORT WAYNE MAN
earbud guy: ME TOO, MAN, ME TOO
me:

i. cannot. make. this. up.

photo courtesy of our awesome newspaper, the journal gazette.
i'm getting intense about copyright, you guys.

i don't want to spend a lot of time on ideology, but i'm pro-choice. you will not see me at a right to life march. and at this point, i just want my goddamn sandwich.

earbud guy and i are trying to figure out how to cut through all these intensely marching people. lucky for me, they're in groups. between what looks like a military group and one of the lutheran high schools, there's a gap.

i run across as fast as i can before i get swept up by these people. i totally applaud that they're marching on this windy day and fighting for what they believe in, but this is not the type of march that i want to be swallowed by.

get into the jimmy johns. order my usual. the guy behind the counter doesn't seem to notice that the entire street in front of his shop is filled with thousands of right to life people. i'm ridiculously flustered and i wonder how much time it's taken me to get here, to find an illegal parking spot, to get partially swept up into a right to life march.

my sandwich is done. i thank the guys behind the counter, shove the sandwich in my bag, and head back outside.

now there are MORE PEOPLE OUTSIDE. chill earbud guy is gone. my van is still parked illegally next to a cop car and i don't see any breaks in the march.

i've never been to a real march. i've done crop walks at alma. every time that i wanted to do a slut walk, i had another engagement. i've seen marches in washington DC when i was there for active minds conference and i did a stomp out stigma walk around georgetown university's campus, but everyone there was pretty much an active minds college student.

i've never really seen a march like this in fort wayne. i'm intrigued. but i definitely just want to get back to the natatorium with my sandwich now that i have my hands on it.

it takes forever to find a gap in the marchers. i'm worried that as soon as i step out into the street, i'm going to get sucked in and someone is going to push a sign in my hand that says "I SUPPORT LIFE!"

like, i support life. but not in the right to life kinda way. more like the planned parenthood sex education free birth control universal healthcare raise the minimum wage kind of way.

i squeeze into a gap. nobody grabs me and hands me a sign. nobody looks at me and shouts "LOOK! A PRO-CHOICE WOMAN! GRAB HER!"

i make my way safely across the street. look back at the march as i'm getting in my van. drive away quickly.

realise that all of this has taken place in fifteen minutes.

let me tell you, that was probably the craziest fifteen minutes of my life.

when i get back to the nat, i eat the jimmy johns like my life depends on it. ben comes into the hospitality room like "was your sandwich good" and i'm like "i almost got swept up into a right to life march" and he's like "dude i'm surprised you didn't stay and march with them" and i was like "eh i'm a pro-choice" and he was like "eh rock on" and that pretty much ended that conversation.

the rest of the meet went well. i stayed a liberal queer pro-choice woman.

but i still almost got swept up in a right to life march and it was actually kinda cool.

and i got through the whole thing without a parking ticket WHAT UP.

(but i did lose my awesome parking spot and had to park on the street. didn't get a parking ticket for that either. WINNING.)

the list that wrapped up 2014.

i remember, quite clearly, writing my new year's post for 2013. and i remember, even more clearly, that i said that my new year's resolution was going to be to blog more.

HA. HAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHAHA OOPS.

sorry about that, kids. but i became an adult. and being an adult is kind of weird. and it means that you don't really have as much free time as you think. or maybe you just choose to spend your free time differently than you did in college.

2013 was a really great year. i went to three different countries in the course of a month, i went to oregon twice (once for a conference, once for a really fun wedding), and i fell out and back in love.

2013 was really really great.

comparatively, 2014 was just been kind of... average. like, killer average.

i can't stay up until midnight anymore. that whole "adult" thing, man, it just like... kills everything that you ever did in college. so last night i didn't stay up until two o'clock in the morning making this post.

i hope you can forgive me.

but now it's time for the list that wrapped up 2014 and we'll see exactly how average or extraordinary my year was.

THE LIST THAT WRAPPED UP 2014.

1. i, uh, well... i graduated from college.

that was pretty cool. english literature degree with honour's. ending the best four years of my life.

2. i became awkwardly obsessed with painting birdhouses. and i painted like... thirty in just a few weeks.

3. i wrote a five page paper in 25 minutes. I KNOW HOW TO COLLEGE.

4. for the same class of the 25 minute five page paper, i made a presentation worth 30% of my grade an hour before i had to present it. GOT AN A IN THE CLASS.

5. I FINALLY, AFTER FOUR EFFIN' YEARS, GOT A 4.0 IN MY LAST SEMESTER OF COLLEGE.

6. i finished my senior thesis. all 270 pages of it.

proud momma right there.

7. i slipped on a pool deck and split my chin open. FIVE STITCHES.

8. i had my first hangover? should i be posting that on here? is my dad reading this?

9. i finished my fourth consecutive blog every day in june go! challenge. and then never blogged again OOPS SORRY.

10. i got a little bit too close to a live alligator that was sunning itself in my grandpa's backyard.

i really like alligators. my brother kept me from getting closer than this.

11. i also met a turtle. he was pretty nice, just making his way down the boardwalk.

12. i went to florida with my brother to hang out with my grandpa. which is where i met the turtle and the alligator. i should've prefaced this.

13. also whilst in florida, i found a bunch of cool shark teeth and it was pretty neat.

14. i became the crazy bearded dragon lady that everyone knew i would become. seriously. hamlet has an instagram. @hamletthegrump. HIT IT UP.

15. i watched the olympic opening ceremonies at a bar instead of the comfort of my own home. being slightly drunk made the background music of heavy metal and rowdy middle aged men much more tolerable.

16. i went to what will probably be my last formal dance.

17. I MADE A BLUE VELVET CAKE?!

18. i finally read each harry potter book 50 times. you read that correctly. 50. TIMES. EACH. 

(no, i have not read the spanish ones 50 times each. sorry.)

19. i had some really good times in my van. trips to detroit, trips to alma, trips to wixom, and most important, trips to the MECHANIC.

20. my alternator died on the way to alma and i managed to coax my van into the parking space in front of my apartment building just seconds before it died and didn't run again for a month.

21. i then had it towed a total of two times in two months in weather under 10 degrees! woo!

22. my tire also blew out and i crashed into a guard rail at seventy miles an hour.

what a vehicle. it will turn 17 this year.

23. since this is number 23, i can say that i turned 23! and maybe people don't like me like that blink 182 song, but maybe they do. i don't know. i'm still trying to like myself.

24. my mom made me a super badass birthday cake. look at this thing.

25. MY BEST FRIEND GOT MARRIED!!!

26. and i got to be a bridesmaid!!!

27. i got my first manicure. it hurt a lot.

them nails, tho

28. i spent a beautiful evening with a beautiful couple on beautiful lake michigan.

it's kind of dark. whatever. it was awesome.

29. i sang in my last ever alma choirs concert. and not a word of it was in english.

30. when my man friend came back from scotland, i picked him up at the detroit airport and i got lost trying to find the international terminal and i ended up paying five dollars to park my van, where i accidentally knocked off a guy's side mirror.

31. when adam got through customs and i met him in the terminal i cried in front of a lot of people.

32. I WENT AND SAW VANCE JOY AND YOUNG THE GIANT.

I'M WAITING FOR THIS COUGH SYRUPPP TO COME DOWWWNNNN

33. i went garage saling and expanding my VHS tape collection to include pulp fiction, men in tights, the silence of the lambs, the fellowship of the ring, finding nemo, and aladdin. (i also got arsenic and old lace for christmas!)

34. i climbed a mountain. well, kind of. i hiked on a mountain.

35. i learned how to say no. so i quit my internship.

36. adam painted my back.

paint on your skin feels really good, by the way.

37. i presented my senior thesis at honour's day.

38. i also presented it for the kapp prize, which i did not win. but alas, it was pretty awesome.

39. i presented my poetry at the second annual see spot run writers' symposium with some of my favourite people. 

40. i got a steady job working part time at a ballet school. and i absolutely love it.

41. i went to my first REAL ballet. presented by the students at the school that i work at.

42. i'm also my old high school's swim coach. and i've loved every second of it so far.

43. i walked all night at relay for life in remembrance of my aunt and in honour of my grandmother and my church mentor.

44. i came out as bisexual publicly.

45. i had another adult christmas in which i received an electric toothbrush and flatware. SO EXCITING.

46. i learned how to knit and my life has never been the same. knit all day. sleep never.

47. i went back to alma for homecoming and realised that i'm done with college. i didn't think i was. but i am. i have moved on.

48. I SAW BEN FOLDS BACKED UP BY OUR SYMPHONY FOR THE SECOND TIME AND IT WAS GLORIOUS.

49. i built a snow fort with a frying pan when it was negative two degrees outside. it was pretty awesome.

50. i lived.

so 2014 wasn't as average as i thought. i mean, i graduated from college and i'm in that adult transition. (where hopefully i'll be moving out of my parents' house soon.)

i don't need a year like 2013 where i learn incredible life lessons, fall in love with myself, travel all over britain and the US, and discover a plethora of new bands. i don't need that every single year to have a good life.

i just need to look back at all i've accomplished, including the little things. 

2015 will hopefully bring super good things. i always foolishly hope that it will.

and i'll try to blog more, i promise. emphasis on the word try.

that transitional time.

hey kids!

it's been a while.

like, too long. way too long.

today's post is about TRANSITIONS.

... i am not good at them.

when i came back from studying abroad in england and the bus that was supposed to take me back to indiana was an hour late, i cried on the phone with my mother at the chicago airport. when the bus finally came and i saw that it was driving on the right side of the road, i screamed really loudly and had a bunch of people stare at me, and then i proceeded to hug my knees and cry silently until the bus dropped me off at a mcdonalds where my parents were meeting me. the next day when i drove to target i drove down the wrong side of the road for a good two hundred feet where i almost hit a truck.

transition is not my strong suit.

i have, however, learned that i can handle it. sometimes.

it was a transition moving back from alma. it's now the middle of september and i'm still like, "lol when i do move back to alma?" and then i'm like "lol never" and then i get sad for a long time and i have to watch my embarrassing TV show on an illegal website until i'm not sad again.

my netflix logged me out. you know, the netflix i was bumming from a friend of my ex boyfriend's? his username was sam sucks cock and i was using it illegally for like, three years, so it was about time it logged me out. (i didn't transition into life without netflix very well either but i'm too poor to pay for it myself.)

here's how my summer routine looked:

1. sleep in way too late
2. realise i had to go into work at kroger
3. hate my life
4. go to work at kroger for eight hours
5. hate my life even more while at work
6. go home and go to bed
7. buy useless shit at target on my days off to fill the empty void in my life that came with working at kroger

working at kroger wasn't the best thing for me. i've blogged about anxiety before and needless to say, kroger made me hella anxious. one day at work i had an anxiety attack which turned into a full body convulsion. my manager, rather than check to see if i was okay, asked me if i had seen any broccoli crowns.

my brother picked me up and i went home early.

the next day, i had so much anxiety about going back to work that i had another anxiety attack. it took me an hour to pluck up the courage to call in sick. when i explained why i wouldn't be coming in, i then got lectured for twenty minutes (after being on hold for ten) about how it wasn't acceptable for me to call in sick because of anxiety.

so i put in my two weeks and told kroger to kiss my ass.

the day that i called in sick and i spent the day dealing with my anxiety, i got a call about an internship that i had applied for and i got it.

I GOT AN INTERNSHIP!

... an internship that paid considerably less than kroger. so nobody was pleased that i quit kroger to make less money.

but whatever, i was happy and i had two weeks to myself. which i spent seeing my cousins, going to the pool, writing weird poetry, learning how to knit, and visiting adam before he left for his junior year at alma.

my internship is at wunderkammer company, which is a really cool hipster art gallery downtown that used to be a restaurant. its mission is to revitalise communities through contemporary art. myself and seven other interns are working around the clock to conduct the largest creative sector census in the nation.

if you make a living doing something creative, whether that's art, any type of writing, web design or computer programming, anything CREATIVE and you live in the fort wayne area, click here. it's a five minute survey and helps us out TONS.

so that's been fun. i get to hang out in the art gallery and run wunderkammer's social media and work with really cool people and i get to wear cool hipster clothes and stuff.

like, it's just a really neat building.

so during those two weeks where i wasn't doing that much and having my own little private summer vacation, i had to start job hunting again.

places that i applied at:

1. starbucks
2. target
3. YMCA
4. half price books
5. barnes and noble

places that i heard back from: NONE. ZIP. ZILCH. ZERO.

one day my cousin jessica came over and she was like, OMG THERE'S A JOB FAIR AT IPFW WE SHOULD GO and i was like, THAT SOUNDS LEGIT and so i picked out an interview worthy outfit and i updated my resume and i dusted off my high heels to make my calves look intimidating.

my resume, though updated, is still really, really sad. it's basically like "lolz i have a bachelor's degree in english hire me plz"

the job fair, in short, was terrifying. there were like, four hundred people there, kroger was there, and all of the jobs were for like... recycled metals conglomerates and computer programmers. i don't do well in large crowds of people and i lost my cousin and my brother and i tottered around in my heels clutching my folder full of fifty copies of my resume, trying to pretend like i knew what i was doing and where i was going. i gave my sad resume to a lady representing early childhood alliance with the assurance that although i didn't have a degree in early childhood education, i really liked kids.

she called me back a week later and offered me an interview.

my mom was like, "oh emily, you're so marketable!"

when she told me that, i was eating a bowl of popcorn in my pyjamas and watching MTV on my computer. hire me. i'm so ambitious.

the day that early childhood alliance called me and offered me an interview, dan, my boss at my wunderkammer internship, sent me and email that was like, SO I SEE YOU QUIT YOUR JOB AT KROGER HERE'S A PART TIME JOB YOU SHOULD APPLY FOR I HOPE THAT'S NOT WEIRD THAT I CREEPED ON YOUR FACEBOOK AND SAW YOU WERE UNEMPLOYED

not at all. not creepy. totally not.

it was a morning receptionist job at new american youth ballet and conservatory. i wrote a fancy cover letter about how my experience as a swim coach and as a resident assistant made me fully capable of answering phones and dealing with unruly children and stressed out ballet parents. i agonised over it for like, three hours. like, how does working at kroger help me be a receptionist?

"my time slaving in the back of kroger and washing broccoli prepared me to work at a ballet company. i can fulfill your produce needs."

i got an interview on one of the hottest days of the summer and spent an hour sweating my ass off sitting in a nice office with a woman named wendy, who had a fierce pixie cut and told me my nose ring was really cool but i should probably go back to a stud because some of the students came from conversative families. she offered me a second interview and asked me a lot of questions about my bearded dragon.

the next day i had my interview at early childhood alliance. i wore the exact same outfit (different underwear i swear) and sweated my way downtown. i was greeted with screaming children and an unhappy receptionist.

to be honest, i didn't even know what job i was interviewing for. i hadn't applied and their website hadn't been helpful.

a nice woman named sherry took me into a room and there were four people waiting for me. all of them had pieces of paper and looked tired. i sat down with my little resume folder and sherry said, "we're all going to be interviewing you, i hope that's okay."

uhhhhh. sure. i'm just totally panicking now.

halfway through the interview, one of the directors told me that my three years' experience as an RA didn't count as real employment. then she asked me what i had my bachelor's degree in.

AND THEN I FORGOT WHAT I HAD MY DEGREE IN. LIKE, I ACTUALLY FORGOT WHAT I WENT TO COLLEGE FOR.

when i finally remembered i laughed awkwardly and said, "sorry, i'm just really nervous!" giggle giggle giggle don't cry giggle giggle.

after the interview sherry thanked me and had me fill out an actual application, which i did by hand, and i didn't have enough room to write my small essay about my disciplinary plans for three year old children because i have huge ugly monster handwriting that nobody can read.

that night my family was like, OMG HOW WAS YOUR INTERVIEW and i was like, LOL I FORGOT WHAT I GOT MY DEGREE IN and my family was like, EMILY YOU SUCK UGH

and then

EARLY CHILDHOOD ALLIANCE CALLED ME AND OFFERED ME THE JOB.

(don't even ask about the gif.)

i told them i'd think about it and then i went to my second interview for the receptionist job at the youth ballet. i put in my nose stud and met the owner of the ballet company and the academic director, because it's also an academic school for children with extraordinary schedules.

they offered me the job on the spot and i took it.

YAYYY!

after the fiasco that was my interview at early childhood alliance, i didn't feel bad calling them and telling them i wasn't going to accept their job offering. i then learned that i was the only person who applied for the job and i felt kinda bad, but not really.

my receptionist job at new american youth ballet rocks. wendy, who's my boss, is really laid back, really funny, and brought in a kuerig for office use. now i'm addicted to cheap caramel macchiatos. i sit at a desk and do fun administrative stuff, answer phones in a happy voice, enrol cute kids in ballet classes, and make sure the academic students don't get too loud when they're on study breaks.

they all call me mrs. hollenberg (i don't bother to remind them i'm not married), hunt crickets in the lobby with me, and teach me about ballet. this morning i learned how to do a plie and one of the advanced ballet students told me that i should probably never, ever decide to start ballet lessons.

i'm kind of an adult. i have to be at the ballet at seven thirty every morning, so i go to bed at ten and get up at six fifteen. i make my morning coffee at work, enter financial transactions, call companies, and make ten bucks an hour, which is about four dollars more than i got paid at kroger. i have more time at home to do things like blog, play with hamlet, and go to wunderkammer on thursdays and fridays to intern.

it's a pretty good gig.

making this transition hasn't been that bad.

but at the same time, a bunch of my friends are getting engaged, have full time jobs, are living in apartments, and going to grad school to save the world and cure cancer and stuff.

and i'm awkwardly living at home, taking too many selfies with my bearded dragon, and still having my mom cook for me.

well, you can't have everything in life.

i have a job that i like, and that's a good start, isn't it?

i leave you with this gif of squidward ballet dancing. because i work at a ballet school now.