unnecessary anxieties

A Minnesotan's Guide to Alternative living, Vol. 1

2011-03-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh you guys. You have no idea how glad I am to see you right now. You wouldn't know it since I only tend to post blog entries about once every two to nine months, but I've been involuntarily off grid for the past couple of weeks.

It all started when my boss decided to clean out her office. You know that scene in Mary Poppins where she keeps pulling coat racks and umbrellas and, like golden retrievers out of her tote bag? I was reminded of that scene when I arrived at work the Monday following my boss's cleaning spree. I had so many questions to which the answer could only be, shrug..."magic?"For example: "where did that stack of two-by-fours in the kitchen come from?" Or, "why is there a broken desk I have never seen before in the middle of the lawn?" For the most part, I applauded my boss's efforts to turn her office into a viable workspace. However, I was less thrilled with her cleaning-fever induced decision scrap the ancient desktop computer in her office that linked my upstairs computer to the internet.

At home, we had internet but I had recently broken my third computer power cord. So, I had been using an old one that shot sparks whenever it moved. Yeah, yeah, I know: "Blah blah fire-hazard, blah blah high risk of electrocution blah." But what was I supposed to do? Go to the library to illegally stream episodes of Holland's Next Top Model? Please.

One fateful Saturday morning though, I was out of luck for real. If this was a cheesy sitcom, now would be that part where we would side-swipe to a little montage about how I instantly went through the five stages of grief over the death of my cord and subsequent loss of access to the internet. It'd be cute and you'd chuckle. But, I'm to lazy to look up what the five stages of grief are, so I'll just tell you that I shook the limp little cord a lot, hoping it would spark back to life and cried, "Why? WHYYYYY??? OH GOD NO!" like I was Meryl Streep and the Academy was watching. Eventually, I accepted my lot and ordered a super sketchy five dollar replacement cord that was probably made out of lead paint chips and squirrel fur.

Then, there was nothing to do but wait for it to arrive. Well, that and, like, read books with pages and talk to people's faces using my face, but I won't bore you with that. I will say, though, that my Luddite-ian experience got me thinking about alternative lifestyle choices in general. I have often blogged about the universal growing pains of becoming an adult -- learning how to clean bathrooms...learning how to feed ourselves...learning to make sure we pack underwear when we go on choir tours (What? I know you guys totally all have super sweet "no-underwear-vacation" stories in your back pockets. I'm just the only one brave enough to share mine). But, I realize that I haven't said much about the life choices I've made that aren't exactly "mainstream."

That's partially because I don't really consider myself an "alternative" gal. I come from a place where the closest we get to buying into new-wave trends is offering gluten-free and whole-wheat wafer options at communion on Sundays. Hell, I still feel a little overwhelmed when people try to hug me during "share the peace" at East Coast church services. And yet, here I am in Baltimore ("Oh. Baltimore. So, on a scale of 'Hairspray' to 'The Wire," exactly how murdery is the block where you live?"-- most middle aged people, on Baltimore) I work as a professional volunteer, with housemates who do things like meditate and abstain from eating animal products and have dreadlocks. I suppose, though I may still feel pretty ordinary, my baseline for what exactly is "normal" has become a little skewed. Some non-Minnesota weird has definitely rubbed off on me.

Beforehand, LVC tried very hard to convince me that their program would expose me to all different kinds of people. They asked phone interview questions that sounded like set-ups for racist Jokes ("You're living in a house with one Lutheran, one Bhuddhist, one Wiccan who believes that every rock has a spirit and a name, and one person who centers herself through martial Arts..."). But I thought, "nice try, LVC. I've read your statistics. Four out of Five of your members members are white Lutheran girls taking a "year off" after being awarded liberal arts degrees somewhere in the Midwest. LVC is about as diverse as a Barenakid Ladies concert." I envisioned me and my future housemates swapping jell-o salad recipes and sharing our favorite parts of Luther's small catechism for spirituality nights. In reality, my experience was more like Real World: The Intentional Simplicity season. I was the token Minnesota Lutheran living with a free spirited Californian, a German Catholic, an East Coast vegan, and a girl who centered herself spiritually through hunting wild game. Suffice it to say, we challenged (and inspired) each other way beyond fighting over who's mom had the best tater-tot hot-dish recipe.

Together, we learned a lot about intentional and sustainable living. Thanks to them and to my new, even more diverse group of housemates this year, I've developed some new habits. But, I don't want to give you the impression that, the next time you see me, I'll be sporting a neck tattoo of the recycling arrows and asking you to call me "Blue Urban Sky." I've changed in my own cautious Minnesota way.

I feel like there's a lot of stuff on the internet written by super impassioned millenial hippies trying to convert people to their dumpster-diving, humanure-using ways (please, if you don't already know what "humanure" is, don't look it up. Trust me. It will only upset you). There is also a lot stuff from apathetic anti-idealists who like to break up the monotony of editing software manuals by posting aloof-yet-scathing vlog entries about how stupid impassioned millennial hippies are. There isn't a whole lot written from people at my point in the journey, which is somewhere between the two extremes, leaning towards the former. To be fair, that's probably because essays about how "meh, alright" things are don't tend to make for very compelling reading. Or, it could be because no one's ever thought to write those essays before. I might be a visionary who is about usher the whole internet away from the "hot or not" model and into a new era of the "pretty good or don't much care for it" model.

Either way, I'm going to go ahead and start giving you my conservative perspectives on the alternative habits I've been exposed to, whether you want to hear them or not. (See? I am one step ahead of you, apathetic anti-idealists. I preemptively don't care that you don't care. We are now swirling in a vortex of apathy.)

This week: Restricted diets

On the very first day of LVC orientation, my new housemates and I made small talk with safe questions like, "where are you from?" and what "kind of food do you like to eat?" I think I might have asked whether anyone was vegetarian. Across the table, I saw my new housemate Morgan grow suddenly quiet.

After a moment she burst, "guys, I have to tell you something."

I didn't have time get past "transgender" and "convicted larcenist" on my mental list of secrets Morgan might divulge because, without missing a beat, Alison asked, "are you a vegan?"

"Yes!" Morgan cried, "yes, I'm a vegan."

My housemates all nodded acceptingly. I did too, but inside I was thinking, "crap. Now how am I going to make these people like me." Because we all know that my friend-making tool kit is stocked with about thirty recipes for cupcakes, laughing disproportionately hard at jokes that are only moderately funny...and not much else.

Where I come from, vegans are in the same exotic category as cabs you don't have to call 24 hours in advance, Belgian nannies and "fusion" restaurants where you sit on the floor and eat without utensils. That is to say, I assumed they existed because I'd heard about them on TV, but I didn't think I'd ever end up getting personal with any of them. Growing up, I only ever had one vegetarian friend. She was also a Unitarian and had five cats -- so she was an outlier. Or, as I called her at the time, "my weird friend". (Potato, potahto.) I'd only even seen one real live vegan. She sang with me in choir. All I remember about her was that she had a blue streak in her hair which, in Minnesota, gave her a quirky/edginess rating of like a seven-and-a-half. (Converted into East Coast units, that's about the equivalent of having a-symmetrical bangs and French Bulldog named Charlotte Bronte.)

I didn't know much about the real logistics of Veganism. My housemates didn't either, so it's a good thing we were willing students with a patient teacher. We prodded Morgan with all our stupid questions, including but not limited to: "Almond butter doesn't have, like actual butter in it, does it?" "So you're vegan...but you can eat shrimp, right?" and, "Is it true that drinking too much soy milk will make dudes grow boobs?" (The answers to questions a, b, and c, by the way, are: "no," "no for the third time" and, "sigh. no" in that order.)

We also poured through Morgan's vegan cookbooks. I initially approached them with caution since, as a rule, I don't trust words that contain inappropriate Zs (See: "skillz," and "lolz."). They usually flag a reality-dodge. When they show up in the supermarket they're trying to say, "this product has a touch of whimzy." But, what they're really saying is, "if we use an actual food-related word to describe this stuff, we'll get sued by the FDA" (See: vegan/Kraft Company favorite "cheez.") Eventually though, I let my guard down enough to try a recipe for brownie banana pudding cake out of Vegan with a Vengence. After that there was no turning back.

In our studies, we quickly learned a few important lessons. First, we learned that there are many "normal" things vegans can eat besides lettuce. Many of our favorite soups, pastas, stir fry's and salads from home were already vegan or almost vegan to begin with. Second, we learned that some non-normal vegan foods are very tasty. Sure, there are some things I've tasted on my tour of the Garden of Vegan that I haven't quite been able to stomach. For instance, Tempeh still tastes like fermented birdseed to me. And seitan kinda has a chickeny texture...If, you know, chicken had a texture less like meat and more like a half-dried up glue stick. But, chili-glazed tofu is legitimately delicious. And Cashew cheez is actually pretty good. I've even come around to dusting my popcorn with a substance that looks like flaked fish food and is suspiciously vaguely called "nutritional yeast" (or, if you're my housemate Alison, "magic vegan dust").

All in all, living in community with a vegan turned out to be educational, rewarding, and a lot easier than I thought it would be. And that's good because, as it turns out, last year was just a warm up. When my new housemate Ryan told me he didn't eat gluten, I didn't blink an eye. I was feeling pretty cocky after last year's vegantation. (that's "vegan orientation."...What, are those non-threateningly alternative looking ladies on the cover of How it all Vegan the only ones who can use vegan non-words?) Soon though, he also stopped eating dairy, along with another housemate. Most recently Ryan has gone off soy as well. At this point, I feel like I'm in some sort of cooking video game where I have to level up every time things start to get too easy.

It's cool, though. I love to cook for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is that I like to make people happy. (Fine, or "like me." Again! Potato, potahto! Get off my back!) On any given day people with major dietary restrictions are crossing their fingers that they can find something to eat that won't make them sick. So, it's especially gratifying to make things for just for them that are edible AND delicious. I'm willing to keep learning.

Also, once I figure out how to make lasagna free of the eight most common allergens, I'll be able to run for president.

Stay tuned for Vol. 2 soon! I thought about going on to the next subject in this entry, but I've been testing your patience with the length of these posts for a while. Hopefully the next one will be prompt and brief!

Terror After Dark

2011-02-04T14:29:00.000-08:00

Well everybody, the smoke on the birthday candles has cleared. Instead of indignantly yelling, "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" when someone asks me why I'm drinking rum punch and eating pizza rolls while watching an American Idol-athon on a weeknight, I must simply sigh, "it's my life."

I feel like the same sort of thing happens to me every year. I wake up on the morning of February third and realize, "Holy crap. I'm a twenty-something. I'm the same age as the people they make sitcoms about. I should be living in an unrealistically expensive looking loft in Manhattan -- across the hall from my unrealistically good-looking and witty pals. I should have a job as a chef, fashion buyer or soap-opera star. I should be sweetly yet assertively eye-flirting with handsome men who buy me pom-tinis in trendy nightclubs. Instead, I spent a whole day last week reading internet plot summaries for horror movies I was too scared to see. Then, I couldn't sleep because even the summaries were too scary so I watched three bootlegged episodes of Fraggle Rock in a row. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE???"

So what do I do. Do design a life plan? Do I research grad schools? Revise my reading list? Vow to exercise more? No, of course not. I come crawling back here to my beloved, spurned Unnecessary Anxieties. At this point I feel like a negligent movie-dad. Every year or so I Stumble back to the wife and kids after a particularly rough night of, say, smarmily betting on underground cockfights. I have my hat in my hand and I declare that this time it will be different. This time I'll stay for good and we'll all go get ice-cream in the morning! In my heart I really do believe it, but I can never keep my promise. I have a roguish wanderlust in my soul that cannot be contained for long. (Or maybe just a lazy-ish American-Idol-lust. This could be where the metaphor breaks down...) Anyway. I know I've talked about "weekly updates" before and it's been a "load of crap." This time, I'm not making any lofty promises. I'll do my best, but I'm not asking you to believe that it's going to last this time. I'm just saying we might as well ride this wave of post-birthday-glow blogging guilt for as long as it lasts.

Now that that's out of the way, do you guys want to hear a horror story?

It's a psychological thriller that -- I'll warn you right now -- has a pretty unsatisfying ending. But! the first part is full of tension and fear and the heart-thumping threat of apple-seed-sized nighttime invaders.

It all began a few months ago. I don't really remember what the weather was like but, for the sake of the genre, lets say it was idyllic. Shortly after I arrived at work, I noticed three small itchy bumps on the inside of my elbow. Without thinking, I asked my co-worker, "huh. What do you think bit me here?"

She raised her eyebrows "When did you notice the bites?"

"Just this morning."

If we had been in a movie, this would have been the part where the ominous violins in the soundtrack would have swelled to a screechy halt.

Betsy said, "Bedbugs?"

Dun dun DUUUUUN!!!!!!

At that point, I should have gripped the edge of the table, leaned forward -- intense Jack Bauer interrogation style -- and growled, "I'm sorry, I must not have heard you properly. Did you say bedbugs?"

Then, Betsy would have gotten the message and been all, "did I say bedbugs? I meant...Fredbugs. That's what they call mosquitoes in...Australia? Or something. Those bites are definitely the work of Fredbugs."

Then I would have leaned back and forgotten the incident within a matter of hours. But no. The seed had been planted.

I spent the rest of the day examining all the potential "bug bites" on my arms and legs. At that point, all I knew was that bedbugs bite people at night, and I remembered our LVC city coordinator mentioning that bedbug bites tended to show up in rows. I needed more information. My internet searches started innocently enough. I just wanted to find out what bedbugs looked like and how to identify their nests. I figured would be immediately assuaged and the whole matter would be put to rest. But you've met me. You know where this was headed.

The websites I visited gave me little conclusive information. Sure, they showed pictures of bugs and bites and listed signs to look for, but they also all said that the bites look different on everyone and, though there are some common signs, they aren't present in every case. They also said that it might take a trained professional hours to confirm the presence of bedbugs. Now, if it worked properly, my brain would have taken this information and put it through a mental mill of rationality and come up with something reasonable like, "I don't seem to see most of the common signs of bedbugs. I probably don't have them, but I'll wait a few nights and them call an exterminator if I keep getting bites." Instead, my brain put this information through a mental mill of paranoid CRAZY and spit out a red alert that went something like, "If you have any sort of bug bites or itchiness, it could be bedbugs. Actually, it's probably bedbugs. They leave no trace, they just invade your home and your nightmares without warning. Call an army of exterminators NOW. They probably won't be able to help but IT'S YOUR ONLY HOPE!" My brain is the Fox News of brains.

And this is all from reading un-exaggerated facts from respectable sources. As it turns out, those sites were just gateway pages to the hard stuff: forums and testimonials. Once I became completely and irrevocably convinced that I had bedbugs, I figured I'd better read some stories from others who had dealt with them before. Once again, I expected to find encouraging stories from people who had fought difficult battles against the critters, but ultimately emerged victorious. I am an idiot. If the internet could have talked to me after I delved into this murky abyss, it would have been like, "Dude. What did you expect? I convince adolescent girls that they can get pregnant by holding hands with boys when their hair is wet."

I found no comfort. Rather, I found something like what country songs would be if Wes Craven wrote country songs. I read dozens of stories from people who broke up with their boyfriends, gotten fired from their jobs, lost all their friends and abandoned all their earthly belongings, including their homes and the clothes on their backs. Sometimes twice. All because of bloodsucking bugs.

Now, if you know me well, you may have already guessed that all this "research" was interspersed with a series of phone calls to my mother. They escalated in panic-scale like recordings on a doctor's found tape recorder in a zombie movie, where the first recording is like, "There's a patient on the fourth floor who keeps trying to eat the doctor's brains. Interesting." Then, recording five is like, "AAAGH ZOMBIES!!!!! *gruesome chomping death sounds*"

Likewise, my first call went, "Mom? I think I might have bedbugs. I'm kind of upset about it but, worst case-scenario, LVC will pay for an exterminator and they'll take care of it."

Fast forward to call six: "MOM I HAVE BEDBUGS AND I'M NEVER GONNA SEE YOU AGAIN!!! *hysterical sobs, a la Van Der Beek* I'll send you a postcard when I've selected the park bench that will serve as my new home."

Other than these calls to my mother, I kept my fears to myself for a few days. Eventually though, I knew I was going to have to have a professional exterminator perform an inspection. To do that, I was going to have to tell my housemates that I suspected bedbugs / that all of their lives were permanently ruined. I approached them one Saturday morning and took a deep breath: "Um guys? There's something I need to tell you. I didn't want to scare you, but it's been bothering me for a while and, um, I just really need to get it off my chest...I've noticed some mysterious nighttime bug bites and I think it may be...um....bedbugs. And this is why I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to make your faces do that." Granted, their faces were probably doing "that" due to the fact that my cryptic windup had convinced them that I was about to tell them I was pregnant. But I didn't understand that at the time. At the time, I just hung my head.

Now, this is where it gets anti-climactic. That tends to happen in my stories when I get to the part where I reveal whatever X-Files have been gestating inside of my head to real people. Real people don't try to convince me that I'm going to have to relocate to Mongolia nearly as often as the internet does. I called my city coordinator who sent an exterminator to do a free inspection. When the exterminator came, I would have felt a sillier if he hadn't been on the phone with another hysterical client who was begging him to preemptively bedbug-proof her home. With my room, he was quick but thorough and firmly declared it bedbug free. It took me a few weeks to stop checking my sheets for bedbug poop every morning, but I got there.

Now for the epilogue: A few weeks ago I had a meeting at work with a Baltimore City government employee who does presentations on a number of public-health related topics, including bedbugs. He brought a vile with him that contained a few dead bedbugs for me to see. I was surprised at how tiny they were. Whenever I see them marching across newspaper articles and TV news segments, they're blown up to look like they're the size of hamsters. No wonder bedbug hysteria is sweeping the nation. Yes, there is something innately scary about parasites that live where you sleep and feed on you under the cover of darkness. But, these news outlets certainly aren't NOT feeding into that fear by making bedbugs look like they're big enough to give a Shi-Tzu a black eye.

Don't worry guys. I've learned my lesson about sensationalist media this time. No more internet "research" for me. Well, no more after I read this one thing on Yahoo News about Cat Flu.

What?

Adult Life-Skills 201: Landlord Communications

2010-06-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hey Liberal Arts institutions of America? I want to talk to you about something. Kenyon, I know you're real smug about the fact that, last year, 39% of your incoming freshmen were in the top 5 % of their graduating high school classes. Your student body is very book-smart, I will give you that. But outside of academia? You and I both know that all kids living away from home for the first time are street-dumbasses. What your admissions web-page doesn't say is that probably about 25% of your incoming freshmen will try to clean their underwear with fabric softener for at least a semester and a half before someone tells them it's not soap.

I'm not saying we should ditch the whole liberal arts system. It was my honor and privilege to be educated in analysis, composition and discourse by some of the greatest English literature instructors in the country. It's just... I'm not going to unclog my shower drain by deconstructing Jane Austin's utilization of the pen as a phallic symbol at it.

Now I know I've lamented my unpreparedness for the adult world before. I mean, let's face it. Most of the time this blog is the lamentiest lament-fest that ever lamented the lament-ernet. I'd like to change that though. Maybe that's why I haven't updated this blog for so long. It may have looked like I was neglecting creative endeavors in favor of binging on Youtube clips of baby animals crawiling in and out of various dishwares, but maybe I was really pondering ways to make this blog a more constructive and positive space. Or, maybe I'm full of crap and you should just enjoy this rare moment of my being a "problem solver" -- as my mother would say -- while it lasts before I go back to ranking all the moles on my body from least to most likely to be cancerous. You pick. Either way, world, I'm about to blow your mind with my present problem solving skillz.

Here's my proposal: How about, in addition to Fine Arts, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, students also have to satisfy requirements in practical survival in the real world? Here are some sample course titles that you can have for free:“57 surfaces you didn't know you had to also clean”, “ Mold: it’s not just for food” and “Writing e-mails with real words only”. I know you're skeptical, but yes -- those ideas really are free! And, you know what? To show you that I'm serious about making this work for all of us, I'll even provide you with a whole sample blog-ture! (For you stuffy academic types, that's like a lecture, only on my blog. So it's still educational but, like, waaay hipper. And I know all about hip. Just ask my pal...um...Jay-Z. Edward Cullen? Miley Cyrus. hip things.)

Anyway! Without further adieu:

Lesson one: Landlord communications.

First, I know, I know. Most college courses are taught by people who have dedicated their entire adult lives to studying the topics they teach. Professors utilize their knowledge of statistics, case studies and the pulse of scholarly opinion to educate their students. And you know, good for them. I'm sure their "lifetimes of study" make for lectures that are total snooze fests. I mean...total information fests. But, what I offer is even better. I'm going to educate you with mistakes that I mySELF have JUST made! I'm 'bout to get REAL with you guys. Let me tell you what I've BEEN through! Case studies may have the "facts" on their side, but what about rawness? I eat case studies for breakfast.

Ahem. What? Anyway. Class, let me introduce you to our topic of study: The ever-mercurial American Landlord. (cue dimmed lights and slide show with pictures of generically slimy looking middle aged white men lazily copied and pasted from Google images -- Like this one!)

(fun fact: 98.2 percent of all landlords have creepy mustaches. Other fun fact: 100 percent of all mustaches are creepy.)

He owns your house, but he's not supposed to live in it with you. He's responsible for repairing your leaky pipes, but he will not scrub the pink ring your lavender-nectar goat-milk bath bomb left caked onto the tub. He'll probably come around to check on the unit you're renting every once in a while, and he has an emergency key to your house, but he is not your RA. If you dissolve into tears in his bean-bag chair over how your roommate got Ramen juice on your comforter AGAIN, he will not be helpful. He may call the police, actually. He'll be upset you if you do any permanent damage to his property, but he won't write you up if he finds jell-o shots in your fridge. It's all very nuanced and confusing, I know. So, unsurprisingly, it's pretty easy for landlord and tenant to misunderstand one another.

For example: My landlord's name is Steve Jones. Usually, I try to avoid using people's full names on this blog so as to protect their privacy (or so they don't find out I've been badmouthing them behind their backs when they Google themselves. One of the two. I forget which...) But, I figure I can make an exception in this case because Steve's name is so generic it sounds like he's a fictional person in a hypothetical scenario. My housemates and I met him shortly after we moved into our new house this year, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Then, mice chewed holes through the walls, the shower turned lukewarm in the dead of winter, and pretty much the whole house started leaking. So, we contacted Steve Jones. Texting is his preferred mode of communication so we texted him things like, "Our whole house is leaking. Please fix it," and he texted things back like, "Will do! As soon as it stops raining. For 90 days. Or more." As the weeks went by, our relationship grew more gnarled with distrust and loathing with each pointed text message. Here is a rough re-counting of one exchange that sticks out in my memory:

Simunye House: Steve, Our garbage disposal is broken again and the sink has stopped draining. Please let us know when you can fix it.

Steve Jones: Won't be able to come until the weekend because of work. Last two times Garbage disposal stopped, there were things that weren't supposed to be there. First a screw, then a twist-tie. When we come to fix it, Someone should be there so we can show you how to fix it yourself next time.

Clearly, these are text messages sent between two parties who are doing a poor job of understanding one another. I can tell you that when we read this message and others like it, my housemates and I assumed that Steve Jones was a cheap, apathetic jerk who didn't care about our living conditions. Obviously, Steve Jones made some assumptions about us as well. So, let's do a little exercise to try to understand Steve's motivation for sending this message. Let's take a look a dinner table conversation at my house community through Steve's eyes:

*Alison: Hey, could you pass the fruit salad?

Angry at Steve for No Reason One: Sure, here you go.

Alison: Thanks for the salad, Angry at Steve for No Reason One. Hey! There's a screw in this salad!

Extra dumb one: Oh, Whoops! That must have fallen in when I got the drill mixed up with the hand mixer again! I guess I'll just shove it down the garbage disposal.

Whiny one: OK

Alison: Yes, do that.

Angry One: Sounds like a good plan. You Guys, I've been thinking. Obviously, it's cool to throw food, hardware, used sponges and plastic with recycling numbers one through eight down the garbage disposal like we've been doing, but here's my question: How can we break it quickly? I'm so excited to make our lame-lord to drive ALL the way down here for essentially no reason other than that I love inconveniencing him.

Dumb One: Heh. Lame-lord. Good one. We could try a twisty tie.

Angry one: Excellent idea.

Whiny one: ...Sigh.

Alison: What is it, whiny one?

Whiny One: Oh nothing. It's just that, lately, I've been having to take showers about two-and-a-half degrees lower than I like. And I mean, whatever. It's not a big deal...It's just that it's not exactly the way I want to start my day, you know?

Alison: No, no. I completely understand. In a world where so much is out of your control, you deserve to have showers your way. Have you tried waiting for the water to warm up for 30 seconds or so before you get in the shower?

Whiny one: Who do you think I am? Paris Hilton, woman of leisure? You think I have time to wait 30 seconds to get in the shower just because our pipes are "old"? I have, like, a job you know.

Angry one: Just text Steve. Who cares if he can fix it or not. I hope he's in a meeting right now and forgot to turn his phone off.

Alison: Oh, way ahead of you. I started composing a text message to Steve the minute you said, "sigh".

AND SCENE

Now, class, what have we learned from this exercise? If you think I am working up to a tidy resolution with this lecture, or some sort of abstract, sweeping "life lesson," you are sorely mistaken. What do you think this is, real school? I'm just here to talk to you straight about the real world, and the best piece of advice for you I can squeeze out of my experience is: don't communicate with your landlords through text messages. When you're working with a 160-character limit, a lot gets lost between the lines. A while back, Steve Jones came to visit us, and we had a pretty positive exchange. Face to face, we remember that Steve Jones doesn't spend all of his time stroking his white fluffy cat with his bionic claw arm while ignoring our text messages. And he can see for himself that we don't spend all of our time making out with Robert Pattinson posters while we inhale nail-polish remover fumes.

Class dismissed!

So, what did you think, Liberal Arts Colleges? It's OK if you can't let me know right away. I know an academic shift like the one I'm proposing would be a big step, so you're going to need to discuss it at length with your faculties and boards of trustees. You're going to have to work pretty hard to convince that one extra uptight old-lady trustee with the tweed skirtsuit and the pearls and the super-severe french roll in her hair and the poodle she carries around in her Berkin Bag who keeps talking about how this just isn't the way things are done here. (That's how boards of trustees work, right? I'm basing all my knowledge of the subject on the movie Tommy Boy, and the scenes with the stuffy grandparents in re-runs of Gilmore Girls so I'm just guessing here.) Anyway, the point is, I'm willing to wait as long as it takes. If you need me, I'll be right here every week (...to six months) with more free ideas you can use (maybe). We'll be in touch!

*I figure Steve Jones doesn't know anyone's name in my house except for Alison, who was tasked at orientation with being the liaison between our house and our landlord. To him, the rest of us are probably just an indistinguishable mess of mostly girls.

Kids, go ahead and try this at home...

2010-04-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

Hey all. As you can probably tell by my severely delayed blog entry this week, I'm starting to run a little low on blog ideas. You guys. Creativity is super hard. How do you think Faulkner did it, Book after book? Maybe his creative process didn't involve eating pizza rolls and watching episodes of Australia's Next Top Model on YouTube for hours on end.

Anyway, because nothing funny or interesting has happened to me in the last few weeks, I'm going to regale you all with a classic tale from days gone by. It's another one of those stories that I know you've probably all heard before, but I really feel it merits the dignity of being committed to writing here, in this most noble and prestigious of archives.

So now, ladies and gentleman, I present to you the "would you rather" story.

The scene was a long, late car ride back from one of my brother's away hockey games. My mom was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and my sister Abby was in the back with Miranda, her best friend since elementary school. Whenever they get together, they have a habit of reminiscing loudly about their colorful schoolyard days: A simpler time filled with wall-ball and bowl haircuts. (If you ever have the pleasure of sharing an elevator with the two of them, ask to hear about the time Abby got a 'fix-it plan' for putting Benjamin Shoecard's backpack outside. You won't be sorry.) Tonight though, everyone was tired, and we'd left anecdotal bliss several miles behind us.

Abby decided to fend off boredom by engaging us in a few rounds of "would you rather," that favorite parlor game of indecisive middle-schoolers and fratty philosophy/"co-ed studies" -- heh heh. Dude. Get it? -- majors everywhere. Abby kicked things off with a number of fairly traditional juxtapositions including but not limited to, "would you rather lose both your legs or your right arm," and "would you rather eat your own toenail clippings every day for the rest of your life, or have a giant toenail growing out of your forehead like the visor of a baseball cap?" When our tired brains started grinding and smoking, Abby explained to us that it's best to shout out your gut reaction before your head has a chance to tie itself in knots. After a few minutes, Miranda thought she had gotten the hang of it and decided to try one of her own.

"OK," Miranda said, "Would you rather have a giant unibrow..."

"Wait." Abby interrupted, "can you shave the unibrow?"

Miranda thought for a minute. "Yes," she said, "but it grows back really fast in the same day."

"Got it. Go ahead."

Miranda started over, "OK. Would you rather have a giant unibrow, or..."

we all leaned forward in anticipation.

"...or be a wolf boy?"

I'm gonna let that sink in for a minute: Or be a wolf boy. Here are some pictures to help you visualize the choice presented to you:

Unibrow...
...Aaaand wolf boy:

"Unibrow!" My sister shouted. Then, "Wait. What? Who would pick wolf boy?"

We laughed about it then, but listen: I think Miranda has really stumbled on to something here. Kids, if regular would-you-rather questions are making your flimsy brains feel like spaghetti milkshakes -- if they cause you to have warped nightmares about middle school multiple choice tests and your housemates all wake up, night after night, to the sound of you mumbling, "A: Cheese...No, B: toilet bowl! No! I meant cheese! Aw man, this SO wasn't in the study guide..."-- Maybe you'd like to try the lighter, gentler Mirandafied version of the game. I've got a few prompts to get you started. I'll wait here while you get a pen so you can write these down.

Ready? Here goes:

Would you rather have a hangnail OR...chop all your toes off?

Would you rather eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich OR... eat leaded paint chips?

Would you rather watch "Finding Nemo" OR... watch a bunny get eaten by a boa constrictor?

Would you rather ride a bicycle OR... set fire to your eyelashes?

Would you rather share a pudding cup with the cast member of "Saved By the Bell" of your choice OR... lick the under-side of a cow?

Really, the sky is the limit. Feel free to kick back and be as uncreative and lazy as you want. This new low-cal version of would-you-rather is like the car-game equivalent of taking a nap in a hammock. Which, by the way, I would rather do than eat my own bedsheets.

Jinx: Chapter Two

2010-03-19T08:13:00.001-07:00

Before we begin, I'd like to warn you that this post contains some content of a graphic nature. If you have no interest in hearing about the health problems my "delicate bits" have encountered over the past few months, stop right after "dream catchers."

Dudes, in the interest of full disclosure, there's something I have to tell you: I am listening to Demi Lovato of Disney Channel's "Camp Rock" fame right now. And it didn't even happen by accident. It's not like I was looking at some snarky blog devoted to lambasting whatever girl the "cute" Jonas is dating this week, and my hand slipped over the link to her new single. I just suddenly found myself thinking, "Hey, you know what would be awesome to listen to right now? Someone who's voice sounds like what would happen if Avril Lavigne swallowed a rainbow cloud full of Lisa Frank panda bears, and who looks like a teen-aged American Girl doll. I better get me some Demi, stat!" That doesn't really have anything to with anything. I just thought you should know in case you find this post lacking some of my usual bite. If I can't find the energy to make any good jokes, it's because I'm mesmerized by the dulcet tones of what can only be an electric guitar made of cotton candy and dream catchers.

Also, I wanted to provide you with that bouncy sparkly YouTube link because I thought it might help to balance out the dark tale I am about to tell. As most of you know, I have a long history with jinxes and curses. For most of my adult life, I couldn't get from point A to point B without some hexed talisman of doom -- ranging from plane tickets to underwear -- waylaying me somehow. And yet, in the past year, I've ridden on a number of planes without having to pay hundreds of dollars to fix any stupid mistakes. I was beginning to think I was through with curses all together!

I should know better by now, shouldn't I?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the new, darker cloud over my life's journey: the health care curse. (Or, if you're my mother, you call it "selective hypochondria." But again: potato, potahto). I've already written about my first medical emergency in this blog, but I didn't know then that that incident merely marked the emergence of a larger pattern.

Shortly after I arrived in Baltimore, I noticed a sore growing on my...well I'm a nice Midwestern girl who's been conditioned to blush at any words more dirty sounding than "uvula" and "masticate". So, let's just say it was on my "hope chest." OK, you know what? Never mind. Calling it that is even yuckier than just saying that it was on my breast, which is where it was. Anyway. At first, I tried that good ole' Minnesota method used for dealing with everything in the heartland from cold sores to interpersonal conflict: Ignore it and it will go away. After two or three months though, it became clear that the traditions of my beloved lake land had failed me. Instead of going away, it got worse. I had no choice but to take action.

So, naturally, I thought: "well, I could spend a few hours figuring out how health insurance works (Seriously Obama! What's taking so long?), track down a clinic that will admit me and then get off my ass and actually go there...OR I could stay in bed and anonymously consult thousands of idiots at once who have no idea what they're talking about. Also, my fear of death is pretty much neck-and-neck with my fear of doctors. Hmm...Internet it is!" My first few Google passes were unsuccessful due to my reluctance to type icky words like "breast" or "areola" into the engine. When my vague, dainty searches for things like "rather embarrassing medical dilemma" did not yield the results I wanted, I was forced to get a little more specific. What I found then was troubling, to say the least.

Now kids, we all know that the internet is good at many things. Finding instructions for how to build a cake shaped like a pony; watching videos of babies wrestling cats; and trying to figure out where you recognize ubiquitous 90's actor Steve Zahn from; are all things the internet is great for. Turns out, the internet is also really good at convincing you that you have a terminal illness. After a bit of poking through forums and google answers, the internet had convinced me that it was most definitely one of two things: Either I needed to take a break from breastfeeding, or I had cancer. Since I haven't ever breastfed anyone that I can think of, I felt pretty confident diagnosing myself as a terminal case.

So I called my mother. I thought she might like to know. When I told her my woefull story, she calmly informed me that it was statistically improbable that someone my age had breast cancer. In retort, I quoted the story -- as told by medicalhorrorstories.com -- of the girl who was diagnosed with three or four rare forms of cancer at age 19. My mother did not seem as concerned with this concrete evidence of my incurable condition as I was. She just made me promise to stop doing independent internet "research." She also suggested I see an actual doctor.

Since my mother is always right, I set out the next morning to take her advice. But, I was hampered by the fact that all my knowledge of America's health care system comes from what I've seen on Grey's Anatomy, where they wouldn't deal with a small blemish like mine unless it had grown a heartbeat and a tiny pair of teeth. What kind of doctor did I even need to see? A general practitioner? A mammary specialist? A world famous neurosurgeon with great hair and a sordid sexual history with half the nurses at Seattle Grace??? My mother had suggested a clinic with an urgent care facility, so I tried calling a few of those first. Though the first few had never even heard of my insurance provider, I got lucky when I called the place that had seen me for my twisted ankle. It was an hour long bus ride away, but I was just relieved to know that my insurance card had not, as I was beginning to suspect, been cut out of the back of a cereal box.

Once I got there, everything went pretty smoothly. Nobody flicked my insurance card or held it up to the light to see if I'd forged it with magic marker. The doctor I saw informed me I probably had a staph infection. She scheduled a mammogram (just to be safe), prescribed two antibiotics and some non-stick bandages, and sent me on my way.If it didn't look like it was getting better in two weeks, she said I should come back in.

The end.

Just kidding! What, you believed me? You think I got it right on the first try? HAVE WE MET? No. Of course it wasn't any better in two weeks. If anything it was worse. Logically, at this juncture -- after having been informed by the Patient First nurse I spoke to on the phone that I was already on the strongest antibiotics available -- I assumed that whatever I had was incurable. The fact that the Patient First doctor referred me to a "specialist" when I went back in did little to dissuade me from this opinion. Come on. I've seen Discovery Health. If you can show me one episode of "Medical Mysteries" that doesn't contain some variation of the phrase, "we saw every specialist in the country, but no one could figure out what was wrong!" I will give you a dollar. My prospects were looking dim, but at least I didn't have to see another doctor for two weeks while I was waiting for my appointment to arrive.

Until, of course, I woke up three days later with nifty rash all over my body. When I discovered it, my first thought was, "Seriously? I've come down with ANOTHER degenerative skin disease? What a horrible coincidence!" Shortly though, it occurred to me that this new symptom was probably connected to one of the medicines I was taking. Sure enough, when I checked my prescriptions, there was "sudden rash or hives" right next to "heart palpitations" under, "Seek immediate medical attention if you develop..."

This was when I became certain that I was going to die. I figured the rash was only phase one. During phase two, by throat would close up, and phase three was probably heart explosion. When I called my boss to let her know that I couldn't come in that day due to the fact that I only had a few hours to live, she offered to give me a ride to the doctor's office. I accepted. This was a good decision for a number of reasons. One was that I didn't want to waste any of my dwindling moments on Baltimore public transit. Another was that Pastor Alice's years of service as a priest in the inner city have made her exceptionally adept at dealing with hysterical people. When I got in her car, we had something like the following conversation:

Pastor Alice: "Are you crying?"

Me: "No..." sniff. "Maybe."

Pastor Alice: "You're going to be fine. I've had bad reactions to plenty of antibiotics before. It's not a big deal."

Me: "sniff."

Pastor Alice: "Have you called your mother?"

Me: "No. I figured they'd do it for me after they admit me to the hospital."

Pastor Alice: "Sigh."

Needless to say, Pastor Alice was right. When I got back to Patient First, I saw a new doctor who made no mention of hospitalizing me or calling my next of kin. She told me that one of the antibiotics I was on was notorious for causing negative reactions in patients. The rash would go away on its own in a few days as long as I stopped taking the drugs. When she took a look at my original problem, she didn't think it was a staph infection and prescribed a steroid cream. Once I was out of the doctor's office, I called my very loving mom who told me that I should feel free to let her know the next time I think I'm dying -- even before a medical professional tells me I'm not.

Thank goodness, the cream worked almost instantly. I kept my appointment with the "specialist" though, who confirmed once and for all that I did NOT have cancer. She also told me not to trust the internet, which I'm 75 percent sure my mother paid her to say.

Oh, and she said that if I continued to have problems, I should consult a dermatologist. Do those guys advertise on Craigslist or the sides of buses? 'Cause if they don't, I'm gonna have to make a few calls. Has anyone seen the number for my phone-a-psychic?

Delicious Cookies: The C-Sell School of Culinary Arts

2010-03-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

Did the title grab you? I'm experimenting with sensationalist tactics.

Guys, I know you're all expecting my trademark self-scathing-yet-tender-hearted-wit right now, but I can't find it. Seriously, I've looked everywhere. If you were my trademark wit, where would you be? My present theory is that it's hiding out in the part of my brain where I keep all the re-runs of X-Files episodes I've pretty much memorized, and is wrapped in the hypothetical snuggie I'm going to crochet for myself one day, snacking on the imaginary gingerbread castle with which I win "battle gumdrop" against Bobby Flay in my Iron Chef fantasies. Really, I don't blame it for hiding. Blogging every week (and a half) is really hard on that little guy.

So, this week, I've decided to give it a rest and try something different. You're probably thinking, "Caitlin, what else can you possibly try? The only things you know how to do that amuse us are telling stories about how bad you are at math and people and falling down." We'll you're right. I have nothing left to entertain you with, but perhaps I have something to teach you.

No no wait! Don't go! It's not about Dostoyevski or fractions or heart-thoughts, I swear. It's about cupcakes! Look, there are two things in life I know how to do very well: deprecate myself and make delicious cookies. Today, I'd like to take a break from the former and tell you a bit about the latter. Lots of people incorrectly assume that I'm a talented cook because I make good food. This is not true. I'm just a terrible cook who's been doing it for so long that I've made every mistake in the book before you met me and I fed you those delicious cookies. And you know what? You can make delicious cookies too. You don't even have to go through that tooth grinding "egg shell vs. egg white" debacle or that failed "flour and cornstarch are basically the same thing, right?" venture to do so! All you have to do is learn from my mistakes. I'd like to impart a little wisdom upon the recent college graduates of America who just learned the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons last month. (hint: the tablespoon is the big one).

Gosh, I've been giving unsolicited cooking advice for so long, I hardly know where to begin! To get things started, I'm going to elaborate on five of the passive-aggressive suggestions I most frequently make, hovering in the kitchen while other people are cooking.

1 "Yeah...that's going to need a few more minutes": Of all the free cooking advice I've doled out over the years, this is perhaps my most common refrain: When it comes to cooking times, trust your senses more than you trust the numbers your recipe has given you. If a recipe says, "Cook for 40 minutes, or until golden brown," This does not mean you get to pick one or the other. Your recipe is not a choose-your-own-adventure story. Or maybe it is, but I'm telling you: If you don't wait until that cake is nice and golden on top and the toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, your adventure is going to end poorly. Every oven is dishonest, and every cooking time in any recipe is an estimation. So, even if you have to cook your cake for twice as long as your recipe leads you to believe -- unless the recipe specifically tells you otherwise -- it's not done if it doesn't look and feel done.

In general, impatience is one of a cook's greatest foes. So set a timer and do something that will take your mind off your cakelust while those youthful blobs of batter take the time they need to mature into sexy full-grown cupcakes. Do some yoga perhaps, or maybe brush up on your Hebrew. Your good eats will repay you for it in the long run.

And P.S. While we're on the subject, never frost or assemble any baked good before it is COMPLETELY COOL. No exceptions. Watching frosting melt into a warm cake is like watching Lindsay Lohan's youth melt away: It was gone before it's time, it's never coming back, and no one feels good about it. So put that spatula down.

2 "Um, does the recipe call for 'low calorie non-dairy spread'?": Listen, I'm all for experimenting, but I'm telling you right now, this one will fail. When a recipe calls for butter, it's calling for fat. If you don't have enough butter on hand, margarine, shortening and even sometimes applesauce or oil can be used as substitutes. But butter spread, -- the stuff that comes in a tub and has zero grahams of fat -- is missing the whole point. You can't use it in your cookies or fry a grilled cheese sandwich in it for the same reason why you can't fry a grilled cheese sandwich in salted water: It's just not going to get the job done. Sure it will be healthier, but what's the point if your toast is burnt and your cookies taste like frisbees?

In general, I say substitute responsibly. Don't substitute a cup of this for a cup of that until a reputable source -- preferably one with an editor, publisher and copyright -- has given you detailed instructions on how to do so.

3 "You know we don't have a blow torch, right?": This one's kind of common sense, but even I get in trouble every now and then when I forget: Read the recipe from start to finish before you begin. Even if you've scanned the ingredients list without any red flags going up, the instructions may still be fraught with landmines. You don't want to wait until step eight -- where the recipe tells you to plug in your imaginary electric ice-cream maker -- to discover you've just made a batch of really rich, possibly toxic, chocolate milk. Likewise, you don't want to wait until the night of the big party to realize that, if you start now, your marinated chicken skewers might be ready for brunch tomorrow. If you're lucky.

Sidenote: Like ingredient substitutions, you can MacGuyver substitutions for a lot specialized kitchen equipment -- deep fryers, double boilers, steamers, etc. -- out of more common pots and pans. But, for my thoughts on all substitutions, see tip #2.

4 "No, it's not that I don't trust your judgment, it's just that I don't think allrecipes.com user "ChefTastykinsHeartsHottieBobbyFlay13" is the most trustworthy recipe author...": You already know that the internet is a dangerous place. You figured that out back when your eighth grade English teacher told you that Harry Potter fan forum poster "RaDcLiFfE*FoR*PrEsIdEnT" was not an appropriate secondary source for your book report on "The Chamber of Secrets." Online cooking resources are similarly hit and miss. If you don't know and trust the place your information is coming from, you're likely going to end up with a check-minus result. Cooking forums like allrecipes, cooks.com and Recipe Zaar, where anyone who wants can post recipes, are full of unclear instructions and incomplete research. At best, you could end up with a custard that won't set. At worst, you might give all your dinner guests salmonella as a party favor.

I'm not saying every recipe on the internet is shifty. The web is brimming with great, creative, easy to follow cooking instructions. But, I'd advise you to use the same criteria for an internet recipe that you would use for potential book-report source: Is the author clearly identifiable? Is it well edited? Are there any spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors? Does the website layout look like it was designed by dyslexic thirteen-year-old Hannah Montana Fan? Etc. If you wouldn't cite it, for Pete's sake, don't eat it! Though, if you must -- if KitchenHotttie69Degrees's recipe for Fruit Loop Casserole just looks too enticing to resist -- make the recipe on your own once (and maybe wait 24 to 48 hours after you've eaten it, just to be safe) before you feed it to your unsuspecting friends.

If you're interested in getting sucked into the world of internet cooking and you've got a few dozen hours to spare, this guy has a great list of trustworthy food blogs and websites to browse.

5 "You're the chef!":Usually, I don't mean this one passive-aggressively. No, really! I think a lot of people are intimidated by cooking because they don't think they know what things are supposed to taste like. But guess what? If you think it tastes good -- unless you have some kind of serious taste-bud malfunction that causes motor oil to smell like pancake syrup in your brain -- it probably tastes good. Recipes that say, "season to taste" aren't referring to some cryptic state of food zen that exists only in Plato's realm of forms. They're talking about YOUR taste. You say it's salty enough? Then it is! There's nothing wrong with asking for a second opinion every once and a while but ultimately, you're the one wielding the spoon. You call the shots. Just remember to add seasonings a little at a time and taste as you go, and your tomato sauce is going to be beautiful. I promise.

And now, I'd like to close with one of my most favorite recipes for cheap, simple and creative eats. People ask me for it all the time. (Or, people often say, "this isn't bad Caitlin," then I say, "I know! Let me give you the recipe..." Again, potato, potahto.) Anyway, without further ado, here's how you make Frying Pan Pizza:

Ingredients:

1 cup of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus a little more for frying
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few tablespoons water

Directions:

1. Mix flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. Add the oil. Then, add water two or three tablespoons at a time, stirring well after each addition. Add water until you have what looks and feels like a bread dough. The dough should stick together in a ball, but not to your hands.

2. Shape dough with a rolling pin or with your hands into a disc no bigger than the bottom of the medium frying pan your about to use.

3. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a medium frying pan. Fry your disc of dough for a minute or two on each side until it is golden brown.

4. Top as desired. If you want your toppings melted or toasted, put the whole pizza - toppings and all -- in the oven and broil on low for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly. Then, enjoy! For toppings, you can use traditional pizza toppings, or you can get as creative as you want. I've used baked beans and cheese, chili and onions, apple cheddar and brown sugar and fried potatoes and scrambled eggs.

This recipe is enough for one personal sized crust, but if you're feeding your friends it's easy to multiply by the number of people eating. Stir the dough up all at once, then divide it into individual portions after it's mixed. If you're having an extra crazy party, you can let your guests shape their own. Have fun! Let me know if you have any questions.

P.S. I'd like to dedicate this post to Anne, "Muffin Face," K. She recently turned 22, and girl knows what to do with a gas burner. Happy late birthday Muffin Face!

That sweet nectar of victory is going to go flat if you don't put a cap on it...

2010-02-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

So you guys know how, at your elementary school carnivals, you used to do those contests where you guessed how many jelly-beans were in the jar, and if you were closest you got to eat the jelly beans? (...I never won the prize. I always looked at the jar and thought, 'well, let's see. As far as I know, it could be anywhere between 34 and five bajillion jelly beans. I'm gonna go spend my tickets on cotton candy instead.')Well, we're going to do a version of that, but with more alcohol and awkwardness. You're excited, right?

The riddle is this: How long does it take Caitlin Jane Scorpion, after entering a Baltimore dive bar, to muster the courage to order a cocktail? To figure it out, you're gonna need some sort of complex mathematical equation that factors in my fear of bars, multiplied by my fear of looking stupid, exponentiated by my lack of knowledge about mixed drinks, divided by the fact that the sooner I order this drink the sooner I can get the hell out of the bar, all squared by my acute general awkwardness... Or, you could just guess.

Anyone?

OK, if you guessed "about 45 minutes," you win! There are no jelly beans for me to give you, but you do win the prize of knowing that you outclass me in yet another adult social grace. Though I guess, if that's a prize, the world is overrun with champions.

It all went down a few weeks ago on a Friday night. A big group of us went ice skating for a friend's birthday, and decided to go out for drinks afterwords. I figured I could handle it. I really enjoyed chatting with friends over pints in the pubs in Ireland. I thought an American bar might even be pleasant as long as it didn't involve any halter tops or drinks with variations of the words "fire," "balls" or "dragon" in their titles. A member of our group suggested a place he'd been before called "Ale Mary's." When we asked him why he liked the place, he said, "I dunno...the name is hilarious."

We said, shrug, "good enough for us!" and off we went.

When we arrived though, the tiny bar was already overflowing with patrons and couldn't accommodate the extra 20 people we tried to stuff inside of it at once. Before we could telephone a consensus to every member of the group, half of us had already ordered drinks. So, we decided to split up. Apparently, there was another bar across the street where some of us could go for a while. I attached myself to the group that was leaving because God knows how many tightly packed strangers had already gotten their greasy fingerprints all over my pristine personal bubble.

Of course, had I known then that we were going to a place actually titled "Bad Decisions," I might have chosen differently. When I saw the ominous name on the dingy awning and the low light in the bar we were headed to, I begged my companions to turn around.

"Guys, we can't go in there! None of us are nicknamed after predatory wildlife and I don't know the words to any Motley Crue songs. Let's come back when we have some leather jackets and stick-on tatoos."

When we got inside (against my wishes) I was relived to see that most of the bar's patrons were bedecked in jeans and hipster scarves -- nary a Hell's Angel in sight. But my greatest challenge -- actually obtaining and drinking a drink -- was still ahead of me. We settled in at the bar where my super cool friends all started expertly ordering cheap beer. Next to me, my friend Will asked the bartender if he had any specials.

"What?" the bartender asked, as though Will had just asked for a crystal bowl of caviar and a tiara.

"You know, specials," Will said, "Like cheap drinks on Friday nights or pitchers of stuff..."

The bartender snorted. "No, we don't have anything like that. Ever. Never ever. Ever."

Will and I exchanged glances. He, unflapped, ordered his beer like a pro, but I was in a predicament. I don't really like beer. I'll probably drink one if you put it in my hand, but who are we kidding? I like my alcoholic beverages to taste like Jolly Ranchers. And I don't want to spend a whole two day's bus fare on a glorified hand decoration. As I mentioned before, I am entirely inexperienced when it comes to public drinking in the US. In Ireland I had cider. It was easy to order, not uncool, and had a lingering hint of juicebox -- just the way I like it. In the States, the only no-fuss thing they ever have on tap is beer, and all my cocktail knowledge comes from re-runs of Sex and the City on TBS. Somehow, I knew this wasn't the sort of place where one orders a Balaklava Nectar. Something simple like a screwdriver or a rum and Coke would have been safe, but I didn't want to spend my aforementioned bus fare on something a frat boy could mix for me in his basement either.

I racked my brain for ten minutes and the best I could come up with was a margarita. Yes... a margarita just might work, I thought. I've never ordered one before, but I know it's widely recognized, tastes like candy, and has somewhere between three and twenty components. And -- bonus! -- it often comes with decorative crap on the rim! Throw in a little pink umbrella and I'm sold! Yet, I still wasn't sure. And not just because I knew in my heart that the pink umbrella was but a wisp of a dream at Bad Decisions.

I took a survey of my friends at the bar: "Do you think they'd give me a Margarita? Will, I really want to order a Margarita but I don't want the bartender to look at me the way he looked at you when you asked about the specials."

Though my friends were ambivalent, I finally plucked up the courage to ask for my beverage of choice:

"Sir, could I have a Margarita?"

The bartender raised his eyebrows, "Sure. I guess." It occurred to me that I was probably the first person to order a Margarita in about ten years at Bad Decisions, but I was pleased he wasn't going to mock me (to my face) for ordering one. He continued, "What kind of Tequila do you want?"

I wasn't prepared for this. The most refined alcoholic nuances I can distinguish are between Smirnoff Watermelon and Smirnoff Blueberry. How am I supposed to choose between Tequilas? I paused for a moment, then said, "Um...the cheap kind?"

The bartender nodded and chuckled a little. "Sure. You got it."

I don't know if the margarita I got was a good one or not. It stuck in my throat like lifesavers dissolved in 7-Up -- just the way I like it. It was also decidedly plain rimmed, but I didn't care. I felt I had won an important victory that night at the bar. It tasted like triumph.

At least, as good as triumph can taste after it's been sitting out for 45 minutes.

Show Some Respect:The Harassment Files, Vol. 1

2010-02-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me make one thing clear: Most of the time, sexual harassment is no laughing matter. It's manipulative, degrading, and just plain gross. And, for all the women I know living in Baltimore -- regardless of their shape, size, age or ethnicity -- it's a regular part of life. We get hollered, honked and stared at just walking down the street all the damn time. Usually, it's a drive-by sort of thing, and the perpetrator is gone before you can turn around and say, "stop harassing women!" That's what we were taught to do by Marty, our pint-sized turtle-necked bad-assed safety instructor at orientation. So, before I go on, I'd like to issue a cyber-statement to all the horn-honking holla'ers out there who -- I'm sure -- have this blog bookmarked and filed under "Efron, other fans of" :

Stop harassing women. No one likes it. Show some respect!

Did I do it right, Marty? It might not count if it's on the internet. Oh well. All you non-harassers can bust that puppy out in real life whenever you run into someone who wants you to know they wish they were that bike you're riding.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I feel comfortable saying that, sometimes? It's a little bit of a laughing matter. You'll see what I mean.

Phew. That was a lot of ado. Let's get on to this edition of The Harassment Files!

Case 1

My housemate Morgan and I are waiting at the bus stop. Now, you should know that the Maryland Transit Association is pretty much Baltimore's swinginest scene for the city's most eligible creepsters. Ladies? Are you looking for that rare special someone who knows all the words to "Calle Ocho" by Pitbull to AND can rock a mullet so hard his achy breaky heart just won't understand? Look no further than route 13. Morgan and I have met some very special gentlemen there in the past, but we have no idea that, today, we are about to encounter someone who will put all the other creepy Casanovas to shame.

He stands in front of us with his eyes half shut. This is where he notices a woman standing about 20 feet away. He's probably swaying in the breeze like that because he's drunk on her beauty. For the purposes of this story, I'm going to have to describe the lady now. I apologize in advance: She's very short -- certainly no taller than five feet. Other than her height, her most distinctive characteristic is her...um...rather...well endowed rear end. In plain language, she's got what kids these days are calling a "badonkadonk." (Please don't tell Minnesota I said that. I promise never to do it again.) It's this badonkadonk (Damn. Sorry, it slipped out) that appears to inspire our skeezy Shakespeare -- or, Skezespeare if you will -- the most. He begins stream of poetic admiration. She's far enough away so she can't hear him, but Morgan and I sure can:

"Mmm. Mmm mmm. Ooh shorty. Sugar baby. Yeah chocolate...chocolate gumdrop. Mmm."

Clearly, this man is a wordsmith.

His platitudes continue for a little while. Eventually, he decides to approach her. We can't hear what she says in response, but judging by her body language, it's probably something along the lines of, "Oh my gosh. That's the most shockingly beautiful thing anyone's any said to me. 'chocolate gumdrop'. It rolls off my tongue like a silken pearl. It's so beautiful that I can't be around you anymore. I need some time to be alone with all these new feelings."

Skezespeare obliges. He cleaves himself from the side of his new muse and resumes his earlier position in front of Morgan and I. Poetry continues to spew from his lips:

"You don't want to talk to me? That's alright. I'll just have a conversation with yo' butt.

The bus arrives. Me, Morgan, Skezespeare and Chocolate Gumdrop all get on. Skezespeare is far from finished.

"Mmm. That ass goes on for days. You could take a vacation on that ass. Oh sugar baby. Gumdrop. You remind me of one of those people who sing, (He begins actually singing in a munchkin voice) 'the lollipop guild...'"

Now, how she hears these musical overtures and is still able to resist jumping this guy right then and there will forever remain a mystery to me. But Morgan and I watch her exit the bus a mere three stops later, where she turns her back on the 13 and her devoted suitor forever. They were like two Baltimore city buses passing in the night, I guess.

Case 2

I am walking away from the opening of a new neighborhood restaurant with a plate full of free pizza and samosas. When you're living on a volunteer's stipend, free food is pretty much the best thing that can happen to you on any given day, so needless to say, I was pretty jazzed. When I pass a middle-aged man who appears to be eying my lunch, I excitedly tell him where he can get some of his own. It only dawns on me later that encouraging a perfect stranger of the opposite sex to get some "tasty fritters" may be sending the wrong message. Also, it probably wasn't the samosas he was eying. He stops and introduces himself. I am new to the neighborhood and still trying to get a feel for the place, so I figure it can't hurt to chat for a bit. He can probably tell I'm in a hurry, so he doesn't waste much time getting his game on.

"Here's my card," he says, "I'm a painter here in the neighborhood."

"Oh thanks!" I reply, "Here's my card." I relish the opportunity to hand one to him since I have a box of about ten-bajillion brand-new business cards sitting on my desk. "I'm working out of the Church down the street."

"I can call you at this number?"

"Yep. that's my Work number."

He gives me a sly smile. "What's your cell phone number?"

"Aah you can't have my cell phone number."

His gives a sheepish, yoooou got me! shrug and says, "What? Your boyfriend wouldn't like that?"

"Um, no." I say thinking, my boyfriend would, indeed, NOT like that. But even if he would -- even if this was an alternate swingin' seventies universe where my boyfriend had a Burt Reynolds mustache to match his man-perm, and I had Farrah hair and eight pairs of polyester bell-bottoms, and we believed in free love and went to kinky poolside key parties every weekend -- I still don't think I'd want to give you my personal number.

My pizza has stopped steaming. I think he knows that he's losing me, because he attempts pull an advanced maneuver: "Would you like to see some of my work?"

Before I can say anything, he pulls a photograph of a painting out of his wallet. Whether or not this man actually painted the picture in the photo is unclear, but it's also irrelevant to the story I'm telling. At first glance, It looks to me like a generic pharaoh standing in front of a generic pyramid. I am quite wrong. "This is Michael Jackson." my new friend the painter explains, "See? I painted him here in ancient Egypt."

Ah, yes. Now I see it. The aviator glasses probably should have been my first clue. Also, I don't seem to recall the Jerry Curl being King Tut's hairstyle of choice. He continues, "This was before he changed skin colors. That's just not right, going black and white and black and white. Not the way God intended it. You know?" He consults my business card, "You do know. You work at a church."

"Mmm hmm." I nod. I don't recall the subject of "skin color changing" coming up in confirmation class, but it's possible I was sick that day. The cheese on my pizza is starting to do that gross congealing thing cold melted cheese does.

I try to inch away, but my new friend has a few more stops to pull out. He says, "You have a very nice face. I would like to paint a face like yours."

I have the simultaneous urge to roll my eyes and laugh awkwardly. Awkward laughter wins.

He continues, "I can tell, it will be good when you are old too. When you are 50, your face will still be nice."

I kind of want to ask him if he says that to all the girls, but I'm sensing an escape window I don't want to pass up, "Um...thanks. Say, I better get back to the church! Lots of work to do."

My new friend shrugs and continues on his way. He doesn't seem too disappointed to see me go. There are plenty of fish in the sea and he's got time. After all, he's not your average player in the game of love. He's an artist.

...And that's it for this obscenely long edition of the harassment files! Sorry, didn't expect to waste so very much of your time. And, I know, I know, it's been about a week and a half since my last entry, but that's a heck of a lot better than six months! We're doing baby steps here. Also, Chris told me it was OK if I was a few days late, so kindly direct all your hate mail to him.

I'm trying to stick to my guns, even if it doesn't seem like it. Expect to hear from me again in seven days or less!

Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone

2010-02-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

Hey Blog? Let's have an intimate chat about a few things. I'll give you a second to get your PJ's on and grab a cup of hot cocoa. I'll light the candles.

OK blog, I'm back. Are you ready for some startling openness and honesty? Here goes: The thing is, I realize I've been undervaluing you for a while now. I knew I'd been neglecting you a bit, but I didn't realize the extent of it until I almost lost you a couple weeks back. That fateful evening, I thought to myself, "Hmm. I'm overdue for a blog entry, as usual. I've got so much wit stored up, it's probably leaking out of my brain as I sleep. I better put some of it in the internet before more is wasted on my pillow and the stuffed fraggle I sleep with." So, I tried to log on here only to discover that I had forgotten my password. No big deal. I just pushed a button to have the password e-mailed to myself. But, when I tried to retrieve the e-mail, I discovered that it had been so long since I checked the e-mail I signed up with that my account had been DELETED. I had no way to access the password Blogspot had sent me!

-- Which, sidenote, is really a shame because, though I obviously didn't check that Excite account very often, I have a soft spot for it in my heart. I've had it since I was fifteen, and e-mail addresses with "scorpion" in the title never really go out of style. Am I right, future employers? Also, I may have let the infamous Larry departure letter slip into the great cyber-cinerator. Did I ever have the presence of mind to forward that to any of you Concert Choir kids? If not, I may never forgive myself. --

But anyway, additionally, there was an IMMEDIATE BLOGGING CHRISIS at hand! I tried password after password unsuccessfully, quickly slipping into despair. All the words on these pages were locked in place like dinosaurs who took baths in tar pits. It was MELT DOWN CITY! And then -- just as I was beginning to think all my brilliant words would be trapped behind velvet ropes and glossy museum glass forever -- success! I remembered the correct combination of capital letters and numbers and Jim Henson characters to unlock the path to my beloved Unnecessary Anxieties dashboard.

So now, here we are blog. You and me. I never realized how much you meant to me until I almost lost you. The experience opened my eyes to how cruel and careless I've been. So, I'm making some changes. I know you're hurting. I know it's going to be hard for you to trust me with the shards of empty broken promises still lying all around you. You've heard me whisper these sweet nothings before. But I'm telling you, it'll be different this time. I'm going to write at least every week. No, I mean it! Most people make new year's resolutions, but not me. (Partially because I'm super alternative...but mostly because I've procrastonated making any resolutions until now.) I'm making a birthday resolution;

I, Caitlin Jane Scorpion, hereby declare that in my 23rd year on this planet, I will change for the better beginning with you, dear Unnecessary Anxieties. I will post something new here at least every seven days until we dissolve into dust and pixels. Or, at least until I write the great American novel, become rich, and can afford to pay someone else do it for me.

It has been written, and I will make it so!

So, what do you say?All of Baltimore is snowed in, huddling together for warmth. Want to huddle with me, dear blog, and create something beautiful?Do you think you can ever trust me again? What, you still don't believe I'll come back? Well, I'll prove you wrong.

I'll see you next week.

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

2009-09-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know. Being back here after all this time...It feels strange somehow. I mean a lot has happened since my last post. I got myself a driver's license, a boyfriend and a fancy-schmancy degree. In Latin. Perhaps I have outgrown this blog. Maybe it's time to put the final nail in the coffin of this childish fodder and just commit to writing a deeply disturbing novella so brilliant, no one will read it until I die respectably of alcoholism at the respectable age 29. Maybe I should say goodbye to the less respectable Zac Efron...goodbye to the endless parade of cheerleading* movies...goodbye to the Muppet singalongs...goodbye to the sparkles...

...Oh, the sparkles.

Nah, that can't be it. Respectability be damned. (You know I could never quit you, Zaky! Call me!) It must just be that my creative juices have all but dried up in my long blogging hiatus. I submit the fact that I just used the words "juices" and "dried up" in the same sentence as evidence toward this case.

But really? I am so not ready to be a grown-up. No one who slows down when she passes the High School Musical themed notebooks in the office supply aisle in Target is ready for her own business cards. If I learn one thing from my year as a member of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, it will be how incredibly under-prepared I am to be a productive member of adult society.

Do you guys remember when we all moved into our dorm rooms freshman year, all dewy and starry eyed? We tore the plastic encasing our brand new pop-up hampers, gingerly stuck dry erase boards on our doors and thought to ourselves, "this is it. We're finally on our own. This self-purchased bottle of laundry detergent is my ticket to the adult world." Kids, I'm telling you right now, we have been lying to ourselves. There is WAY more to adulthood than having to staple your papers before you bring them to class.

First of all, did you know that you have to go grocery shopping every week in the real world? I mean, I suspected milk and bread could go bad. I saw numerous graphic posters on the process at my third-grade science fair. But, it turns out that everything else can grow mold too! Tomatoes, Broccoli, rice (though, to be fair, that's just prison-style sake if you're a glass-half-full kind of person) garbage cans, lunch meat, bedsheets...You have to clean or eat all of these things regularly or throw them out. And money doesn't grow on trees (though mold probably grows on money) so it's good to not have to buy new bedsheets every other week. Also, most people don't even have an unlimited supply of soft-serve and a sprinkle bar in their kitchens.

Adulthood: Zero. College cafeteria: Like, 48.

Second, bathrooms don't clean themselves. When your mother said this to you, she wasn't kidding. When I informed my mother my "chore"one week was cleaning bathrooms, she asked me, "Caitlin, do you even know how to clean a bathroom?" When I said "um...nope." she replied, "I have failed as a mother."

When I was little, "bathroom cleaning" seemed like a mysterious cocktail concocted from baking soda, rubber gloves and mom jeans. The cocktail also seemed kind of redundant to me because, hello: Bathrooms clean people...why can't they clean themselves too? Well, it turns out they can't because human beings are filthy and disgusting. Within nine days our brand new tub had a gray ring around it and it stopped draining completely. We took measures to correct the situation with drain-o and something called a "hair strainer." I assure you, it's as gross as it sounds.

Finally, did you guys know that adults have to take themselves to the doctor? Remember the days of shuffling into urgent care and just plopping yourself down in a chair with a five year old copy of Highlights while your mom filled out paperwork at the receptionists desk? Yeah, well, those days are gone. I know, I know. many of you guys have been hip to this for a while. You've all been hauling your own asses to the campus clinic every flu season since freshman year. But I have managed to avoid it thus far.

And I was counting on avoiding it indefinitely. I figured I'd just not contract any ailments that couldn't be cured by the internet and a frozen pack of peas. Then, I'd die a peaceful death with no medical cause at age 130. I thought this was a pretty good plan. So imagine my surprise when, four weeks into my new job, I fell down the stairs and listened to my ankle crackle like a bowl of Rice Krispies. I managed to keep it together for a while until I realized that, yes, I was going to have to visit the doctor. Luckily, no one was around to witness my meltdown, but if they had, our dialogue might have gone something like this:

Friendly co-worker: Oh, honey, does it hurt that bad?

Me: No (pathetic sniff), it doesn't hurt at all. I'm crying because (sniff sniff) I have no concept of how health insurance works. I called the pharmacy the "pill library" until I was ten.

Co-worker: The pill library?

Me: What? An insurance card and a library card have a lot of similar qualities to a thirteen year old.

Co-worker: I thought you said 'ten.'

Me: Oh noooooooooooo...

Co-worker: Okay, okay. Don't cry. I'm sure a lot of kids get insurance cards mixed up with library cards. Even some, um, slower adults. Anyway, do you know the name of your insurance provider? How about the name of your plan or your ID number...

Me: Are you kidding? My insurance card hasn't come in the mail yet and I can barely even remember my own phone number without singing a little song in my head. (singing to the tune of Twinkle Little Star:) two eight seven six zero five one, That is my...phone number.

Co-worker: What? That doesn't even rhyme --

Me: I want my mommy.

Eventually I grown-uped up and called a number of resources to find out about my health-care situation. OK, so one of them was my mommy. I'm taking baby steps. None of the calls I made mattered because the health-care facility I went to was not about to provide me with any coverage without an insurance card. Luckily, I qualified for worker's comp. since I fell down the stairs on the job.

Since I still had a very loose grasp on the logistics of health insurance, I felt like a little old con-lady who trips outside of Olive Garden and sues the franchise for forgetting to salt the sidewalks. Later, my mother -- definitive resource that she is -- assured me that the money would come out of my employer's insurance, not by boss's children's lunch boxes. This was a great comfort to me once the whole ordeal was over. At the time though, every bleeb of the x-ray machine just sounded more and more like little Maggie's sigh of disappointment as she peeked inside her brown bag to find nothing but a hard boiled egg and a few packets of non-dairy creamer.

"Luckily," Nothing was broken (in my ankle) and I was out of the brace they gave me within a week. And, I guess if I had to learn about health insurance, there could have been more painful ways to do it. Still, I think my original plan of just never getting hurt was far superior. Let me impart what little wisdom I have gleaned from the real world so far on you little whippersnappers: don't fall down stairs.

Oh well. I guess it's all just part of growing up. But, if you can avoid it, I wouldn't recommend doing that either.

*The spell-check on this program does not recognize "cheerleading" as one word. I just wanted to clarify that there is no mistake on my part. If letting the words "cheer" and "leading" co-exist in spaceless, sparkle fingering** harmony is wrong, I don't want to be right. But I mean, it didn't recognize "Zac" or "Efron" as properly spelled words either so...how reliable could it be, right?

**Can we please file "sparkle fingering" -- along with the "withered juices" incident -- under "things we pretend I never said?"

Ways in Which I Fail at Ireland: Part Two

2008-03-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

Grocery shopping

In an effort to help the environment, there is a tax on plastic bags in Ireland. To which I say, "great." Because of the tax, most people bring re-usable bags grocery shopping with them. To this I say, "awesome." Or, I would, if I had the attention span of a human being instead of a hamster. You already know where this is going don't you? The first time I went grocery shopping, I forgot the hearty re-usable bags. No big deal at first. I just shelled out the extra 88 cents for four plastic bags.

It wasn't until I was halfway through my ten minute journey home that I found out that the pansy bags I was carrying weren't worth the plastic they were made out of. The disintegration of three of my bags must have only taken two or three minutes, tops, but it felt like a half an hour in slow motion. First, a handle snapped. Then, a bottle of olive oil began to make a break for freedom. Next, the baked beans and the eggs decided they weren't going to suffer in silence any more! They were following the way paved for them by the olive oil, that great liberator. I did my best to keep all my groceries in check, but nearing Western road, I began to have visions of all my groceries sprawled across the pavement, sad and abandoned. A desperate plan to prevent this scene from happening involved me leaving my food on some dingy street corner with a scruffy but trustworthy looking guitar player and sprinting home to find sturdier bags while calling over my shoulder, "Don't go anywhere! I'm going to get help!"

Luckily it didn't quite come to that. I managed to gather my strength and my groceries close to my fold and collapse in my kitchen with groceries intact except for one battered yogurt. Its injuries were severe. There was nothing I could do. But, every time I eat another "forest fruits" yogurt, I think ofr its fallen comrade. Remember the Tesco-mo!

Baking

I wanted to make myself a chocolate cake for my birthday with a few friends. I went to the grocery store thinking I could just walk in with an American recipe and walk out with the ingredients it called for. No such luck. If the grocery store had been able to talk, we would have had the following conversation:

Me: Got any Corn syrup?
Super-Valu: Syrup made out of corn? That's gross, you weird American. Try "golden syrup" instead and cross your fingers.
Me: Powdered sugar?
Store: Well, stare at that wall of sugar all you want, but you won't find any "powdered sugar." Sweet 'n low is probably as close as you're gonna get. Ha! You suck at this. I'm totally winning.
Me: Shut up. Cocoa powder?
Store: Hmm...well, it's here somewhere. But I'm not gonna tell you where. Me: How about baking chocolate? Well, I have "baking" and I have "chocolate"... Ooh! and look! I have a non dairy product for baking that's "Chocolate flavored" [evil laughter]
Me: [growing desperate] What about chocolate chips? You have to have chocolate chips! You people have to make things chocolaty somehow!
Store: Sure, no problem...if you want to pay over two euro for less than a cup...
Me. NOOOOO!

When I discovered the price tag on those chocolate chips, righteous anger mounted inside of me, because I believe in a world where cheap giant bags of chocolate chips are accessible to all! I mean, I did buy the overpriced chocolate chips, but only because I had no other choice. I wandered out of the store, wondering how I could relate to a people who didn't value Nestle Tollhouse the way I did.

Outside, the grass looked a little less green.

Ways in Which I Fail at Ireland: Part One

2008-03-08T05:05:00.000-08:00

It's the small things, really. I had been prepared for the more obvious differences while abroad in Ireland: different currency, different word for "soccer," different drinking age...etc. What I wasn't prepared for were the smaller surprises in my daily life. Experiences I thought were universal, and rights I took to be God given -- like industrial sized bags of chocolate chips and one-dollar double cheeseburgers -- shocked me greatly when they turned out to be courtesy of Uncle Sam. So: Travel to England and back again? check. Live on the contents of a single suitcase for five months in a row? No problemo! Yet, I try to do laundry and all hell breaks loose. Yes, going abroad is hard, but not for the reasons I expected. What follows are a few lessons I wish I'd had learned January. These are the ways in which I fail at Ireland:

Doing Laundry

So, you guys know how, at Kenyon, everyone complains about having to shell out six quarters for one load of laundry? Well, to you I say, "whatever." Yeah, that's right. I'm worldly now. I've experienced the hard knocks of doing European laundry. I think you should know that there are innocent college children in Ireland who pay twelve euro just to do laundry once. My friends, I have been one of those children. My views have been expanded in a way yours never can.

Anyway, the steep price of clean clothing is bad enough on its own, but when you mix it with the non-metric system and washers and driers that appear to have been purchased circa 1927, you have a meltdown docktail. The first time I attempted to do laundry I just stood, staring at all the nonsensical numbers on the washing-machine dial for about five minutes before some guy wandered in and asked me if I needed help with anything. "Oh no," I laughed, "It's totally fine!" as I just started shoving clothes into some holes and soap and coins into others, trying to look self assured. I left hoping I wouldn't end up with any shrunken sweaters or sudsy laundry tokens when I came back.

Luckily, Everything seemed fine when I transferred my wet clothes into the drier. Upon returning again after an hour to see if they were done, however, I discovered that the drier had stopped, but my clothes were still sopping wet. In the states, this would have been a major annoyance. In Ireland, however, where this broken drier had eaten three precious euro and I had to be on a bus in a half an hour, I considered it grounds for a rock star scale temper tantrum. I mean, I don't remember exactly what happened, because I blacked out in a blind rage at that point, but I'm pretty sure I kicked a washing machine and/or punched a wall. I yelled a lot too. I delivered a monologue that was nothing short of Shakespearean:

"I...I...argh. AAAAAARGH! What the!? damn it. DAMN IT! What am I supposed to do now? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW DEAN'S HALL??? Dean's DUMB Hall. AAAAAARGH! Stupid Ireland."

Since, as I mentioned earlier, I was supposed to be getting on a bus in half an hour to leave for the weekend, I didn't have time to run the drier again. So, I took my clothes back to my flat, and just sort of spread them out on the floor of my room hoping they wouldn't get moldy. Since that first incident, I have attempted to do laundry a few more times, and I run an approximate 45 percent success rate with those driers. Because I just did laundry a few days ago, I currently have a wet pair of jeans draped over my curtain rod, and my room smells like mildew. Or failure.

Turning my heater on

Seriously. I still don't know how to turn that thing on and I've been here for over two months. Sometimes, it turns itself on, and then I can't figure out how to turn it off. People have to stop assuming that college students are just born knowing how to do things like turn on heaters and use mops.

...Stay tuned in a couple of days for more ways in which I fail at Ireland. For real! I've written about them already, but they were so epic -- or long winded...Potato, potahto -- that they wouldn't all fit in one post!

PAAAARTAAAAAYYY!!!!!!!!

2008-02-25T15:57:00.000-08:00

Hey, so, you guys know how I don't like other people very much? Also, you know how my trademark "thing" is to be kind of terrified of everything all the time? And how I like enough personal space to be able to stretch out with a nice copy of Luther's small Catechism without knocking anyone with my elbows? How about how I have a personal knees-and-shoulders-covered dress code that's just a few dangly earrings shy of Pennsylvania Dutch? With all of this in mind, it's probably not hard for you to imagine that I'm not so great with parties. I mean, seeing as how they involve lots of people in very tight quarters with very little clothing and lots of sexual energy and all kinds of other things that cause me to wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night.

Anyway, all of this is just to establish a little background for...get ready...my first Irish party story! Aren't you proud? Of course, I wasn't actually in attendance at the party the story is about, but this is a detail. Did you hear what I said? Party! Story! Drunkenness! Cuh-rayzieyness! Woooooooo! Let's get started:

It was at the tail end of "Rag Week" At University College Cork. I'd tell you exactly what Rag Week is if I could figure it out myself. It has something to do with charity, and lots of parties. So...drinking for charity, I think? It's not like I didn't try to figure out more, but it's one of those things that means different things to the administration and to the students. It's sort of like Kenyon's Summer Sendoff that way. Last year, when I started hearing about Sendoff, I knew there had to be some administration endorsed aspect of it. Would there be music? Ice-cream? square dancing? laser tag? Yet, when I asked anyone what Summer Sendoff was, and all I ever got was an answer along the lines of, "Everyone's wasted all day! Yeah! Kick ass!" I'm still not really sure what Summer Sendoff is.

Anyway, long story short (though, yes, at this point I realize it's a little late for that), Rag week equals Week-long Sendoff. Thursday night of Rag Week was sort of the grand finale, since most UCC students go home on weekends. I went out for a little while, but was home and tucked in bed before 12:30. Because I'm an old lady who hates fun. My two flatmates were still out dancing the night away. Circa 3 a.m., however, I was awoken from a peaceful slumber by the door buzzer. My first instinct is to just ignore it, but it continued to buzz. And buzz and buzz. I began to think that maybe my flatmates had forgotten their keys and had no way of getting into the apartment. I figured I ought to let them in in the interest of Christian charity. Groggily, I rose from my bed and pushed the button to open the outside door without checking to see who was there. That Caitlin, she likes to learn lessons the hard way...

...When I opened the door, I didn't see either of my two roommates. Instead, A lone guy stumbled past me into the apartment and slurred, "Too much fun!"

"I can see that," I replied.

I recognized him as a friend of my flatmates, so I was about 89 percent sure he wasn't a sex offender. But I still didn't want him in my apartment. Our ensuing conversation put my years of training in the PB Newsroom trying to reason with unreasonable people to the test. You'll not be surprised to learn that I failed miserably.

Me: Um...Amy isn't here right now...

My New Drunken Friend: Right! right. Let's go drink.

Me: Uh, no thanks. I think maybe you shouldn't be here right now?

MNDF: Ha ha ha ha ha! Me and Amy...Me and Amy, were like this. We're best mates! Come on, let's go drink.

Me: No...no. Why don't you, um, leave now?

MNDF: Ha ha ha ha ha!

Me: So, I'm gonna go to bed now.

He headed towards the living room, and I went back into my room. My first instinct was to lock the door and pretend the whole thing never happened. "But," I thought, "he's really drunk...I don't want him to die or break anything on my watch. Gosh, that'd be hard to explain." So, I decided to go check on him. When I left my room and looked down the hall into the living room though, I saw that he had seated himself on the couch, opened my flatmate's computer, put his hands on the keyboard, and fallen asleep. Since "go check on him" was as far as my plan went at this point, I wasn't sure of what to do next. So, I stood in the hallway and seriously considered running away to a friend's flat. Or Minnesota.

Luckily, one of my flatmates returned with some of her friends before I hopped a cargo ship accross the Atlantic. As she staggered into the apartment, I turned her around, mumbled, "Um, your friend is..." and quickly hid in my bedroom. As I retreated I heard her exclaim, "Brian! How did you get in here?" I closed the door, but could still hear a steady refrain of "Brian! How did you get in here? Brian? Brian! How did you get in here?" I turned off the light and cowered.

But in a "wooo! Party!" sort of way.

Now that I've shared my first party story, can I have my "official college student" badge now? No? Fine. I'm going to bed. Where's my glass of milk...

Lost in Trans-Caitlin: A Semester Abroad in Ireland

2008-01-14T13:26:00.000-08:00

Friends! Gather round and bear witness to my triumphant return! Or...just go about your lives and ignore me in order to teach me a lesson for my near semester's worth of silence. Actually, that might make me feel a little more comfortable, come to think of it. If you'll all be kind enough to avert your eyes and let your memories of me fade into oblivion, this blog can finally blossom into the free-flowing feeling-fest it's always wanted to be. Let's not talk about Ireland right now, lets talk about the depth of my emotions! Especially towards Zach Effron! And let's do away with punctuation (excepting exclamation points and emoticons) as it is a cage that squelches the flickering fire our beautiful words!!!!!!!!!!! :-) ;-( (Yeah that's right, a winky FROWNY face! Try wrapping your heads around THAT one, bitches!) Hey, now that I have a web cam, the videos I post of me singing heartfelt renditions of "Breaking Free" will be all the punctuation I need! You know what? Screw you, old fans of wit and "turn of phrase." I don't need you anymore. Instead, I will be embraced by all the Youtube fangirls with tears, bangs, Livejournals and OPEN ARMS!

Sorry. You know I could never really do it. I have made these idle threats too often to be taken seriously anymore. You know as well as I do that, with or without you, I'll just be here making my "jokes" and token efforts toward thinly veiling my desperation to be loved by all. Well, all except those Youtube girls I just mentioned. Because a life lived without completely alienating at least one whole group of people is a life half lived.

Moving on! where were we...My apologies? My promises to write more often now that I have no social life? Your wary disbelief, tendered by months and months of my empty broken promises?

Um...Ireland it is!

I have been studying in the Emerald Isle for over two whole weeks now. So far, it feels a whole lot like Freshman orientation, but with cooler accents and no mac and cheese. I know you're thinking to yourself, "Wow. Sounds right up Caitlin's alley!" And you're so right. Because the only reason anyone would put themselves through all of this THREE TIMES would be that she is the sort of person who enjoys adventure and making friends. Either that, or she enjoys self masochism. You know, one of the two. A girl's gotta have hobbies.

It's OK though. The upside of having been through it all before is that I know I'll get used to it eventually. Right now though, it's hard to imagine overcoming my numerous social handicaps in just four to five month's time. Sure, getting from day to day is easy enough when the sun is shining. I have managed to find all my classes on time, feed, clothe and bathe myself without any major mishaps. Come nightfall though, it's a different story. It's like Irish college pub scene is a blacklight, and all my irrational social un-endearing foibles are the ketchup stain that you and maybe a few close friends knew was on your white shirt before you went extreme bowling; but now, since the techno music and the neon strobe lights have been flipped on, everyone in the bowling alley knows. And trust me, nothing flips that seizure inducing disco switch like a game of "never have I ever" with a bunch of strangers who are wearing more expensive shoes than I am. Except maybe the orange game...

...Anyway, though I have since had a few (slightly) more relaxing pub experiences since my Dublin orientation, none have imprinted me so deeply as my very first forays into Irish nightlife. In a half hearted final attempt to make this sad, roaming post worth the space it's taking up on my hard drive, I will now close by regaling you with my favorite exchange from one of those fateful nights. Maybe it will give you a glimpse of what I'm dealing with here.

The scene: A crowded Dublin pub on New Year's eve. My Hostel-mates are doing shots at the bar and licking each other's faces or something. I am surveying the room for some broken glass I can chew on so as to make my evening a little more fun. A good-natured looking, red-cheeked English man taps me on the shoulder and offers to buy me a pint. Though I refuse, he still begins a conversation with me, not knowing that I already dislike him on the grounds of his pulse, opposable thumbs and sentience. He introduces his friends as three of the Backstreet Boys and David Beckham, respectively. He then points at my heavily eye-shadowed, affectionate traveling companions and asks, very Britishly,

"Are they lesbian Americans?"

I answer, "um...yep."

Stay tuned next week when, if nothing exciting happens, I will post multiple pictures of myself making pouty lips at the web-cam and crying tears of IRELAND DOESN'T GET ME rage. Bet you can't wait.

P.S. Please, keep writing to me and praying for me or sending good thoughts in a generally Eastern direction as . I can't tell you how much I love hearing from you guys. I really miss the people who knew about the ketchup stain all along and liked me anyway.

You're Going to Think I'm Kidding...

2007-07-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

...But I'm totally not.

For real though? I've finally hit rock bottom. Remember that time I tried to fly with an expired learner's permit? How about that time I booked my own flight a week late? You thought I was out of traveling lessons to learn the hard way, didn't you. Yeah, well SO DID I.

We were all wrong. Though, considering it's me we're talking about, I can't see any of you being very surprised.

This past Friday, I was supposed to fly to Ohio at 2:30. Only I thought it was 3:30. Who can say why, really. My mother and father are both relatively intelligent people, and I did OK on the ACTs, so it's hard to say how I developed this gaping hole in my head when it comes to dates, times and common sense. Maybe I got the time I was leaving to Ohio mixed up with the time I had arrived in Rochester. Maybe it was the time change. Maybe it was that hippie charter school. Maybe, when I was a very young child, I landed on my head in such a way that caused the unicorn/pony/play-dough part of my brain to stampede into the number/calendar/USEFUL part of my brain and claim it for Candy-Land. Whatever. the reason for the mistake doesn't really matter. What matters is that, at 2:05 on Friday afternoon, I checked my e-mail at home and realized that the flight I thought wasn't taking off until 3:30 was, in fact, already boarding.

At that point I threw a bunch of stuff into my suitcase, hopped into the car with my mother and headed for the airport. When we arrived at the airport, my brother and I hauled my suitcases to the checkout desk, apologised for being late, and were informed that I was not going to be able to board the plane. Then, having learned from a previous travel mishap in which I was charged a hundred dollars to move my flight up a week, I cried. Oh, I cried hard core. And it worked like a charm. The lady behind the counter booked me on the next available flight which was the next day and informed me that there was no charge. She probably thought I was crying because I had missed something important by showing up so late. You know, something good like a dying relative or my own wedding. But no. I was crying because it wasn't until that moment that I fully understood the depth of my own stupidity.

Seriously everyone. At this point, I've pretty much given up on ever becoming a productive adult. There aren't many options for people with my special needs. I'll be lucky if I can get a job at Wal-Mart. I will fulfill all my potential by wearing a blue vest and sticking smiley-face stickers on people's pop cans.

So, I guess that's it. You all have fun with the rest of your lives while I look for a price marking gun and some sensible shoes. And never set foot in an airport again.

Call Me Sunset Head

2007-05-24T20:51:00.001-07:00

Well fans, I've been idle for a while, and I know you've missed me. If I were a hip celebrity (Britney you're my idol! Call me!), my absence from the blogging world would have been due to a stint in rehab. If that were the case, this entry would take the form of a heartfelt letter to my fans riddled with the grammar of a two-year-old and excessive references to my continuing "journey to recovery." However, because I am woefully well adjusted, I will never know the glory of a fame fueled train wreckage (Lohan! You're the basket case I aspire to! Call me!). Needless to say, my blogging laziness has been fueled less by booze and tears than by regular old slackerage. I am sorry. To make it up to the two of you still reading this thing, I am going to disclose something deeply personal. Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame and I share a dark secret:

We are not natural redheads.

And I don't know about Gillian, but I have recently gone through more hair color hijinx than Christina Aguilera in an "experimental" phase. Now, because I like to pride myself on keepin' it real, and because my blog fan base is built solidly on my personal embarrassment and discomfort, I'm going to tell all about it. And Christina can bite me.

It all began over Christmas break when I dyed my hair red with a box from Target. Or, more precisely, "burnt mahogany." You know...to match my fiery personality. I didn't exactly mean to choose a permanent color, but I was OK with the results. I figured I could try life as a redhead for a while.

A few months later, when I got a trim back in Minnesota, my hairdresser tactfully suggested fixing my two-toned hair before beginning my summer job in Ohio. I decided to heed her advice. This was partially because I knew I looked sloppy, but mostly because I was tired of being mistaken for Nicole Kidman. So, I went to the store and picked out what I thought would be a nice neutral shade closer to my natural color. girl on the box was smiling, "like her eyes had a secret," as Tyra Banks would say. Little did I know, the secret was that I can't do anything right.

The next day, I followed the instructions on the box to the letter. When my mother came home from work, the first thing she said was, "So how does your hair look?"

I replied, "Um...I'm going to need some more hair dye."

"Oh? What happened."

"Well, the red part is still red, but the part that was growing in brown turned...blond."

"Well let's see. That sounds funny....Yep. That is...blond." Then, because she is a sympathetic and nurturing mother, she proceeded to laugh for about three straight minutes.

Unfortunately for all of you, I didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures of my hair at it's most avant garde. However, to get a general idea of my look, you can consider the following two photos. One is Vitamin C of "The Graduation Song" fame. The other is Saaphyri (pronounced Safari...and yes my right hand just seizured a little as I was typing Saaphyri)-- who was kicked off of "Flavor of Love 2" after she pulled some ho's hair and cried a lot.

Now, don't get me wrong. There was a time in my life where I would have liked nothing more than to be styled like a mediocre pop middle school graduation anthem singer...who will slap a bitch if if she steps up on me. But, times change and people grow. So, I went back to the store and bought another, more demure, shade of brown. However, when that box of dye barely dimmed my sunshiney head, we called in the professionals.

Back at the salon, my journey came to an end at last. There, my hair was re-dyed to a shade that wouldn't make people turn and stare and little children cry. Still, It will be a while before everything is as it was with my hair. Even the professional dye wasn't enough to completely cover up the red and gold. So, if you find my head in the right light and make a wish, you just might catch a glimpse of a sunset.

It's easier to do than you THINK, okay?

2007-04-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

I know for a fact that no one reading this does not already know the beginning, middle and end of the story I am about to tell, but I feel the need to write it down for posterity's sake. It would be a disservice to the entire blogging community if this account went unwritten here. It's the sort of story that, even when it's happening, makes you think: "Yes, God. Now I know why I have a blog. I guess the universe does have meaning."

Now, brace yourselves for a chapter in the saga of Caitlin the travel Jinx entitled, "Looking back, it's actually kind of hard to believe it didn't happen sooner."

This part of the epic begins the Friday before Thanksgiving break and my departure for a three day tour with my a capella group, the Cornerstones. (Yeah that's right, I toured like a rockstar. I won't go into too many details of our totally bitchin' visits to several midwestern hotspots, but I will say this: there may or may not have been some speed limit violations involved. Oh yeah. Who says Christians don't know how to party? Say it with me: Bad. Ass.) Anyway, the day of the commencement of said tour, I had my day all planned out. I would go to my morning classes, have lunch, then skip bio of sci-fi, (bad ass, remember?) withdraw some cash and pack. Everything was going according to plan.

until.

I opened my wallet and my cash card was nowhere to be found. Those of you who know me well know that I always remain calm and collected when faced with stressful situations. So, you can probably guess that, upon this discovery, I very logically began to hyperventilate. Then, I systematically and level-headedly proceeded to tear every inch of my room apart looking for the damn thing while muttering a high pitched stream angry gibberish under my breath the way my father does when he can't find the remote: "mumblemumblemumledamnitmumblefrickin- -mumblewhatthehelliswrondwithme?...mumble." After two hours of searching, I had to give up and cancel my card. The representative of the Mayo Federal Credit Union on the other end of the phone made fun of me in her head for not knowing my own social security number. I could hear her silent laughter in my heart.

Once the whole thing was taken care of, I only had about twenty minutes to pack before I had to leave for tour. In a haze, I pulled out the biggest suitcase I could find, threw in the necessities, and headed out the door to meet my fellow cornerstones. After announcing the fact that I was without finances and would be depending on the Christian kindness of my group members for food (very glad feeding the hungry had been a pretty central part of the gospels), I thought I would be able to put the whole thing behind me and enjoy tour....

I THOUGHT

We had not been on tour for twelve hours before I discovered the first flaw in my hasty packing job. I had forgotten a toothbrush and toothpaste. Like a pro, I was unfazed by this small inconvenience. I used my last dollar to remedy the situation at our next gas station stop. It was not until the next night that I realized that the toothpaste incident had been mere foreshadowing.

The next morning, I awoke early at my host's house to shower first. When I dig through my suitcase to pick out an outfit for the day, the extent of my packing ineptitude finally manifested itself. It was though I had spun around a bunch of times before packing with my left foot while blindfolded. For a three day tour, I had packed twelve pairs of socks, five pairs of pants, a curling iron, blow drier and every pair of earrings I own...but no underwear. That's right. every middle schooler's nightmare. If the incident had been published in the "Embarrassing moments" section of Seventeen magazine, it would rate "bright pink" on the blush-o-meter...rivaled only by that one story about the girl who wore a white dress to prom during "that time of the month."

But I digress. If you forgot where I left off, we were at the part of the story had just been stranded in the Midwest without my panties. If my roommates had been awake as I made this discovery, they would have seen me sit back on my heels next to my suitcase in disbelief and mouth, "You have got to be kidding me."

At breakfast, I told the other girls on tour about my plight. After laughing a great deal (unlike the hungry, the bible doesn't mention any specific protocol in regards to inefficient undergarment packing) they were sympathetic. Johanna, who's home town we were in, kindly offered to take me to Old Navy to find suitable replacements. On the way out, we ran into her equally gracious mother who asked us where we were going. Since my brain responded to all this trauma by regressing to the age of twelve, the following conversation was pretty middle-schoolicious:

Johanna: Oh, mom, Caitlin lost her cash card before we left, and there were a few things she forgot to pack, so we're just going to get some stuff from Wal-Mart for her.
Johanna's Mother: Oh, what do you need?
Me: Oh, um... just some personal items...
Johanna's Mother: Like what? I just want to make sure we don't already have what you need in the house.
Me: Well...
Johanna: UNDERWEAR mom. She didn't pack any underwear.
Johanna's Mother: Oh, OK. I can't help you with that...

-We drive away-

At this point, if I had been in a Hilary Duff movie, I would have burst into tears and written in my diary about how nobody GETS me, and buff homecoming king Chip Davis would never date a girl who forgot to pack any underwear on a capella tour. But, to my daily chagrin, I am not Hilary Duff. So, I took the whole thing in stride and picked out a nice, simple three pack of cotton bikinis at Old Navy. I now owe Johanna about four dollars and my first born.

Here, the story pretty much comes to an end. Tour continued as planned and my new underwear served me well. No further packing emergencies came up, though I never did do anything with that curling iron. Or seven of my twelve pairs of socks. In the end, I chalked up my experiences up to the wrath of the travel gods. It's all just further evidence that I will never be free of my travel jinx. Now, find joy in my misfortune, good friends. Seriously. Go ahead.

Poll Results and Also Adventure!

2007-03-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but it took longer than I expected to tally the whopping eight votes my last entry drew. Firstly, I had to investigate a bit of suspected corruption in the circle of big boss Christa and her gangsta political machine. Secondly, I wasn't anticipating a full ranking of all options presented by everyone who voted, so I had to spend about a month devising a complex run off system to fairly tally the ballots. It will be pretty hard for those of you who haven't single handedly run an entire blog election to understandthe process, but the short version is: I'm going to exercise my blogtator powers to do whatever the hell I want. Now, Don't worry. The voting wasn't completely purposeless. I still plan on writing entries for all of the options that landed in your top fives most consistently. However, in light of recent events, a few items must be re-prioritized. Namely option 2. Trust me, once you've read about the new depths my stupidity has reached, you will say to yourself, "Wow, Caitlin the blogtator is funny when she cries. I'm so glad she nullified all her promises to me as a democratic blog citizen to bring me that story about how dumb she is. It makes me feel better about myself." And then I will use your testimony in my next blog election campaign.

Now, who wants come with me on yet another airport adventure?

Let's work backwards, shall we? I will begin by saying that, about an hour ago, I discovered that I had left my purse on the shuttle from the Columbus airport to Kenyon. Now, you must understand that this is the smallest problem I have encountered while traveling these past two weeks. My missing purse is merely the icing, if you will, on the cake that is my boundless idiocy.

Now let's backtrack to two months ago, when I was trying to get to Gambier from Columbus after winter break. I discovered the night before I left home that my flight was scheduled to arrive at the airport after all shuttles to campus stopped running. Then, everything was delayed because of a timely snowstorm, I lost my luggage and, while waiting for it, missed the car I emotionally blackmailed my mother into booking for me at the last minute to take me back to campus.

Have you ever had one of those moments there you look around, mentally note the place at the airport food court that sells the cheapest "big chug" and try to convince yourself that it wouldn't be so bad to live in an airport? I have that moment every time I fly. I thought, at the time, that this shuttle thing had happened partly because of poor planning on my part, but mostly because I had done something wrong in another life to displease the travel gods. Maybe I walked up a down escalator. Perhaps I crossed my fingers when a stewardice asked me if I was comfortable performing the duties of someone seated in an exit row because no, I had no intent to perform those duties, but wanted the extra leg room anyway. Whatever the reason, surely I had done nothing in my current life to deserve this. I see clearly now that it has all been pre-emptive karma up until this flight. All my mishaps in the past have merely been penance for the unbelievable stupidity I displayed two weeks ago.

Fast forward now to that flight. This was before the purse, but after the shuttle debacle. Still with me? I had just arrived at the airport, fresh off of choir tour and ready for some relaxation at home. Clutching my flight itinerary, I made my way to the self check in. I punched in my six letter code and waited for a second before the touch screen informed my that my itinerary could not be found. No matter, I thought. I must have made an error. I had no idea. I punched the code in again. The computer said, "Your itinerary could not be found, dumbass." Beginning to panic now, I looked over my itinerary and then up at the man behind the counter.

"Excuse me sir", I said, "What is today's date?"

He looked at his watch and replied, "It is the tenth of March."

Once again I glanced at my itinerary and said, "Oh God. I think I am going to need some assistance."

I had booked my flight a week late.

The date I had on my itinerary was march 17th, not the tenth. The reason I couldn't check in was because most airports don't like it when you come a week early. When the man got back to me at the loser...I mean..."Help" counter, His first words were, "So I take it you're not supposed to be flying today." I told him what I had done, and he was kind enough to not address me as the crazy loser freak I obviously am. After much button pushing and furrowing of his brow, the problem was fixed for the small fee of a hundred dollars.

Once he finished everything up, I walked, dejected to the food court where several other chamber singers were hanging out waiting for their flights. I told them what had happened and then invited them to stop being friends with me. It was the same invitation I will now extend to all of you. I also invented a new mantra I would like to share with the world. The next time you're doing the crossword in the Times and you can't figure out 34 across and you catch yourself thinking you're less than brilliant, just say to yourself, "Well, at least I didn't book my own flight a week late..." You can add it to the lexicon of other mantras I have unknowingly put forth on this blog over time such as, "well, at least I've never never tried to crash teen night at my town's only nightclub," and, "Well, at least I know how to count."

Now because, as you know, I am a glass half full kind of gal, let me tell you about the bright side to all of this. Silver lining number one: If my purse had been stolen of the shuttle, there would be very little money left on the cash card in my wallet due to the fact that I was charged a hundred dollars for BOOKING MY FLIGHT A WEEK LATE. So take that, thief! Crime doesn't pay for you, as I am broke anyway! Silver number two: My parents though the whole thing was hilarious. Upon arriving home, my mother said to my father, "Yeah, when we got there, Caitlin was already waiting for us. Her plane got in early...

...A whole week early!"

Ha ha ha.

Oh, I don't even deserve your pity.

Happy New Year (and one month)

2007-01-15T18:20:00.000-08:00

Well, welcome to 2007 (minus one month). It's time to dust the cobwebs off the ol' computer keyboard and ring in the new year (and one month) by turning over a new Unnecessarily Anxious leaf. If anyone out there still cares, one of my new year (and one month)'s resolutions is to stay more on top of updating this blog. Yes, I know I could have gone with a few more "traditional" and "productive" resolutions such as "eating more salads," "using nacho cheese as a condiment less frequently," or "giving a damn when I start to feel my brain leek out of my ears due to an overexposure to 'Australia's Next Top Model.'" But, I firmly believe that lowered expectations are the key to a happy life. So, I will leave those far more lofty goals for those of you with more willpower and a higher brain cell count. Vowing to spend more time on the internet is as lofty as it gets for this Kenyon student.

I expect this goal of mine to become more and more difficult as the weeks wear on. Contrary to what you might think, brilliance does not automatically pour from my fingertips every time I sit down in front of a keyboard. My particular brand of genius can take actual hours or even days to cultivate. However, I'm going to try my darndest to keep up the pace. Getting off to a good start won't be a problem because, during my recent blog sabbatical of sorts, I managed to stockpile a few ideas to get the ball rolling. The only problem now is that I'm a little out of practice with judging which ideas are good and which ideas are bad, and I can't decide what to write about. So, in another pathetic manifestation of my deluded dream of someday becoming internet famous, I have decided to appeal to you, the fan(s?), for help. I'm going to type up a list of possible subject headings for my next few entries, and every one -- cough*by"everyone"ImeanprobablyjustChrista*cough -- can vote on which ones they would like to hear more about. Then, I'll write about whichever one gets the most votes, -- cough*by"most votes"Imeanwhicheveronechristavotesfor*cough -- and we'll find out together whether it was a good idea or not. This is a noble microcosm of the American way itself: a combination between Democracy and "Let's Make a Deal"! I hope you are as excited as I am...

And the nominees are:

1. An Ode to last semesters classes (make note: In one of my classes, my final project was a web page detailing a hypothetical situation involving the creatures from E.T., Alien and Gremlins, and a far away planet called Yeoj.)

2. My most recent airport escapades

3. A Marshmallow update (Be warned: Though my dog is still alive, this will be a sad entry.)

4. My packing inaptitude on Cornerstones tour. (This one will involve me typing the word "underwear" multiple times, for information of the half of a person reading this who hasn't already heard that story.)

5. My wish to have a nickel for every time I thought to myself, "that would be an excellent blog entry!"

6. My inaugural adventure in the Kenyon Athletic Center.

7. "Australia's Next Top Model": and other musings on YouTube

8. A brief discussion of all my irrational fears including, but not limited to: Using the men's bathroom by mistake, setting off the anti theft devices by the doors in the library, and inadvertently advocating drug use.

9. Reader's Choice

I hereby declare the polls open!

A Conversation with November

2006-12-16T16:15:00.001-08:00

November: Um Caitlin? Caaaaaaitlin...

Caitlin!

Me: Shut up, November. Can't you take a hint? Leave me alone.

November: Hey, remember that time you were like "Oh, don't worry November. I'll write you a blog entry. I've got tons of ideas..." and then you -- oh what's the word -- didn't?

Me: You know what, November? You kind of suck at being a smart ass.

November: Well, at least I'm not a liar with a cold black soul.

Me: I am not a liar! You know I meant to write. I was just...busy.

November: Busy doing what? Watching episodes of Canada's Next Top Model on YouTube? Because that sounds pretty taxing, both mentally and physically.

Me: Bite me, November. I was busy...being in college...and getting wasted...and sleeping with multiple partners. And popping pills -- hardcore stimulants I bought off the black market with money I made selling naked pictures of myself on a website called "busty and barely legal" -- like they're Flinstones vitamins. It's what we modern, edgy college kids do.

November: --silence--

Me: Oh, fine. So, I've been living like the same Canada's Next Top Model loving nun as I always have. You're right. I've really let you down with my neglectful laziness. I'm sorry, November.

November: That's more like it. It's just too bad "sorry" can't turn back time...

Hey kids. I know It's too late for me to make it up to November for falling off the face of the planet there for a month and a half, but I hope it's not too late for me to make it up to you, the fans! Stay tuned after finals time for some lengthy airpot ramblings on my missing underwear and an ode to this past semester's classes. It'll be awesome.

That's all. Now go and rock the face off those finals. Do it for me. And November.

A Series of Unfortunately Boring Events

2006-10-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

I suck.

The problem is, I don't even suck enough to be noteworthy of sucking. To be a mega loser would be an improvement from where I am now because at least then I would be a mega something. As it stands, I am just a mediocre pity whore with a serious inferiority complex.

Guys? Do you mind If I get real with you for a minute? I'm going to break the fourth blogging wall to explain my process. Usually, I like to have an idea to unify these rambling posts by some kind of thread, however weak it is. A lot of the time I'll start with a list of things in my head I want to cover in the same entry. When I sat down to write this one, I was feeling rather melancholy and felt the need to compose a list of the reasons why. However, as the list took shape, it became obvious that my experiences over the past few weeks aren't even sad enough to make worthwhile list of sad stuff.

I have reached a new level of mediocrity.

Here are a few examples, in case you think I'm kidding. I'll show you exciting...and then I'll show you me:

1. Exciting would be if I were failing three classes due to any number of delinquent complications. Exciting would be if I got expelled from school for turning in a paper I bought off the internet from a site called "paper monkey" without reading it through and, hence, not realizing that it was written in a strange mix of Spanish and pig-Latin. Exciting would be if I stopped studying every night because I had been caught up in dark underground ring of cock fighting and cocaine dealing. Oh yes, Columbian nose candy would be exciting indeed.

But I am not exciting. Instead, I spent all of Sunday second guessing myself and nursing my lame-ass non-cocaine addiction (illegally downloaded episodes of scrubs) because I got a low B on one English paper. "Um...Caitlin? Boo frickin hoo." chorus all the starving children in Ethiopia.

2. Exciting would be if I were being haunted by recurring nightmares about tigers ripping me to pieces and playing keep-away with the mangled parts in a moody parody of my most painful elementary school phy-ed memories. Exciting would be if my subconscious began to leak and I spilled all my deepest darkest secrets in my sleep while roommate took careful notes with plans to ALLSTU them to the entire campus as a passive aggressive act of revenge for my continually leaving shoes on her side of the room: "I've seen every episode of Flavor of Love ever made...I steal spoons and peanut butter out of the cafeteria on a regular basis...I love ABBA..." splattered all over the internet would be exciting.

I am not exciting. Here's an example of what happens in my sleep: The other night I had a dream about eating socks. It wasn't even about a noteworthy traumatic sock-eating experience either. I mean, the sock-eating wasn't the main event of my dream. It was more of a nervous dream habit that involved me absent mindedly munching on socks until the moment came when I said to myself, "I need socks. Oh, shoot. I don't have any because I ATE THEM ALL."

3. Exciting would be if I shattered seven bones in my left leg falling down the stairs while fleeing from a rabid raccoon. Exciting would be if I suffered a psychotic break and took a hammer to my own arm in order to avoid dealing with "problem six" in drama class.

But...I am not exciting. I have never broken any bones. I'm not that cool. I came close once, but it's been a while. A couple of weeks ago I was baking -- compulsively the way I do -- all by myself. I should have known this was a bad idea. I should not be left alone with numerous fractions for prolonged periods of time. I get flustered easily. As I was walking down the stairs with my arms full of baking supplies, I lost my footing and fell, ankle first. Baking supplies lay strewn about me as I lay broken at the bottom of the stairwell, moaning to myself. In the end, I couldn't decide if I wanted someone to find me there and help me put my measuring cups in order, or if I would rather lie there alone with all my pain and that last shred of dignity. I didn't have to decide though, because no one came in the end. Only God could hear my cries.

Seriously though, I was fine. Too fine to make a noteworthy addition to any list of unfortunate events. I pulled myself up, brushed myself off and limped around for a few days. I'm good as new now, even though my foot still hurts a little when I bend it like this...

Ow.

See I told you I was boring. And also a little stupid. Just call me boring stupid Caitlin from now on. Or gimpy.

Now please, pardon me while I get over myself.

Wanna Hear a Ghost Story?

2006-10-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

First, a disclaimer: This story is totally true but it is not for the faint of heart. It doesn't quite end with "and then there was a hook in the door!" but it comes pretty damn close. If you aren't ready to be seriously creeped out, read no further. (I'm talking to you, children and pregnant women...) Dude. It's cool. I won't judge you if you decide you're not ready for this. Trust me, It's not worth the nightmares.

Now...Every one still with me: turn off the lights and get ready to have your mind blown.

So once, there was this girl. For the purposes of this story we'll call her Shmaitlin. (You don't know her. She's a friend of a friend's stepmother's cousin's...um...Optometrist.) Shmaitlin wasn't counting sequins on any homecoming queen crowns in high school, but she wasn't exactly eating lunch on the floor of the handicapped stall in the girl's bathroom alone with her snack-bar nachos, tears, and a "kick me" sign taped to her back every day either. Except for a few slight social defects, Shmaitlin was the very picture of a model high school student.

She was even in the top eleven percent of her class.

No one would have suspected her to be the type of girl to...JOIN A CULT OF SATAN!

But, join such a cult she did. Now, lest you think poorly of poor innocent shmatilin, it should be made clear that she didn't know exactly what she was getting herself into until it was much too late. The dastardly organization was so well disguised that oblivious kindly elderly people funded the cult willingly by purchasing baked goods and wallpaper peddled door to door by cult members in broad daylight. This was because, To the outside world, the cult was known simply as the Century High School Concert Choir. Oh, the ruse was too perfect.

Insiders like Shmaitlin however, knew the truth. The "elite" organization first indoctrinated it's members when they were freshman and hungry to belong. "Choir is more than just a class. It's a family." The weak minded freshman were told over and over again. "Yeah, a family. Totally a family." The freshman repeated dutifully. It was only later they learned that by "family" the Concert Choir meant "a socially crippled group of people motivated by fear and subconscious daddy issues that would have caused Freud to convulse with excitement."

The mastermind behind the entire establishment was a man named -- for the purposes of this story -- Barry Schmook. He instituted a number of rituals including, but not limited to: memory tests (a potent cocktail of terror, rage and a few drunk tenors mouthing "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" over and over again while the sopranos wept quietly), guiltraising...I mean, fundraising (If there were a manipulation text book, a whole chapter could be dedicated to the yearly butterbraid speech: "Now, I can't legally force any of you to sell Buttebraids and not let the entire choir down...Just like I can't legally make you be a good person and I can't legally make you not kick puppies. There are some moral decisions you just have to make on your own, I guess...") pop choir (if Hell exists, I -- I mean Shmaitlin -- thinks it might be an endless series of kick-ball-changes set to Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" amidst flames of sequins) and required "retreats" (awkward sexual getting to know you games's greatest hits! Oranges! lifesavers and toothpicks! The closest I've ever come to an aneurysm!) It's all so twisted and bizarre that I can't really do it justice in one blog entry. Just trust me when I say that Shmaitlin was in it deep.

And yet, in the end, there comes a time when every empire must crumble and fall. For the Century Choir, that time came during Shmaitlin's junior year. Barry announced that he was leaving forever about a month before the school year ended. He disappeared without a trace except for one excellent e-mail and about 60 broken shells of human beings. After that, he became more mystery than man. Rumors about his whereabouts began to surface at every turn. First he was a music theory teaching chemist. Then he was a med student. Supposed sightings were made on darkened highways in internet chatrooms.

Shmaitlin, however, never saw or heard from him again. She ran far far away from Mr. Schmook's lies and empty promises and moved on with her life. She graduated from Centyre went off to college. Twice actually, since she liked it so much. She joined a new choir at Kenyon College in a far away place called Ohio and fully believed she had broken free.

Until.

One especially cloudy day in Ohio, Shmaitlin was talking to her friendly new Ohio choir director -- known to students as Doc -- about one of the pieces the Kenyon choir was singing called "Prelude for Voices." Shmaitlin mentioned that she had sung the song before in high school. There were a lot of Concert Choir songs Shmaitlin had managed to black out, but this one had proven difficult to forget. All you former cult members reading this remember it too even if you don't recognize the title. Here, I'll give you a hint: It has to do with nudity. Still stuck? It's OK. Even my non-musical readership can experience "Prelude for Voices." Just chant, "na-ked. and alone. We came. in-to ex-ile." over an over again. OK? Now, find a friend and do it in a cannon! There. You've just sung pages eight through twelve. (See cultees? I told you you'd remember.)

Anyway, when Shmaitlin mentioned this to Doc, he asked her old choir director's name.

"It was Barry..." she began,

"Schmook?" Doc finished for her.

Feel free to take a moment to be terrified out of your mind. Shmaitlin certainly did. "AAAAAH!" She said in her head.

As it turns out, when Shmaitlin sung the song in the tenth grade, it was with music that Mr. Barry Schmook borrowed from Kenyon College. The two directors met in an internet choir director's forum when Barry asked if anyone was wiling to loan out the music for "Prelude." Doc answered the call and shipped the music straight to Minnesota. The story doesn't end there though. It ends with Mr. Schmook losing all the music causing Doc to decide never to loan any music ever again. When the entire story had been told, Doc said to Shmaitlin,

"Wow, small world."

"Oh." She replied, "This is no coincidence. I will never escape the Concert Choir."

And neither will any of you. Mwahahahaha! Happy Halloween, guys! Good luck getting to sleep tonight...

Portraits of melancholy

2006-09-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

So World, 'sup? We haven't talked much since I obtained illegal downloading capabilities and I discovered how to sneak free ice-cream out of the cafeteria in those Styrofoam cups they keep by the cuppachino machine. Since then, I've been busy avoiding you with the aid of soggy cafeteria Oreo crumbs and ancient Daria episodes. Oh, don't shake your head at me, World. You've been putting me under a lot of pressure lately. Pretending you don't exist is much easier than dealing with all of these crazy adjustment period feelings...Or...Wait, did I say feelings? I meant homework. "Crazy adjustment period homework" is what I meant to say, World. Because emotions are for the weak.

Sorry. My inner monologue has been kind of out of whack lately, but I'm trying to crack down on it now. You hear me inner monologue? That's the last time I let you listen to Bright Eyes before bed.

Anyway, even though we haven't spoken it a while, I wanted to let you know that I'm muddling through with as much finesse as can be expected from a person who has my special social needs, and I'm still interested in living life. I can't really describe my current state of mind or situation because I have yet to figure it out myself. I am in an odd state of limbo somewhere between waking, sleeping, sophomore, freshman and unicorn. If I were an experimental artist, I would film a series of surreal vingiettes depicting the most definitive moments of the last few days in an attempt to convey my current approach to the human race. However, since I'm not, you're just going to have to deal with some literary snapshots. Picture them, like, narrated in German and intercut with time lapse footage of sad clowns and wilting roses.

One.

I trudge up a long, steep path of depression away from lunch and toward biology. As I think to myself that the only people more out of shape than I am are the ones who ride around in wheelchairs because their legs cannot support the weight of their own bodies, I am greeted by a familiar face.

"Hey," he says, "how are you?"

"Oh, pretty good," I say, but think to myself, by "good" I mean " my lungs are in the primary stages of total failure due to the impossible angle of this damn hill. And all the sadness."..."How are you?" I ask out loud.

"Oh, I'm a total mess," he answers.

I do not ask why. Instead, I laugh at him. Because his suffering amuses me. He leaves. I think to myself, I wish I had a dollar for every time I have walked away from a conversation thinking, "Caitlin...next time, don't laugh so much."

Two.

I enter my dorm room to find my purse lying open on my bed, surrounded by its contents. Gum wrappers. Lip gloss. Pony-tail holders. Pencils.

My first thought is that, with all my worrying about adjusting to a new roommate dynamic, I have neglected to consider a good number of possible nightmarish possibilities. Here I have been -- afraid that I will be judged for my extensive neurosis, dancing hampster collection, and sordid late-Friday-night history with the sci-fi channel -- without the thought that I might end up rooming with a functioning cleptomaniac crossing my mind even once.

Then I remember. I myself went through my purse that morning half asleep looking for chapstick.

All is as is should be again, because I am still the only psycho.

Three.

My lovely, mentally stable roommate Suzanne and I enter the Gund Commons for dinner. Strange things are about to happen. We approach our friend Brittany's table to sit with her, but she is finished so she is getting up to Leave. We are alone. This is our first clue. We fail to take note.

Girl one approaches us and points to a chair. "Are you guys using this?" she asks.

"No, take it," we say.

About ten minutes later, a creepy stranger sits down across from us with great urgency. We look at each other, then at him. Suzanne, brave, well adjusted and well intending, attempts to make conversation. It does not go well:

Suzanne: Hi, I'm Suzanne.
Daniel: Hello Suzanne.
Suzanne: What's your name?
Daniel: Daniel.

We eat in silence for a few minutes. I make no effort to contribute. I concentrate on my vegetable turnover instead of my own uselessness. Girl number two approaches us, points to a chair and asks, "Do you guys need this?"

"Nope," Suzanne and I say. Daniel says nothing. Daniel is not a fan of eye contact.

Suzanne: So, what are you majoring in, Daniel?
Daniel: Philosophy. Mathematics.

It should be noted that Daniel employs four full syllables when saying, "ma-the-ma-tics." It is admirable that he takes the time to give heed the oft forgotten last three fourths of the word, since he is obviously not here to chat. He is here to eat his dinner which consists of plain noodles and two slices of American cheese. Suzanne gives up and we finish our meal wordlessly. But not before girl number three approaches us and points to a chair. Before she can get past, "are you guys..." we say, "go for it," and watch as our last spare chair leaves this three person loser Bermuda black hole of surreal awkward.

I may be in Sophie's World.

Suzanne and I leave shortly thereafter and laugh for the next ten minutes.

We are not sure why.

Why, world?

Why.

Holy Molly Ringwald!

2006-08-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

Guys! Yesterday was the one year anniversary of this very blog. I can't believe I missed it. One year ago yesterday was the day the magic began. One year ago yesterday a voice was given to all of my voiceless crippling insecurities and borderline psychotic phobias. One year ago yesterday I said to myself: "Does the international internet community deserve to experience the cornucopia of internet temper tantrums and needy breakdowns that only I can provide? Why yes. Yes, I believe it does. HERE I COME, WORLD!"

One year ago yesterday was one hell of a day for me and, for that matter, humanity, but I passed it by without so much as the blink of an eye. Please, help me make it up to my beloved UnAnx. If you're so inclined, Leave it a little anniversary/birthday message next time you stop by. If you're stumped as to the gift giving protocol for an occasion like this, I can't help you with specifics since I've never had to celebrate a one year anniversary before, but I will say that I don't know anyone who doesn't appreciate a good Limerick. That's not, like, a hint or anything...I'm totally just throwing it out there.

Well blog, it's been a strange ride so far. Who would have thought one year ago yesterday that my life journey over this past year would blossom and branch and wind all the way to...Exactly where I was one year ago yesterday? I mean, really. I'm back in a new place, at a new school jam packed with brand new terror and awkward at every turn. If ever I made a choice that gave proper meaning to the term "Unnecessary Anxieties," it would be the decision to go through freshman year of college twice. It's almost as though I am distrusful of happiness and comfort, therefore I continually sabotage myself in an effort to avoid getting my heart broken by yet another empty promise of fulfillment. Or I'm mentally unstable. Either way, I feel Freud would direct me to blame my mother, so I will: Mom? Maybe if I'd gotten that Barbie dream house I wanted for Christmas when I was seven instead of that lame-ass tea set Santa brought, I would have developed the ability to know what's good for me and stayed in South Dakota.

Oh well. Today isn't about me. It's about this blog; The specialest friend a girl could ever ask for. To belatedly celebrate the occasion of our union, I am going to make a gift of the most delightfully awkward conversation I have witnessed in the past twenty-four hours:

Random Guy (Walking behind me): Hey Peter, do you know Dylan?
Peter: Yeah, I know him.
RG: Is he attractive?
--long, uncomfortable pause--
Peter: Uh...Yeah...I guess he'd be attractive...If, like, I were a girl...
RG: Oh, I don't mean do you find him attractive...

And that's were we parted ways all too quickly. Thanks Peter and Random Guy for brightening my day.

And blog? Thank you too. For everything.

Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful

2006-08-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

This is against my better judgment. I'm in a very dark place right now and I have been trying to spare my myriad of fans the effects of my acute anxiety. I have the sneaking suspicion that if I continue to turn to this blog whenever I'm down, it will quickly morph into the kind of creepy myspace page that is called to the attention of the PTA after a string of school shootings. Seriously. Picture this in red writing accompanied by numerous off center pictures of me like, sobbing and drinking alone with my arm reaching out of the frame because I've obviously taken them all myself:

...i hate the whole world i hate real people maybe if everyone was mute and deaf like my thirteen year old dog i wouldnt feel so alone the happiest time in my life was in high school concert choir because it wasn't just a class itwas a family but it ended so soon and now broken promises lay abandoned all around i think the only person who will ever really understandme is hilary duff. imean marilyn manson. im a danger to myself and to happy people everywhere. im also way edgy...

Scoff if you want, but you have to admit I'm a prime candidate for that kind of a nervous internet breakdown. Especially now when the start of a new school year in a new place is fast approaching and the stress is getting so bad I'm beginning to self medicate. I won't tell you how exactly because I don't want to traumatize any pony loving nine-year-olds who might be reading this, but I'll just give you this subtle hint: It starts with a "B" and ends with a "ring It on 3: All or Nothing." When I become a famous emo recording artist my first single is going to be called "Cheerleading Movies are My Novocaine."

Oh well. Chances are I won't stop feeling this way until late November and I don't want to deprive the world of my particular brand of brilliance for that long. So, I'm going to take my chances by updating now, as long as you promise not to begrudge a girl a little nostalgic melancholy every now and then. That said, at the risk of slipping into Lifetime movie montage mode, I'd like to dwell on a few of my favorite moments from the end of this quickly fleeting summer:

My favorite sad excuse for a meal: Well, this one was a close call because that five dollar egg roll Christa and I shared before Rent was pretty special. Additionally, the tiny magical array of cheese and approximately four "house baked crackers" set before Kyra and I pre-Great Gatsby with flavors ranging from lavender to burnt plastic was basically sunshine on a plate. However, I must award the grand prize to John's ten dollar tuna roll. I didn't get a very good look at the quarter sized piece of fish, but I like to think it provided the birthday boy with the most delicious two-and-a-half seconds of his life.
My favorite drug induced moment: My sister upon having her wisdom teeth pulled and discovering the joys of Vicodin..."Caitlin, while I was asleep, I designed a really cute pair of pants." She says she likes the drugs because they "take the pain away and make her happy." Hmm...I think Courtney Love said the something similar on her eighth birthday when she discovered Tequila. But no worries, Abby. She turned out totally fine.
My favorite Post Bulletin goodbye: While everyone was very kind to me on my last day of work, I have to bestow the honor of best send off upon the random weirdo who called me about one hour before my departure. One last crazy for the road! Oh, it couldn't have been more perfect, but he'll never know the gift he gave me. That's what made it so bittersweet and poingant. I knew he was nuts when I picked up the phone and immediately had to hold it two inches away from my face because the guy was shouting so loud. Not in a mad way mind you, just in a crazy way. What he wanted, I discovered after many long stories about this man and his encounters with President Gerald Ford, was a way to send the ailing president a get well card. However, he didn't let my total inability to help him in any way stop him from telling me more stories still. My favorite was the one about how he had already gone to Mr. Ford's floor on the Mayo Clinic and approached the "secret service." They wouldn't let him through even though he "only wanted an autograph." I heart crazies.
My favorite useless, vaguely dirty "pearl of wisdom" from a dove chocolate wrapper: "Discover yourself." Heh. Now can someone please apologize to that pony loving nine-year-old for me?
My favorite camping moment: Honestly, I can't decide. How can I choose between Eric Darsow declaring himself the "popcorn master" and becoming cross with me when I doubted his method; and Eric Darsow asking, "Now, what is a 'friend'?"; and Eric Darsow being present when Christa told a story about her boobs? You try making that choice, Sophie.

And those are just the highlights I can think of now. There are too many lovely goodbye moments to receive proper justice in a blog entry. Really guys, this summer has been heavenly. The sheer perfection of all these sweet, comfy times is making it that much harder to look toward starting over. But, I will welcome new experiences with open arms because of the strength that you have loaned me. Really, thanks for everything.

See, now, I told you I'd regret writing this post. I flew right past Lifetime Movie montage mode and fell head first into Seventh-Heaven oblivion. How will I be able to face myself in the mirror now? Ah well. Wish me luck. Hopefully, the next time you hear from me I'll have some entertaining terror and awkward for you...

P.S. A shout out to you beautiful Augie kids: I don't know the right words to adequately express how much I will miss you. You were funny and real and kind and surprising over and over again. You made it worth everything.

Never Asked Questions. Or...um...NAQ

2006-07-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have this fantasy where I'm an internet celebrity. (My fantasy standards are significantly lower than they were when I was eight and wanted to earn my celebrity status through inventing new snack foods and being the prettiest girl EVER...but it's a fantasy nonetheless.) I think it's due largely to the fact that a good portion of my day is spent at a desk waiting for the phone to ring with nothing to entertain me but this keyboard and the vast, magical expanse of friendship, laughter and sexual predators known as the world wide web. While mindlessly poking through endless archives of fondue recipes, I find myself slipping into daydreams where I have reached the kind of blogging status where I receive hundreds of comments in regards to my controversial spelling of the word "badonkadonk."

When I was eight, my only aid in playing out my snack-food fantasies was a cardboard box with spirals drawn on top like a "stove." (By the way mom, thanks for that and all the emotional scarring. It went well with my "toy" sink.) But, now that I'm grown up, I have my very own real-live blog with which to pretend to be internet popular! Lucky you. Before I go on vacation, I'm going to tie up some loose blog ends for the fans I wish I had by answering some questions that have never been asked, contained in e-mails that don't exist but would if I were internet famous like I deserve to be.

Dear Caitlin,

What was it like in Aquarius? My mommy goes there almost every night. I asked her what's inside and she said it's like a giant playground for grownups. I read your "Aquariawkwardness" entry and was hoping you could be a little more specific. What did you find?

Timmy,
Age seven

Answer:
Um...I only stayed for fifteen minutes so it was a little hard to tell, but it sure looked like magic and unicorns to me, Timmy.

Dear Caitlin

I am a junior in high-school and I really identify with you because I too have an almost pathological self-esteem problem. Last night I was so depressed about getting a "B+" on my last geography quiz that I watched four episodes in a row of "Flavor of Love" with a bag of chocolate chips as my only companion. But then I thought to myself, "Hey. It could be worse. I could have fewer facebook friends than that bitter internet girl. Which I don't." Once I saw clearly how good I have it compared to you, I gathered the strength to trade my chips in for a granola bar and change the channel to Laguna Beach. You are truly an inspiration!

Molly,
Age 17

P.S.
What did you decide about transferring to Kenyon? I'm thinking about applying there myself.

Answer:
First of all Molly, Facebook is by no means a reflection of your worth as a person in real life, so I wouldn't store those chocolate chips out of reach just yet. I mean, I don't know you or anything, but it's quite possible that you are every bit as pathetic as you thought you were. Second of all, to answer your question: Yes. I decided to transfer to Kenyon. This is partly because I think it will help me begin a career as a working writer, and partly because I want to prepare myself for Hell -- you know, just in case -- and I thought another round of orientation "getting to know you games" would do the trick. However, if your self esteem problems are as acute as mine, I don't recommend applying to Kenyon or any other even mildly selective schools. The rejection will drive you back to Flavor Flav's sexy sexy embrace faster than you can say, "you know what would be good with these chocolate chips? Some deep-fried stuff." In fact, to be safe, I recommend not applying to college at all. Get yourself a nice, mail order groom from like, the Ukraine, and start making babies. Trust me. Learn from my mistakes. It's the only way to avoid the heartache. Good luck!

Dear Caitlin

I really liked The Notebook and I'm a big fan of Valentine's day. And "The Christmas Shoes" is a lovely tune that is as brilliantly constructed as it is heartwarming. What is your problem? Why are you so afraid to feel feelings?

Also, I'm the one who called in about the pollen count. Bitch.

Celeste
Age twenty-seven

Answer:
Well Celeste, I may have a problem feeling feelings, but you have a stripper name. Yeah, that's right. Touche.

And that's all from the mailbag for now kids, but the imaginary letters are constantly pouring in so keep your fingers crossed for another installment soon.

Wish me luck on the open Wyoming range!

The Age of Aquariawkwardness

2006-07-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Monday night I tried to go clubbin'. Emphasis on tried since I failed miserably. I didn't fail in the sense that I clubbed poorly...I failed at ever getting through the metal detecting door. Right now, in your heads, you're thinking it's because I'm not of age. You're picturing some big bouncer type with a lot of gold jewelry glancing at my learners permit, shaking his head at me and saying, "What are you tryin' to pull kid? It's twenty-one and up here at Aquarius." But you're horribly wrong. I was turned away because I'm too old.

No, seriously.

For the two of you who don't know, Aquarius is the hottest club in Rochester if you're talking to someone who's thirteen and owns multiple halter tops or someone who sells drugs. It's the only club in town if you're talking to anyone else. From everything I've heard (which isn't much since I can't seem to find any hipsters who've ever...you know...been there...), it's pretty gross and sad. But, seeing the neon sign blink across the way, constantly radiating above the city street lights mere blocks away from my home of eighteen years has had a profound effect on me. Aquarius Club is the Daisy to my Gatsby. I've been fostering a sick curiosity mingled with terror and hope about that place since, at age eight, I first asked my mother, "Mommy, what do they do in there?" and she hurriedly answered, "Um, they dance. Who wants ice-cream?" Nice try mom, but your sly subject-change only served to deepen the mystery.

A mystery that can only be solved in one way: I have to go. Colleen, Tracy and Christa have also felt the mysteriously drawn to the Roch's "hottest" night spot, and we've been planning a visit since last summer. "Do you still want to go?" we ask each other. "No, not really," we answer, "But I feel that I must." Really, its almost noble.

Finally, the big night rolled around and the four of us met at my house where we stalled for about an hour before setting out to stall in the Aquarius parking lot for another ten minutes. When we finally got up the nerve to actually enter the club, a girl behind a cash register took Tracy's money, looked at her and said, "How old are you"

"Um, twenty." She and Christa answered.

Though the girl behind the counter could have easily begun her response with a polite, "Oh, I'm sorry," or an empathetic, "How unfortunate for you!", she chose "uh-uh." for an opener. Like, "nice try, creepies." She continued with, "It's teen night. Thirteen to eighteen only." So we turned around and left for Denny's. Broken, ashamed and all together anticlimatized.

I wish I could say that we showed up on teen night accidentally, but that would be a lie. The truth is, we thought thirteen year olds would be less intimidating and less likely to carry switchblades and fire-arms. We wanted a relatively tame environment for our entry into the lusty, glamorous nightclub world, and we figured middle schoolers and free soda would do the trick. Also, we knew we wouldn't have to compete with other women our age. I don't know any thirteen-year-olds who have a rack like Christa. But, alas, our plan failed due to the fact that Aquarius has no interest in catering to pedophiles. Now the stakes have been raised. Since we still feel that we must go, we are forcing ourselves to try again on Thursday which is "eighteen and up." Now we'll get the full effect.

I don't know what I expect to find beyond those taupe colored walls. I keep picturing that brilliant episode of the Tyra Show where the always eloquent Miss Tyra went undercover as a stripper and kept saying, "I feel...Icky." Icky indeed. Because you can shower all you want, but there are some things that you can't wash away with cucumber-melon body wash and a loofa. Like shame. and Chlamydia.

Now, I have to whoreif...I mean...beautify myself. Wish me luck finding those fishnets.

Let's Get Quizzical (Bite me, Olivia Newton John...)

2006-07-02T20:36:00.000-07:00

So far, my summer has been driven by serious mental turmoil. My mind has been beaten to hell by confusion, huge decisions about my future, and phone-calls from batty old ladies. So, I've decided to use my spare time at work to untangle all my jumbled feelings and search through my tumultuous soul. And when I say, "search my soul," I mean "take an unhealthy number of online personality quizzes."

At first, I stumbled into the quiz section of the-n.com because I wanted to find out just how "Moesha" I am, (The answer, by the way, is very. I am very Moesha. In fact, according to the quiz I took, I am "so Mo'.") but I found myself wondering the answers to some other questions posed by the miriad of quizzes on the page. Am I punk? Really? And if I were to date an animal, with wich one would I be the most compatable? Soon, I had been introduced to a whole new world of cybernetic psychotherapy.

I love the rush. I love pushing all of those little buttons, clicking "get results" at the bottom of the page and holding my breath while I hope that my cosmic Smallville twin is more Chloe Sullivan than Lana Lang. Sometimes My heart gets broken. Like the time I learned that, if my life were a TV show, Jessica Simpson would have written its theme song. Or the time I found out that if I were a character from High School Musical I would be Sharpay...but these are all things about myself I'm going to have to face sooner or later on my journey toward self actualization. I'm working on learning to love me for me. Even with all my quirks and flaws. Here are just a just a few of the ways my soul has been revealed to me:

I am less Ashley, and more Mary Kate.

Justin timberlake is my soulmate.

I'm sort of a downer. (I'm not surprised there wasn't a snazzy little badge/logo for this one for me to cut and paste here, but I really wish there was. It woud go something like:"You're Little Miss Sunshine's deformed step-sister! You hate everything! Whenever you speak, people don't know whether to laugh or cry! You're going to die alone!"

My inner self is a brunette and...has really nice eyelashes. Also: "If [I'm] attracted to someone, [I'd] rather share 30 seconds of intense eye contact than spend an hour chatting on IM." So true. You know how I love me some "intense eye contact."

If I had a superpower, it would be "superfly dressing."

***

Sometimes, when I take these quizzes, I get a little bonus guidance when a pearl of wisdom is offered up with my results. Like this one from The Spark: "talk to yourself less. Other people more." Or this one from my old standby, the-n as it revealed that "me + myself = enemies": "Don't let your self-deprecating inner voice prevent you from trying new things -- the next time you catch yourself saying, 'I'm so stupid,' yell back, 'No, I'm not!'" Dulely noted, the-n.com. That sounds like it will do the trick. You probably just saved me a few years of therapy with that one.

No I'm Not! Sorry...where were we?

I know all of these things the internet has told me to virtually error proof because the questions that compose these quizzes are crafted too expertly to have been created by anyone who isn't an emotional genius. Note the finesse of this example from the above mentioned self-esteemed quiz:

When you look in the mirror, your inner voice is most likely to say:

a)“damn, I’m hot!”
b)“I look alright, I guess.”
c)“I look like total crap.”

(Luke, don't pretend you wouldn't pick "a"...)

And examine the delicacy of this carefully crafted moral dilemma from the "how compassionate are you" quiz:

"Your class is throwing a benefit for homeless children. On that same night, your absolute, total and complete favorite actor is doing a book-signing at a local mall. Which do you go to?"

Remember, there are no right or wrong answers on a personality quiz. No one will judge you if you prefer nice, clean "favorite actors" to all those smelly little "homeless children." (Christa.)

Just like I hope you won't judge me because of this new tool I've found for self examination. I too was once a doubter. Until that "what does your DVD collection say about you" quiz saw into my soul and knew somehow that I giggled all the way through "The Notebook." Then, I knew that these almighty quiz creators had abilities not to be taken lightly. Really, it's a completely healthy processs and I can stop whenever I want to. I just don't want to.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find out just how well I know Hilary Duff.

MATH

2006-06-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

"Now heres a scary thought. I might Like like Brandon. It's really farfeched. I don't know if I like him or not. I don't think I do, and it would be really scary if I actually did. I don't think he likes me."

What you have just witnessed, my friends, is the budding of a flower of genius. The above quote is an excerpt from the personal journal of one Caitlin Jane Sellnow: age ten.

My mother found it recently when she was cleaning out some closet space. Really, it's remarkable that she didn't throw it away, since I had so cleverly disguised it as not a diary by etching MATH on the front in pencil and underlining it twice. I was so concerned with secrecy the names have been changed in the first entry. My best friends Samantha and Leslie became "Michelle" and "Luella." The code was so brilliant, even I didn't know who the hell I was talking about when I read it two days ago until I looked a little closer and saw the remnants of"Samantha Georss" erased behind her new alias, "Michelle." I must have been worried that the names of the boys we had a crushes on in the fifth grade would be damaging to our legacies "100 years from now" when I meant for the journal to be discoved and read by the world. Because I state clearly in the praface (what, doesn't your journal have a preface?) that "right now when I'm alive this journal is PRIVAT!"

Even though it hasn't quite been a hundred years, I'm going to share a few of my favorite passages with you now. They demonstrate just how swiftly time can pass. In all of it's misspelled glory, this journal comes from a time before my soul had shrivled into oblivion. A carefree time before I knew the meaning of heartache...or "far fetched." Before I had given up on my dream to become the most famous singing, writing, baton twirling star on Broadway. Before I had been introduced to adjectives more expressive than "soooo" (as in "soooo jealous"). Before I had cried all my tears. Back when words poured freely from my unfettered soul with wreckless, passionate abandon. Observe the emotion:

8-14-98
Today I have to preform my share the fun skit at the county fair becaus we won first pace in the contest. I don't want to be in that stuped play! Nothing is going right today. I have to wear a ridiculis costum that I can't find, I don't know my lines, my eyes are red and puffy because I've been crying and I have alergys. I have to go in an hour but I haven't gotten out of my pajamas, let alone brushed my hair. I'm a wrek! Well, may I break a leg! (With my luck, I probubly will, lituraly.)

***

Oh man, that's totally my favorite one. A "wrek"? "let alone"? apparently, the ten-year-old me studied at the Dynasty school of temper tantrums. I was such a little drama queen. Looking back, it's hard to remember why I had any friends. Sadly though, whatever friend making method I was practicing then appears to have been more effective than any method I've practiced since. Try as I might, I have yet to be able to match my elementary school success at founding secret clubs:

5-22-98
I just came back from my little sister's historical picknick. All day her class pretended it was the olden days at the historical society. I was soooo jealous. The girls had to wear dresses and the boys had to wear suspenders or bibs. I tell everyone I hate dresses but I really like them [I was brimming over with painful secrets]...When I was there I made a secret club with some friends. (All girlls) At the meetings we trade secrets. Mostly about boys. The members of my club are:

Tatum Blume
Shawna Stich
Emie Seechan
and of course, me, Caitlin Sellnow.

Right now, Jackie is being tested. She doesn't know it though. Tatum told her that Shawna french kissed a boy. (It's not true) We're waiting to see if she can keep the secret. If she can, she's in the club.

***

Being ten was no excuse for not knowing that plan was lame.

Behold, the product of a charter school. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the proper way to spell words like "tradition" "Historical" "Suspenders" and "society," but the correct spellings of "even,""stupid" and "because" never found their way into my lexicon. I guess there wasn't room in Lincoln at Mann's "creative" curriculum. We were too busy learning about the seven multiple intelligences. Thanks to my elementary school, I can't tell you what seven times eight equals without a calculator, but I can tell you that I am a visual-spacial learner who enjoys kenisthetic activities.

You know, the more I look at these journal entries, the more convinced I become that I peaked in the fifth grade. Sure, I had a few things to learn...like how crying isn't an acceptable way to get what you want...but creatively, I was at the top of my game. I wrote some wicked awesome stories about magical creatures made out of chocolate and lemons, and I was a regular caligraphy pen prodigy. Also, I posessed leadership skills I have given up all hope of ever gaining back. I directed and starred in some very innovative plays (at least, that's my story until Encyclopedia Brown sues for copyright enfringement) and founded the most exclusive secret clubs in town. In every area besides multiplication and spelling, it appears I have taken a step backwards. I would be depressed about that if I hadn't already formulated a plan. I'm going to use the information contained in this journal to make myself popular and shocklingly brilliant once again. I'll remake my entire image from the clothes I wear (I know those green crushed velvet stirrup leggings are around here somewhere...) to the friends I have.

So get ready and be nice, or I'll tell every one about that boy you french kissed.

P.S. I am the new proud owner of a fifteen dollar button maker. (Not buttons that fasten things; buttons that say things like, "Girl Power," and "you looked better on myspace.") Now I need suggestions for things to put on said buttons. If you want, you can submit a request and I'll be happy to make you a button of your very own...If I like you.

The Documentation of my Gradual Departure From Sanity

2006-06-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Right now, the Augie Choir is on tour in Tanzania and I am not. Because I'm just not good enough, damnit. Instead, I am sitting behind a desk on a Saturday morning waiting for the phone to ring. I think I might be going a little crazy, but it's hard to tell because many of the people who call the newsroom are a little crazy as well. They're not straight up nuts or anything obvious in a Beautiful Mind, hearing voices and "working for the FBI" kind of way...More of a vaguely unbalanced, "just ignore it, she's old " sort of way. I'm worried because I know I've always been teetering on the brink of sanity. Now, surrounded by the kind of company I've been keeping recently, it will to be hard to tell if I actually do slip over the edge. Read these few conversations I've had over the past couple weeks and see for yourselves what I'm dealing with.

Me: Newsroom, this is Caitlin.
Old Man: Hello, I have a comment or a complaint or I don't know what.
Me: OK...
Old Man: Well, there was a country music award program on a couple of nights ago and I didn't see anything about it in the paper yesterday...

-pause while I slowly realize he has already stated his entire complaint-

Me: Well, I don't know what to tell you...other than maybe there just wasn't room for it today...um...
Old Man: Well I don't know about today, I'm saying there wasn't anything about it yesterday and I just wanted to put my two cents in.
Me: All right. I'll make a note of that. Thank you for your feedback.
Old Man: You're welcome.

(The best part of that conversation was the fact that, when I said, "I'll make a note of that," I actually lifted a pen to my little notepad as though I was about to start pantomiming the writing of a pretend note. Like he could see me. See? Crazy.)

As you read this next conversation, keep in mind that the "man on drugs" sort of shouts everything he says, and most of the "words" described here as being "spoken" by me aren't so much words as indiscriminate mumbling that could be mistaken for frightened throat clearing:

I was walking down fourth street on my second day of work when a middle aged guy with bloodshot eyes turned onto the sidewalk at the same time as I did. Shoot, this will be a little awkward, I thought, but whatever. I'll pass him in a couple of seconds. Then, to my horror, he spoke:

Man on Drugs: I'm not following you or anything. Hopefully I'll pass you in a couple of minutes.
Me: (smile and nod)
MOD: I mean, it's nothing personal or anything. That's just the way it is. It would be kind of awkward if we just kept walking next to each other without anything to say.
Me. Um...that's true.
MOD: I'm going to have to cross the street here now. I mean, it's nothing personal...you're a very good looking woman...but it would just be awkward. Hey, at least I'm being honest.
Me: That's true.
MOD: (Heading into oncoming traffic on Broadway) I mean, have you figured it out? How to talk to somebody...?

And that was the last I heard from him. He might have gotten hit by a car. It was hard to tell because I was running away pretty fast. Does that make me a bad person?

More recently, a woman called to give me a piece of her mind about repeated errors in the pollen count the paper publishes.

Yeah, you heard me. The pollen count.

"Somebody needs to check that because the count on the Mayo Clinic Website and the one in the paper...well they never match up."

Frankly, I find the remarkable part of her complaint not to be that she cared enough about the pollen count to give me a call, but that she cared enough to check at least two different sources. More than once. I wonder why she waited as long as she did to complain. I can just picture her reading the paper, eating breakfast or something...maybe some oatmeal...and saying to herself, "OK, this has to end. I've kept my silence for too long. Today is the day I fix this. Today, I stand up for what's right. Today, I call in about the pollen count."

Whatever. She probably got a higher ACT score than I did. Which makes her a better person.

Somebody e-mail me and save me from myself.

The Adventures of Princess Mono

2006-05-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

My sister has Mono.

Finally.

We kind of figured it would happen eventually, I guess. Mono is all the rage these days and my sister is never out of vogue. She's been trying to convince us for months that she already had it once before. At least now, when she says, "That one time I had mono..." she won't have to hear, "Abby, you didn't have mono. Quit whining."

We Sellnows aren't a very sympathetic breed. Once, in like, the fifth grade, I almost broke my ankle falling up a set of concrete stairs at the Civic Theater about a an hour before a Drama Camp finale performance. They warned us over and over again not to run on those stairs of death but, damnit, I was just so excited at the prospect of getting my hair french braided that my enthusiasm got the best of me. When I slipped and started to cry...and cry and cry and cry, the director called my mother. She told them I was just being "dramatic" and they sent me out on stage. Because the show must go on! Everyone knew in their hearts the play would fall apart without the oldest half-boy-half-raven to offer up such memorable show-stopping zingers as, "stop him, he's getting away!" and "yellow is the color of a lemon drop." (I would be sad about how that was the pinnacle of my acting career if I chose to dwell on it, but you know I'm a sunny-side, glass-half-full kind of gal...) When the show was over, my parents took me to the Clinic and I was given an ankle brace and crutches to use for a month because, no mom, I wasn't just being "dramatic." To this day, whenever my mother tells the story about my injury, she laughs so hard she almost can't get the words out when she comes to the part where she says, "Everyone thought you were just a really good actress, but now we know those looks of fear and pain were real! Ha ha!" No wonder I have self-esteem issues.

Anyway, since my sister was able to obtain actual medical proof of her illness, she now has the right to a limited amount of sadness and sympathy. When my mother came to help move me out of my dorm room, she tagged along and sat around while my mother and I did all of the heavy lifting. "I'd help," she said, "but I might rupture my spleen."

Turns out, having Mono does have its advantages. Abby's upset about having to miss so much school and not being able to see her friends...but she's very excited that she lost twelve pounds in five days thanks to the water and sorbet diet. Ha! In your face, Trimspa! And, she found that Teen America's Favorite Virus is the one effective way to keep my father away from leftovers in the fridge. Every food item she touches, she titles MONO with a Sharpie. (Now, that's brilliant whether the leftovers are actually contaminated or not. I'm thinking of having labels printed up that say things like SMALLPOX and DYSENTERY to stick on anything I want to lay claim to. Have you ever asked for a drink of someone's Coke-a-HEPATITIS? I didn't think so. It's Genius.)

She better enjoy the benefits while they last though, because she is swiftly recovering. Today, Abigail is attending her first full day of class in ten days, and she'll soon have to make up all the homework she's missed. Hopefully, the Sellnow household is finally nearing the end of its imprisonment in Mono's death grip. If not, the experience has at least taught me one very valuable lesson for the next time around: The answer to the question, "want to see my tonsils?" should always be no.

P.S. I still need advice about Kenyon, but I was tired of looking at my one needy, serious post. My offer to send cookies to anyone who tells me what to do by June 15 still stands.

Strange News

2006-05-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hey kids, no wit right now. I just need your help. My head is kind of spinning. If you want proof of my creative aptitude, read the post about the Communism. This here isn't my best work.

Today, I arrived home to find an envelope from Kenyon College in the mailbox. It was the big envelope. The kind where they validate me and tell me I've been accepted for transfer. For those of you who aren't aware, Kenyon was my first choice last year, but I was in waitlist limbo until I left for Augustana. It's in Gambier Ohio and has a creative writing program.

So please, now, tell me what to do. Talk me into transfer, talk me out of it...Just please say something. I'm very happy, very scared, and very confused and I can't do this without you guys.

An Honesty Overdose. And Also Communism.

2006-05-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

I'm bored.

I feel like I've been doing this college thing so long, even my procrastinating skills are starting to wane. A month or two ago I would have at least been able to justify the creation of a new blog entry with some sort of amusing story or witty insight. But today, I can't summon the strength to put off homework with finesse. The truth is, I'm only here because I would rather watch useless babble appear on my computer screen than face Mark Twain again. There. I've told you all the straight truth. I have nothing of real value to contribute to any of your lives and I'm not pretending anymore.

And as long as we're being honest, yeah. Maybe I am jealous of Hilary Duff. And maybe I enjoyed Bring it On more than a little bit. And maybe I do have all the words to "Dancing Queen" memorized. And maybe some part of me still wishes I were Pocahontas and could paint with all the colors of the wind. And maybe I really love Dawson's Creek. Like, not just "enjoy" or "find mildly amusing". Love.

Sorry, was that too personal? I didn't mean for it to get so intense. At least now there are no secrets between us. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. If you decide to continue speaking to me knowing all you do at this point, both of us can rest assured that you are truly accepting me for who I am.

And presently, because you deserve a reward for taking that little cathartic journey with me, and because my homework is still repelling me with magnificent force, I'll regale you with a classic story of awkwardness on the Plains. ("awkwardness on the Plains" is sort of like "Little House on the Prairie" only less about hugs and happiness and more about self-loathing and terror.) Most of you have probably heard it already, but I want to commit it to writing for the sake of posterity:

Once upon a time, I was at a meeting for the Ecumenical Advocacy team here at Augustana, and we were talking about our plans to travel to Washington D.C. At the time, the Northwestern Airline strike was happening. We discussed it for a while because some were worried it might affect our flight. At one rather quiet point in the conversation I forgot a little bit that I was at Augustana College in South Dakota and said with a straight face,

"Stupid communists."

My comment was followed by an audible gasp and uncomfortable silence.

"Um...just kidding?"

I'm either really misunderstood or kind of a jerk. What do you guys think?

OK. I'm ready to be done clumsily stalling now. Bring it, Twain.

Welcome To My Nightmare

2006-05-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

This one goes out to my pal, Emma the birthday girl.

Well everybody, the play is over and I feel empty and alone. I now sit in front of this blog with a cup of cookie dough ice-cream in hand and a soap opera playing in the background...

An actual quote: "Whitney and I used to talk about coming here to Rome for our honeymoon...before we found out we were half brother and sister."

I'm just one Avril Lavigne song away from a total melt down. Pretty soon I'll start telling everyone about how, if stuffed animals had opposable thumbs, They would post on my facebook wall and tell the world what a great person I am. Where can I turn in this state but to you, internet? Embrace me with Times New Roman. Lull me to sleep with promises that, if I'm good, those "friends" I have on facebook will turn into real boys and girls. Show me shirtless pictures of Tom Welling and tell me that Jade will soon no longer be in the running towards becoming America's Next top Model. I promise I'll believe every word. I'm with you, internet. I'm with you.

I may be closer to that melt down than any of us realize. I'm two weeks away from finals and already having nightmares. Recently, I turned in a sixteen page semester long research paper about memoir and the holocaust. For two days, I was convinced that my professor had stood in front of my class of about 97 students, reading sections of it out loud and laughing, before giving it back to me with "I expected more form you, Caitlin" Written across the top in big red letters. Then I realized that my professor never writes with red ink, we hadn't gotten our papers back yet, there are only eight other kids in my class, and my teacher is around five feet tall in reality, not seven like she is in my subconscious. Needless to say, I was dreaming.

I wasn't dreaming, however when we discussed our end of the year Collegiate Chorale choir party. It will be a picnic. At that picnic, we will play a "game" called...dodgeball-volleyball. I think, if it were possible for someone to dig deep into the blackest depths of my soul, find all my greatest fears and magically assemble them in a material way involving sunshine and cruel cruel laughter, something called "dodgeball-volleyball" would be the result. All we need is a hypnotist and some mini-skirts to make the horror complete.

As a choir, we voted on this game. "That sounds fun!" one girl exclaimed. Okay missy, you tell me what sounds fun about having multiple balls pelted at you while you're trapped in an invisible vestibule of shame.

I'm not going to make a huge deal about it though. It's just one more reason for me to wake up screaming in the middle of the night so, no biggie.

Oh, the ice-cream is gone.

And so is the happiness.

In Honor of Finals...

2006-04-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

...Let's play a little multiple choice game.

Which of these conversations was had by me sometime during the course of the past two days?

Selection A
Jerk behind me at choir concert: "Walk faster!"
Me: "OK but seriously, I can't find my shoe."

Selection B
Me: "Um, I think I locked my roommate out of the room.
Government teacher: And you care about her deeply so..."
Me: "Well yes, and when I left she was in the shower."
Government teacher: "Oh. Well you better go let her in. That has to be the best excuse to get out of class I've ever heard."

Selection C
Me: (falling down the stairs in the Madsen Center)"Ow."
People Behind me who now know me as, "That girl who fell down the stairs": Laugh, laugh, laugh.

Selection D
ALL OF THE ABOVE.

I don't even deserve your pity.

Jinx

2006-04-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Oh my traveling companions...

Remember that time I tried to smuggle a little Fiscar weapon of death onto the plane back from Poland? Remember how I left my passport on the plane back from Italy and thought they were going to make me live in the airport like Tom Hanks in The Terminal? (It was based on a true story...) How about that time they almost didn't let me on the plane to Washington DC on account of social leprosy? No? No one remembers that last time, you say? Because it just happened a few weeks ago? Well, gather round my friends. Watch as a new chapter unfolds in the saga of Caitlin the travel jinx.

I arrived at the airport to embark upon my adventure at Advocacy days in DC clutching a bright red suitcase filled with fancy shoes and grown-up clothes and an orange folder containing the flight schedule I was sent by the internet. Since I purchased the ticket myself, I assumed something would go wrong, but I managed to get my ticket and make it to security without incident.

But, just as I was about to relax, I was thwarted by the lady checking ID's at the top of the escalator. I gave my coughlearner'spermitcough to her and her hair and her eye shadow and her fake nails:

Her: "Well this doesn't make any sense."
Me: "Well, um, it's not a driver's license..."
Her: "I know that. Do you see this expiration date?"(...You nineteen year old licenseless freak, she said with her eyes...)
Me: "Oh. So, um, it's not valid?"
Her:"Well, not in my eyes. Take this down to the desk where you checked in."
Me: stare, stare, stare, blink, "Where?"
Her: "Where you checked in. Then come back."

OK

I followed her instructions and handed my permit to a grumpy old man behind the counter and he frowned over it and shook his head, then drew two big red S's on my boarding pass and sent be back up the escalator. The S's Probably stood for Super Stupid or Sad...Simpleton. Oh leave me alone, it was traumatic.

I re-showed my ticket to Cranky Ms. A-hair-band-somewhere-wants-its-hairspray-and-eyeliner-back, and she ushered me into the special line for criminals. Apparently, I was the only criminal in the whole Sioux Falls airport at the time, since the line they were all supposed to be in consisted of me alone. So... on second thought, it wasn't so much a line as it was me standing by myself behind a length of red tape trying to decide whether I should be annoyed or terrified. Next, I waited while a woman with gloves and a spiffy uniform patted me down and went through all of my things behind a little shield so I couldn't see what she was doing and wouldn't make a scene when she found my guns and Vodka. Another guard tested by backpack for chemicals and explosives (Oh yes, chemicals and explosives) and finally sent me on my way.

I take the party with me where ever I go.

What is it with me? Why can't I just get on the plane and off the plane without causing any trouble? They've probably put my name on a special Super Stupid airport deviant list by now. I'm never leaving the tri-state area again.

One More

2006-03-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Facebook. I hate facebook. I hate facebook people and their facebook friends and their facebook parties. I hate that it provides insecure people like myself with such a vivid day to day measure of who's winning at life. I hate the fact that facebook makes me say things to myself like, "sure I have 372 less friends than she does, but the friends I do have are 372 times better." Then I cry because I realize how pathetic I am for even thinking these things and because I'm lying in my own head. And I start to think about how, if I were prettier and had as many friends as that kid on facebook with all the drunken pictures of him punching himself in the face, I would have somebody to lie out loud to.

And the "wall". That sucks too. It sucks because I get super excited every time I check my e-mail and see, "Somebody cooler than you has written on your wall!" WOOOOOOOOO! I say, and do an internal dance. Then, I check facebook to find a chipper little message from somebody who loves me deeply enough to grace my electronic presence with his or her face and let the world know that he or she wants to say hi. To me! WOOOOOOO! Then, I get sad again because I remember that the last time this happened to me was three months ago, and worthwhile human beings get at least seven posts a day.

Are you happy facebook? You've ruined me.

Also, I hate world lit. Shove it, Gilgamesh.

Madness!

2006-02-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't talked to any of you in so long. I'll send out personal updates soon...I really do like hearing from you. It occurs to me, however, that in order to do so, you must hear from me first. There's a give and take to e-mail relationships that way. Unless you are Kristina. Sorry you all thought I was dead. I'm not, but thanks for blowing my previous comment record totally out of the water. It's nice to know that if I actually did die, at least five people would publicly acknowledge having known me. At least as public as anonymous blogspot screen names can be...

You will all be glad to know that I am still physically among the living. Only dead inside, as usual.

I wish I had a good excuse for not writing for so long, but I don't have one. I'm just suffering from a little bit of writer's block. You people make me nervous. I sense that you're expecting wit and charm from me, and it's hard to deliver week after week. So, in order to get over this burn out of sorts, I've decided to stop trying so hard. Lower your expectations people.

This week, I shall simply offer up a list of things that piss me off. I've been pissed off in general for a while, and I'm not sure why. I think it has something to do with people being around all the time. They're everywhere. And you know how I feel about people. Maybe this list of things that suck will help me get over my random rage.

Let's start with the obvious:

1. Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day pisses me off. The cliches are inescapable whether you're boycotting with suicide movies and black nail polish or spazzing over what to buy the love of your life/love of your week. The source of most of my resentment, I imagine, is fairly clear to the majority of you. The fact that I -- resenter of all things pink, lacy, cliche, sparkley, kitteny and touchy feely -- am rubbed the wrong way by Valentine's Day, should hardly come as a surprise to anyone reading this.

However, I also resent the fact that I, a perennial single, am expected to be bitter. Quit feeling so sorry for me, you people filled with love and other warm feelings. It's true, sometimes I think about how nice it would be to share days like February 14th with someone special, but I don't get as upset about being single as the world seems to think I do. Really, I'm OK. I'm not going to crawl into bed with a gallon of rocky road ice-cream and all my tears tonight just because I don't have anyone to give that "will you be my magical sweetheart" Harry potter valentine to. I wallow in self pity for many other reasons most of the time already. The last thing I need is an entire season where it's encouraged. Singles of the world unite! It could be a whole lot worse.

2. Hillary Duff. Well, I'm not so much mad at her as I am mad at most of America and Japan for buying her "Best of" CD.

3. Good Looking People who get away with being obnoxious because they're good looking. Why does society give a free pass to every idiot with a six pack? Yes Suzie cute-face, your boyfriend's a real looker, but he's also a socially impaired lunatic who thinks the US would be a lot better off if those colored folks weren't allowed to vote. If I have to hear, "Well, I know, but he has the most adorable southern accent" from you one more time, so help me...

That's all I have time for now. I'll finish the list in a bit once I've had time to process and cool down. Right now I'm too fired up about Hillary Duff to think coherently.

"Hey look! It's Miss Iowa.....'s Boobs!"

2006-01-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

So, who can guess how I spent my Saturday night?

No, silly, I didn't hold up another liquor store. Stop right there. If I were speaking to any one of you people reading this face to face, this would be the point where I'd be sorry I ever asked that question. The correct answer -- if you care to take a moment away from compiling that mental list of hilariously illegal/inappropriate/borderline racist things I could be doing on Saturday nights -- is that I was watching the Miss America pageant from start to finish.

Oh, shut up. Don't judge me. I know for a fact that more than one of you has paid money to see a Hillary Duff movie in theaters. Nobody's perfect. Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed the "scholarship competition." I saw enough teeth and big shiny hair and perfect bodies and identical noses and wide eyes filled with hatred and emptiness to rival the test tube society of Gattaca. I kept wanting to yell at those parents and grandparents in the audience screaming and holding signs for their loved ones onstage, "It's OK to conceive a child in love! Take your chances with nature! Maybe if you weren't so worried about having a child genetically predestined to have such white teeth, Miss California could have had a soul! Think of Ethan and Uma! Love! Love!"

I was a little disappointed when the Midwest was not represented in the top ten, but it was a minor setback. It's not like I was upset enough to stop watching or anything. I don't remember the top ten's actual names or the states they represented, I just remember Miss Suspiciously excellent hair, Miss Half Chinese Almost Ethnic, Miss The Black One, Miss Skin Cancer, Miss Seven Foot Weird Eyed Mutant Thing, Miss "Well, I'm Greek so..." and Miss So Skinny Don't Give Her a Hug or You'll Puncture a Lung. Boy were they one dapper bunch! Rhinestones, cleavage and heels galore. I think I have ten new role-models, guys.

Now, don't be fooled by their beauty. They have to grapple with real issues every day just like you and me. Oh man, the question and answer segment was marvelous. I've never seen so much bizarre nonsensical babble accompanied by such pride and gleeful self-assurance. The question was, "How has an event from your childhood shaped who you are today?" I don't remember what Miss Mutant or Twinky from Maine said exactly, but Miss Almost Ethnic tried, for thirty hilarious seconds, to convince everyone she had overcome racial prejudices in her youth. The first words out of her mouth were, "Well as you know, my dad is Chinese..."

In the end, Miss Mutant was crowned -- much to the joy of Sarah, who was watching the ceremony with us and leading a chant: "mu-tant! mu-tant! mu-tant!" Miss Mutant took the crown from the former Miss America: Miss If She Wasn't High, She Should Really Do Something About That Lazy Eye. There was singing and crying and confetti and it was over as quickly as it had begun.

Next year will be my year.

Hey you. Stop with the laughing.

P.S. Out of curiosity, how do you guys feel about the song, The Christmas Shoes? My roommate loves it, but I find it tests my gag reflex.

An Official Apology to Miss Christa Jobeth

2006-01-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

Christa, I have been thinking of you lately and all of the crap we put you through on account of your crippling inability to align your opinions of hottness with those of society...Or those without drugs and imaginary friends.

If you recall, we discovered this disorder while playing our brilliantly constructed "Who's prettiest?" game. It was a game where we went through each choir section and decided who was prettiest. That game inspired such equally amusing hits as, "Which soprano will cry first?," and "If the Whole Choir Wrestled in a Pit of Jell-o, Who Would Emerge Victorious?" I won't go into the details of those games because the rules are so complex that it would be tedious for me to transcribe them here. (Wow. You know, for a group of fairly intelligent people, we were way too easily amused. It must have something to do with my dancing hampster collection. Everything always circles back to them) Time and time again, you lost at that game. And, losing "Who's Prettiest?" is fairly difficult due to the fact that there aren't supposed to be any winners, losers or objects (see rules outlined above). That's why we proceeded to ridicule you and your defective hottness determinant. Colleen may continue to do so for as long both of you live, but that's between the two of you. I resign. Here's why:

A couple days ago, I let it slip that I don't get Brad Pitt. Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed him in Mr. and Mrs. Smith and I respect the fact that he's more attractive than most human beings, but the guy just doesn't really do it for me. I don't get worked up the way some people do when he licks his luscious man lips. Ever since I revealed this about myself, I too have received endless ridicule. Nay, make that cold, smoldering hatred. I may as well have revealed that I don't really get ethnic people. When I said, "Brad Pit doesn't really do it for me," what Sarah, Emma and Pam heard was, "I'm an evil fascist." Now, whenever a Brad Pitt Movie comes up in conversation, there's an awkward pause so everyone involved can shoot me a look that says, "better not talk about Brad around obviously a-sexual Caitlin. We might awaken other dormant abnormal tendencies. Next she'll turn out to be a homicidal maniac. Or she'll blaspheme Orlando. She's a dangerous fool!"

I can't take the heat. Christa, I don't know how you've put up with it for so long. I commend you and extend my profoundest apologies. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find myself an awesome poster of Brad and his awesome chiseled jaw and his awesome rippling pecks and his awesome cold dead eyes. Because Brad Pit is awesome. No. Really.

P.S. the other day, I told a girl that I didn't have my driver's license. She replied, "Yeah, you seem like you wouldn't." Um...ok. Wait, hey! Do I have to open my mouth to mark myself a social leper, or am I just that weird looking? I must know.

I could use a good pot-luck right now.

2005-12-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

Tracey, In response to your comment...

I won't be funny again until Christmas. Man Kelsey, this mind meld thing we have going on is kind of freaky. I think my sense of humor heard finals were coming and went into hibernation. It's fickle, that wit. Sorry. I know I'm kind of useless when I can't tell jokes.

I've tried to re-target the usual victims of my razor sharp tongue and cheek, but results so far have been lackluster. Watch this, it's sad:

President Bush is...the president.(and I'm proud to be an American...)
Fast food employees are...not really that intimidating.
Choir is...a musical extracurricular activity in which I participate.
Babies are...a lovely way to start people.
Hillary duff is...pretty.
Republicans are...fiscally conservative.

I think I'm in big trouble. Hopefully I'll be better in a few days. Right now I'm just depressed. And I have "Proud to be an American" stuck in my head.

Finals rule.

Scarred for life.

2005-12-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

Kristina, you are correct in your assessment. I am a slacker. That's why I wrote an entire eight page paper last night, and that's why I'm providing you all with this additional entry when I should be studying for finals.

Sometimes, my hair dryer shoots random sparks at my head and kind of whines at me. I'm hoping it will be OK if I don't lick it or anything. My hair has yet to catch on fire, but you know what they say: It only has to happen once.

Is it Christmas yet?

Never mind. I have a story.

The big Christmas choir concert/service is called Vespers around these parts and it takes place way off campus. For three of the four services, I rode to and from the church/Vespers location with my friend Alyssa. However, on Sunday, she informed me that she would be joining her family afterwards, and hence, could not give me a ride home. This information alone was distressing, but I soldiered on and asked Heather if she could give me a ride. She said yes! I was psyched. Oh if I had known then...

After the concert, I drank some punch and waited for Heather. For a half an hour. Several people saw me sitting against the wall, lonely with my pity-me-cookies and loser-bullseye beverage in hand and said things like, "Hey, we're leaving now, if you want to ride with us..." "Oh, no no." I said. "I don't want things to get too complicated. I'll just wait here for Heather." So, I waited. For a long time I kept my eye on Heather. Then, suddenly, I looked up from my program and empty napkin and she was gone. And so was everybody else. The catering staff looked as though they would be unsympathetic to my plight.

You know that feeling you got when you were six and you realized the lady you had been following in the supermarket for the past five minutes wasn't your mother? I recognized that feeling on Sunday at age eighteen. The difference is, at age eighteen, people usually assume you have your own address memorized. No one offered to help me find my mommy. I wandered around the empty church for a while half heartedly checking bathrooms and closets as my situation grew more futile with each passing, "Heather? Where the hell are you???" Never before had my inability to keep more than four phone numbers in my head at the same time been so inconvenient. After a while I found myself checking shelves for blankets and hoping they didn't turn the heat off in the church at night. Wouldn't that make for an ironic death: refusal to obtain license due to fear of accidentally mauling self and or others in a motorized vehicle causes college freshman to freeze to death.

In the end, a sort of creepy, hard-of-hearing old guy from the church spotted me on the verge of tears and offered me a ride back to campus. I thought to myself, "Well, he could be a child molester, but what else am I going to do? I choose death in a heated car!" My gamble paid off big in the end, because he safely got me back to campus where my homework and a worried call from Heather were cheerfully awaiting my arrival.

Now is it Christmas?

Blame the Mayflower

2005-11-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

I have Thanksgivingitis.

It's like Senioritis only...with Thanksgiving. Oh, what? You were expecting depth? I've been completely useless for a good four days now. I keep thinking I should get a head start on those two major papers due shortly after break, but all I want to do is watch the Food Network. C'mon, how could I miss Battle Turkey in kitchen stadium? When I wiegh my options, turkey ice cream always trumps discussing Lucifer/trickster motifs in the short stories of Flanery O'Conner.

Is annyone else having this problem, or am I just an abnormally defective human being? Here is a snapshot of my largely ineffective life: On Saturday, I spent 55 minutes watching laundry dry. Seriously. It's not a metaphor like, "watching paint dry" or, "two Ukranian eggs in a soap chicken." (Whoever knows which masterwork I just referenced gets cake.) Nope. Pam and I put most of our laundry into two dryers and decided, afer 17 minutes of hoping somebody would unload another dryer in which I could dry the rest of my clothes, that climbing four flights of stairs wasn't really worth it when we'd just have to come back down in another 40 minutes. So, we waited. For an hour. Damn pilgrims.

Happy Thanksgiving guys. There are not words for how excited I am to see you all.

Awesome..iaro!

2005-11-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

Duuuuude! Harry Potter rules! Ron and his sexy sweaters made the movie for me. The rest was just icing on the cake, my friends.

The cool kids do pollen and pet dander.

2005-10-31T16:55:00.000-08:00

The other day a boy asked me if I was high.

No, really.

Man, if I had a nickle for every time someone asked me that...I'd have somewhere in the neighborhood of ten cents.

I wish I had been high. It probably would have made the whole paper writing experience much more enjoyable. I had this four sentence conversation when I went down to the dorm lobby at two o' clock in the morning to get my paper out of the printer. My allergies were making me miserable and I was at that late night paper point were my eyes were all squinty and bleary and the words on the computer screen were going all wavy and realigning themselves of their own free will. My domain as ruler of the keyboard had been undermined by the rebellious peasant masses of Times New Roman.

But seriously, I wasn't high.

Anyway, when I arrived in the lobby, there were a few people gathered around the front desk. One of them took one look at me and his eyes lit up.
"Are you high?" he asked.
"no." I said.
"Then why are you all bloodshot and...messed up?"

He's a real smooth talker, that Luke. I explained that I don't always need drugs to get messed up and went on my way.

I hope you guys enjoyed that story. It's a time of year when I always look like I've been abusing lots of substances. I feel so uncool when I explain that, no, it's not liquor or weed, it's...um...pollen and pet dander. It would probably be better if I just stopped trying to explain altogether. If anyone asks, I am soooo stoned right now.

Only losers do homework.

2005-10-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

It's been an off week. Today is Thursday and it feels like Friday should have been yesterday. It might have something to do with the fact that fall break starts tomorrow. The sands of time move so slowly when you're having fun.

Sorry. It is quite possible that this blog is quickly going downhill. Be polite guys. Don't say anything until I start using ALL CAPS and asterisks to cyberscream about how I WILL *NEVER* FIND TRUE LOVE and transcribing Kelly Clarkson lyrics because she's captured the way I *REALLY* feel with depth and tender insight. Yeah yeah. Since you've been gone...I'm so movin on...

Then you have permission to shoot me in the face. I'm counting on those of you with guns to save me from myself. (You know who you are...coughconservativecough)

Anyway,you had to read through all of that just to find out that I really have nothing to say. I'm only here because I have finally hit the bottom of the well of charm that is facebook. Perhaps I shall discuss my feelings about The Notebook

When I speak the title of that movie, most of the girls around me have a physical reaction. If they had blogs, that reaction would read like this: "Oooooooooooh, i *LOOOOVE* that movie." I finally sat down to watch it last week after much protest, being informed, "Caitlin, You're going to watch it and you're going to cry. It's soooooo romantic." Really, it wasn't a bad movie. Being dead inside, I couldn't muster a tear for the doomed lovers, but I've seen much worse. There were only a few places where I thought creative deaths would have been more entertaining than the makeout sessions that actually occurred. (Remember that romantic swan scene in the rowboat? Ever seen The Birds?) The one biggest Notebook qualm I had was with a scene that's been in every romantic movie since the beginning of time when the chick - "If I could only find a man like that my whole life would make sense" - flick was created.
Quirky but handsome man says, "Dance with me."
Incredulous giggly beautiful sparkle head says, "What, here? But we haven't any music."
Boy says, "We'll make our own."
Then the lover's dance and strings from Romance Inc. swoop in from all around as they melt into each other's arms.

Please. I've seen that scene 20 gazillion times in 20 gazillion different movies and it never seems very romantic to me. Just once, I'd like to give the Romance Inc. guys a coffee break and let those idiots dance for like two minutes without any swooping strings. Then they'd both just kind of stop and feel awkward. Because you don't do that sort of thing unless you're equipped with a soundtrack or hallucinagens.

It's jut how I feel. Don't judge me, OK?

P.S. My favorite commercial ever is back on TV. It's that fantastic Nissan commercial where the slogan is: "Hard core just got harder. Core." It gets me every time.

The End of Time

2005-10-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in Santa? I do. Once upon a time he gave me a beautiful watch. It was a Fossil and everything. It was both utilitarian and pretty, unlike myself. If I had a real boyfriend, he would probably have left me for my superior Fossil watch. But, since all of my boyfriends have been imaginary, I had no reason not to love this watch like a good friend.

But alas, now my watch is not nearly the specimen it once was. Perhaps in a subconscious passive aggressive attempt to bring the watch's iflated ego down a notch or two, I dropped it in the shower. Now, it's quite broken. The glass is intact, but all the numbers came off the face. The only thing left clinging to its rightful place in time is a lone one. It used to be part of the twelve, but now it's not even a whole number. It stands lost and alone in a terrifying world of chaos. All the other numbers rattle around in between the face and the glass like that silver confetti you toss on New Years Eve. It doesn't keep time anymore because the minute hand doesn't move, and the second hand gets caught on the loose numbers and just sort of twitches pathetically. Even so, I decided that I will keep wearing my confettified watch so that, whenever anyone asks me what time it is, I can look at my wrist and say, "Well, my watch says it's party time."

Oh watch. Your death will not be in vein. Light a candle and think of me and my loss today.

Me, Truth, Marshmallow and Satan

2005-10-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

Woa, sorry guys. I dropped off the face of the planet there for a little while. I was busy investigating the meaning of truth. But, now I'm back and I am here to tell of my adventures into the depths of good, evil and man's purpose in the universe.

Or not really. If, over the past week, I came across absolute truth, it was in the tiny little footnotes at the bottom of my gazillion page religion book and I missed it. Who has time for the mysteries of the universe when they're trying to write an English paper worthy of a check-plus, and study for a religion test that can't be studied for? Who has time for footnotes? Not I.

On Friday I took the first test of my collge carreer. The first part was a five-to-six page essay we were given two nights to complete. The second part, administered in a sixty minute class, consisted of ten essay questions. I looked at the test and figured, after doing some quick calculations in my math friendly brain, that I had ten minutes for each question. Because sixty divided by ten equals...um...ten. (Seriously guys. In high school did you ever look at me and wonder how I, with so many obvious mental handicaps, could autonamously accomplish simple tasks like getting dressed in the morning? and being literate?) Needless to say, I was mistaken. Not that it really mattered because I spent fifteen minutes on the first question anyway. As the test continued and sixty minutes flew by, the answers to my questions got progressively worse. The answer to number one began something like: "Well, in order to discuss what relevance Adam and Eve have to our daily lives, I must first discuss the nature of truth. I shall address this subject in three parts..." My answer to question number ten went something like: "Well, Babel is like, humans keep trying to build a tower to heaven. By themselves. But they can't." Somehow, I don't think my professor's comments will include: "The depth of the simplicity here astounds me on many levels. A+ for you!"

Maybe I would have been better off at some hippy school where the administration doesn't believe in tests because its mission is to teach students how to have A+ souls. Or not. If anyone could fail at a mission like that, It'd be me.

Oh well, that's life I guess. Coincidentaly, my test ends with those very words. In other news, I was home this weekend and my dog has hair! Yeah, I know. It's a medical miriacle. Either that, or Marshmallow sold his soul to Satan in exchange for beauty in his old age. Either way, he's lookin' good.

Holla!

2005-09-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Century kids...

Who's going back for homecomming?

That's all. Sorry.

Oh, except for the fights that happen on the bathroom stalls here on the estrogen floor of Solberg hall. We have these white boards taped to the sides of the stalls so we can write silly (stupid) messages (witless nonsensical bable that only sounds funny in our heads and always end with "JK," "lol" and little smiley faces to make it look cute) and answer fun (annoying) questions like, "what is the cutest thing a boy has ever said to you?" I want to know who, in respose to the question "What is the coolest vacation you've ever taken?" wrote, "To the moon!," then followed it up with "(jk, I've never been to the moon!!!)" Um, really? Boy, she had me going there for a sec. Thank goodness someone invented "jk." Otherwise there would be nothing to signal to me the fact that there are no real live astronauts living in Solberg's South wing. How did we communicate before instant messenger?

Anyway, my favorite stall is the one that not a lot of people use because the lock sticks. The white board hasn't been cleaned in a while and there's a fight on it between people who drink and party and people who don't. It starts with, "Why do people feel like they need to drink to be cool?" and ends with, "Why you gotta be like that, bitch?" I wish you could all be here to witness the fantasticness.

So, yeah. Homecomming?

P.S.

2005-09-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I saw the best "Sweet Sixteen" preview on MTV ever. My favorite part was when the music got all scary and the girl screamed, "I don't WANT ugly people!"

I, along with the rest of America's ugly people, will be watching intently.

My diary, my only friend.

2005-09-20T19:13:00.000-07:00

Dear diary,

My life is over. Today in Western Civ., I fell off of a desk in front of all the cool kids. I don't kow how it happened. One minute, I was perched nonchalontly atop my desk discussing the philosophies of socrates and Plato. The next, I was doing a sort of dive and roll thing like you're supposed to do when you get thrown off a horse. I then landed on my head and everybody laughed. If they'd seen as many Hilary Duff movies as I have, they probably would have started clapping like people do in those cafeteria scenes where Hilary drops her tray or gets food thrown at her or something. Man, I bet Hilary knows just how I feel. Judging by her role choices, She seems like the kind of girl who's always on the outside looking in. Just like me.

Oh diary, I wish something had been hurt other than my pride. Then, I'd be that girl who ended up in a coma due to a horrific desk massacre. People would send me flowers and organize prayer circles. Instead, I'm just the dork who fell off a desk. Now, I'll never get asked to the mixer.

I may as well be dead.

ho hum

2005-09-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

If you look closely, you can almost read the procrastination between the lines.

Really, I have nothing to say, but I knew I could either do this, write my history paper due tomorrow, send a perfume soaked letter confessing my love to Tom Welling, or gouge my own eyes out with a mechanical pencil. Obviously, after surveying my options, I chose blogging. But I'll give bonus points to annyone who can guess which one came in second.

As I stare at this computer screen and realize the wit mechanism in my head didn't wake up with me, (I think it went out and got wasted last night...) my inferiority complex is starting to kick in. So, I'll return to my history before this post becomes one of those tear stained middle school journal entries where I whine about how, "Jeez, nobody gets me," and, "Jeez, he doesn't even know I'm alive," and, "Jeez, If I ran this school, no one would ever have to play 'no strikes baseball' again and everyone would wear stirrup pants and..."

But, I digress. Middle school has left my soul bitter and contorted. I guess I'll let you know how that history paper goes.

By the way, I really miss you guys. If annyone's interested in playing a game of "Who knows the most about witchcraft in the fifteenth century," Give me a call. It might help with my inferiority complex.

Party on, NSS

2005-09-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

I totally just finished a paper about a book with no textual references! I also refered to myself in first person! Numerous times! Oh man, who needs to drink their tuition away? My wild and crazy self is half-assing things while I'm completely sober! Woo! Everybody, raise a glass of milk to New Student Seminars and taking them pass-fail.

You know, some people collect jokes off of Laughy-Taffy wrappers. At Augustana, administrators get their kicks out of assigning "values essays" based on Chaim Potok's The Chosen, and finding different ways to convince people someone reads them. They give bonus points and candy to any teacher who can convince a student than someone actually cares. So far, no one's scored on me.

That may have come out wrong...

I thought I might look for a job on campus because I wasn't awarded work study. Turns out, I'm not that desperate.

My first option was to join "calling crew." The situation was explained to me in an e-mail with lots of spelling errors and exclamation points! With "calling crew," I would have the opportunity to call alumni and ask them for money. It didn't sound like a very good job for a person with limited social skills and low self esteem. I decided to look for a job that involved something other than me being rejected over and over again.

Then, I saw a sign on a wall advertising openings for "Red Bull representatives." There was a long list of criteria of which I met none. Call me crazy, but I think that if you have a "passion for Red Bull and want to share it with others," you may want to re-evaluate your life goals and values. No offense, Red Bull spokespeople of the world, I just don't get you. Perhaps no one ever will.

Finally, I checked the career center website for community job listings off campus within walking distance. My only options were ghetto Hy-Vee and a terrifying call for workers in a "pharmeceutical plant." Qualifications included sharp vision, the ability to read fine, colored print for log periods of time and the ability to lift fifty pounds. I didn't check, but the workers are probably paid with suckers, gum, hookers and/or kibble, depending on age, gender and species.

In conclusion, extra cash is overrated.

Hola. Me Llamo Adolph...

2005-09-07T17:29:00.000-07:00

I caved. I'm in college and it seems that many people who go to college obtain blogs. So I did. I figured it was a nice alternative to the things college kids usually obtain like drug addictions, alcoholism and sexually transmitted diseases. If I ever have a deep thought, I may post it here, but it hasn't happened yet. Until that day comes, I'll just talk about college and the things that make me nervous. Namely everything. That way, it will feel like I'm complaining to someone, but no one has to listen. Plus, blogs seem like a nice way to keep up with friends once they've died. I mean, gone to college. (We love you Larry! I know you're smiling down on us from... um...med. school...)

Anyway, college so far is a blast. But only if your understanding of "Blast" involves terror, never knowing the right thing to say, and a constant social headache. Mine does. At least the camp feeling is starting to wear off here at Augustana. I'm feeling better than I was a week ago and hope to continue this pattern. I met a boy, (a theatrical design major), who taught me the rule of ten: For every twenty girls at Augie, there are ten boys. Of that ten, five of them are taken, one's an ass, one's just creepy, and two of them are gay. That leaves one boy for every twenty girls. Boy, I better sharpen those sexy wiles of mine! I'm 18 and I think I may already be an old maid.

Oh, hey! this has nothing to do with anything but what is a blog for if not random thoughts...
I'm taking a spainish class. (I don't know why, since the only thing I've retained from my middle school spainish experience is a snazzy rap naming all the capitals of South America.) and I've decided that whenever I have to make up names for people in a "create your own conversation," those names will be Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Therefore the conversations will go something like:

Hola! Me Llamo Adolph Hitler! Y tu?

Mucho Gusto, Adolph. Me Llamo Jose Stalin. De donde eres?

El gusto es mio. Yo soy de Nazi Germany. Y tu?

And so on. Well, I thought it was entertaining.

2005-08-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

So I have a blog. What?