I love life.

2007 has by far been the best year of my life.

I'm graduating from college in five days and moving to New Mexico three weeks after that. I was offered a three-month design internship at a newspaper, and I'm so thrilled at the opportunity to improve (and to live in the south for the winter, I'll be honest!). I wanted to go somewhere really random, so I think this will work out perfectly for me.

I found out Thursday that I got the internship of my dreams. I have been obsessed with this internship for more than a year and a half now. In the craziness that was London, I never got the chance to take the test and apply, but I managed to do that this year. I'll be working at The Associated Press in New York City this summer, in a copy-editing internship program that's worth three years' real work experience. I'll be doing an internship residency at Temple University in Philadelphia, and I'll receive a $1,000 scholarship to go back to school in the fall.

I'm sad to leave here, as I've grown to love it, but I'll be back, and I know at least a few of my friends will be returning in the fall, too. I am soooo excited about 2008, and I'm not sure how it could be better than 2007, but it's looking really promising.

So ... EEEEEEEEEK!!!!! I'm not convinced this is really my life, but I'm not going to be the one to tell God he made a mistake. :)

What would they call this Ice Deli flavor?

On Monday afternoon, my dad was at work in the office, my mom was teaching, I was asleep in my room, Scott was downstairs, Julie was in Washington, Amy was in Florida, Lyndsey was just plain missing and Kevin and Lexie were happily making chocolate pudding together. I had just come downstairs, wrapped in a blanket, my hair all over the place and my eyes crusted half-close, and I saw my two little lovebugs involved over a dessert bowl. Precious.

My mom came home later, and by chance, all three of us were in the kitchen again, each doing our own thing. My mom leaned over the half-eaten bowl of pudding and made a face. "What is THIS?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. My mom would eat chocolate off the bottom of her shoe. I didn't know what she was complaining about. "It's chocolate pudding, Mom," I said. She stared at it once more. "I see that - but why is it green?"

Huh? I walked over and peered in the bowl with her. There was indeed a day-glo green haze in the dark brown goop.

"Oh," Kevin said, casually, "Lexie added green food coloring."

My mom and I glanced at each other, raising our eye brows. Now why on EARTH. Lexie didn't keep us waiting long.

"I wanted to make it look like diarrhea," she replied.

I wish I could say we only laughed for an hour or two. But no. We're still laughing.

Electrifyin' controversy

Letters to the Editor
Published Thursday, July 19, 2007

Profanities, cigarettes not needed in ‘Grease’
I attended the opening night production of “Grease” at the Muni. While the performances were outstanding, with wonderful singing, dancing and sets, I walked away feeling angry and disappointed.

Nick Rogers noted in his review that the show featured “slightly more profanity” than the film version. So much for the family-friendly venue expected for a Springfield reproduction of an American classic. Every time a character threw out a profanity during the show, the audience took a collective gasp, parents and kids alike.

The directors also failed to announce the main sponsor of this year’s Grease production, although they provided plenty of product plugs. Even with all the money the tobacco industry has, I’m doubtful that even Philip Morris could afford the kind of publicity the Muni provided for them. Who needs laws forbidding tobacco companies from advertising to children when the Muni will do it for them?

“Grease” had a cast of some of the most talented performers Springfield has to offer, each waving a cigarette between two fingers. When star Cory Blissett (Danny Zuko) was in high school, his face was plastered on a few dozen buses in Springfield touting an anti-smoking message. How long ago four years seems.

Were the directors really so blind to their own talent that they thought a performance without smoking (real cigarettes, too!) would be somehow less exciting?

It’s too bad the directors deemed it best to expose their proteges (singers, no less!) to more than 4,000 chemicals for each performance, glorifying for thousands of Muni patrons the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States each year.

What’s really “electrifyin’” is that no one thought of the impressionable kids sitting in the audience, watching and listening with eager eyes and ears the people they may one day hope to emulate.

Ashley Thomas, New Berlin

-------------------------------------------------

Let's see how our friendly Springfield community responded to this, shall we?


TO Ashley wrote at 7/19/2007 9:16:10 AM

Have been watching TV the last 20 years? Give me a break.


grease 7/19/07 wrote at 7/19/2007 10:39:32 AM

Isn't is the point of a play to re-invent the film version? Did this lady watch the movie? I thought the inclusion of smoking and profanity was included to replicate the movie. Do people live in the real world anymore? Do they not think that children see smoking and hear profanity everyday? Maybe before taking children to a replication of a movie, you should watch the movie to see if you choose to have your children exposed. How did former generations ever survive with all of the drinking and cussing. Somehow they created this perfect generation of people who judge and complain because they have nothing better to do.


anonymous wrote at 7/19/2007 11:25:19 AM

I would like to ask Ashley Thomas if she knows how many chemicals she is exposed to when she cleans her house, washes her car, paints the garage, feeds the grass, kills bugs or weeds, fills the gas tank, eats food or just about anything else we do in our daily lives. Ashley, Grease had smoking in it's original production whether you like it or not. What makes you think it is your place to scrub history clean to fit your own personal desires? Obtuse elitism, that's what. It was said that people just up and left the production. That is GREAT! It is an example of what free people are supposed to do when they find a situation disagreeable. Those who stayed, also GREAT. It is also an example of a free people doing what a free people are supposed to do when they find a situation agreeable.


Stay Home Ashley wrote at 7/19/2007 1:00:16 PM

I'm tired of prudes ruining everything in Springfield because they think we have to change everything to be child-friendly. Sorry but the world doesn't revolve around your choice to have children. Stay home with them if you can't handle the real world.


My final remark --
I also think a lot of people underestimate the danger of cigarettes since tobacco is so engrained in our culture. Cigarettes today contain more nicotine than ever to hook people quickly. Was it really necessary to use real cigarettes in the performance? Even if the Muni had issued a content warning (which they didn't), that still doesn't excuse the directors from endangering their performers and not having their best interests at heart. The show may have been set in the 50s, but it took place in the 21st century when we SHOULD know better.

Fortune cookie surprise

So I have some really good news and a really depressing reminder. Unfortunately, they are one in the same.

The amazing news -- my favorite cousin in the entire world is pregnant!!!! I was a bridesmaid in her September '05 wedding. She is so cute and her husband is so sweet, and they will make the best parents. I have a seventh sense about the sex of babies, and I think they're having a boy. Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how excited I am. I didn't really appreciate the novelty of babies growing up since there was always a new one, but there's been a drought lately and I really need to hold one.

I didn't even think there could be bad news after an announcement like that, but I grew really sad afterwards and I tried to figure out why. I am so thrilled for my cousin, and I look at her and her new life - she and her husband are building a new house next spring, etc. - and I just have this sense of dread for my own life.

I do not think I'll get married, and I do not think I'll have kids. I know I say I don't want to and some days I actually believe that, but I really really do. I want to be married even more than I want kids, if that's even humanly possible. But I don't think it'll happen. I don't even like guys. I'm actually repulsed by them, and I think they're all idiots. That is a really hard place to work from. My dad said to me a few days ago, "I'm not saying this as your dad -- but I would go for a much older guy if I were you. Guys your age are immature." I KNOW, DAD. I tried that! He was insane!

So it's dumb and I know I'm only 21, but I don't want to date anyone; I just want to get married. Dating is stupid. So are boys. I just want a husband.

(BTW - They put the baby announcement inside a fortune cookie and passed them around to all of us. So cute!)

"My mom tells me I'm not much of a catch."

Last night before bed, I swallowed a pill that lodged itself in my air passage. Over the course of the next 12 hours, it slowly made its way down into my lungs. If you want to know what happens in a situation like this, let me tell you that it burns. Really bad. I'm not sure what happened once it reached my lungs, but it did stop feeilng like I had swallowed a hamster with sharp nails whole.

I spent another weekend in Iowa, this time with Carly. In the 36 hours we were there, we managed to go to a frat house, meet her kindergarten boyfriend, involve ourselves in a 7-car interstate wreck, tour the Obama campaign headquarters, watch Meredith try on 10 different outfits, go to two smoky bars, hear political babble, sleep next to a snoring boy, pronounce Dubuque as 'duh-BUCK-ee', enjoy an interstate traffic standstill for 2 hours and car dance wildly to the Backstreet Boys. I even introduced her to her car's cruise control, helpful after 7 years of thinking it didn't work.

I'm still sleepy. It takes me a couple of days to recover from busy weekends. I've been like this since I was little. It probably didn't help that we got in at 2 a.m. and then I slept in the fetal position on a too-small couch next to a thundering snorer.

the 's' word

It could be because I'm conservative, that I'm shy, modest, cautious, that I come from a religious family, that Jesus is looking down on me from every nook and cranny of our house. It could be because I'm a good girl and always listen to my parents. Because I do, although I no longer permit my mother to dress me. I would even say that I come from a loving family, even if Lyndsey and Lexie do beat each other whenever they get the chance. They don't care if Mom and Dad are watching.

But I know at least one of these things is a reason I never want to have sex. Which is a problem because I would love to be married and have kids.

As you grow up, you learn that sex is bad. It's something you don't talk about outloud, at least when you're young. I remember being in fifth grade and reading from my science book, and the textbook briefly mentioned "sexual organisms." A girl from my class got that paragraph and she read the words outloud, and I was mortified for myself and ESPECIALLY for her. I later heard her whisper to someone that if she had seen the word "sexual," she would have skipped her turn.

My mom used to tell me that "boys only want one thing." "They'll use you and walk away," she would say. "Then the girl ends up alone and pregnant. Boys use love to get sex. Girls use sex to get love." Well, that's pretty scary! Boys were the enemy. I surely didn't want to be a stupid girl like my mom talked about. Besides, I was shy and I got embarrassed easily. I never went to any dances in junior high. I remember a boy called me when I was in fifth grade to ask me to the end-of-the-year dance. So embarrassing! It was the shortest phone conversation of my life, and when I hung up the phone, my mom asked who it was. I told her it was an Asian girl in my class that she didn't know -- like maybe the girl's non-existant accent could sound the same as a boy's voice. I mean, I was desperate!

"Sex is only okay when you're married." This perturbed me a little bit. You go to a church in a white dress, kiss in front of the entire congregation and cut the wedding cake, and suddenly you have God's blessing? Suddenly a boy stops becoming evil, stops only wanting one thing? How do you know? "If he waits until marriage, that means he loves you," my mom would say. What if he's just waiting until marriage to use me? What if the marriage happens and then I realize that, in actuality, I'm still TERRIFIED of sex? Um. Whoops.

There are sex toys. Condoms. Vibrators. Sexy lingerie. Lubricant. Threesomes. One-night stands. And probably some of the ugliest parts on the human body. This is supposed to be love? This is how we show someone that we're in love with them, that we'll love them forever?

Traditionally, women who had sex before marriage were considered the dregs of society. Once you had sex, you were worthless. Your life was meaningless. Because someone inserted his penis in your vagina? What does that have to do with meaning? What about intelligence, beauty, smiles, laughter, hugs, happiness? Is that meaningless?

So I don't really see the direct correlation between sex and love. I don't see the virtue in it, and I wish God could have come up with a holier method of having kids. Or at least a way that people didn't decide to abuse to make it ugly.

I hope I get a different outlook on things. I would really like to be a mommy.

Rejection makes the heart grow fonder. -- my mom

There was actually a point to my last blog entry. I know I made one, but it wasn't the one I intended to. I do that sometimes.

The point I wanted to segue into is that you can't make someone like you. Not if you like them even more to make up for their lacking share. Not if you tell them they're selfish, they're proud, that they have grandiose, worthless ideas for life.

The reason I changed my blog URL, as most of you know, is because I had someone stalking me. I dated him for a month, more than one and a half years ago, and he became obsessed with me. I liked him in the beginning. He seemed different in a way you don't see too often - religious, courageous, cute. I had never really given anyone a chance before, so I thought - what would it hurt?

So I gave him a chance. He flew out to see me and stayed for five days. He met my family. He seemed nice enough, and we didn't get sick of each other, which was bonus. I know how I can be sometimes - idealistic, super-serious and cautious - so I tried to be freer. He had told me that he didn't believe in soulmates, that his dad had said that when you're ready to get married, you'll find 100 girls in a one mile radius that would work out. It deadened me a little -- I didn't come close to believing that and I had tried arguing to no avail. I didn't really have anything to back my opinions up with, other than I thought God had a plan for us and a perfect person out there for each of us. It couldn't just be anybody.

I flew down to see him the next month. This time was rougher. We had a big fight in the middle. I wanted to go home. He said at one point, "I'm not anything special. I'm just an average guy." And I saw that. For the first time, I stopped making excuses for him and trying to find things that weren't there. He wasn't anything special. He might say he's religious and spout nonsensical, complicated thoughts, but I didn't feel his goodness. He didn't inspire me. He wasn't worth it.

When I left, I knew I would never be back. He had wanted me to spend the summer there and rent a townhouse with one of his girl friends. He wanted me to kiss him when we stood in front of the airport, my suitcases at my side. I told him that I would kiss him when I was sure about him. I was already sure. I was done.

I have a hard time hurting people. I knew it hurt. We still talked on the phone every night. I was having a horrible semester with school, and I felt alone. He was there with me. But our feelings were drastically different. I saw him as a friend. I hoped that maybe someday I would see a spark of sweetness, of goodness, of brilliance, of something that would convince me that I was wrong about him the first time. But I didn't.

I think he again tried to overcompensate for my lack of feelings. The less I liked him, the less I thought of him, the more he liked me and the more he thought of me. He was desperate for me to love him. He would ask me why I didn't love him like his ex-girlfriend did. He sent me books on the virtue of humility, telling me that if I wasn't so selfish with such unrealistic expectations of life that I would appreciate him.

It didn't work. It just made me angry. He stopped being a friend and started being an enemy. I didn't want drama. I've always hated it. He didn't make me happy anymore. I dreaded talking to him and hearing his religious nonsense. God was his trump card. He tried to control me through God's will.

Ten months after I last saw him, I had had enough. I told him that I never wanted to see or speak to him again. I told him to stop contacting me. He sent me close to 40 e-mails after that, in a span of five months. Always saying the same thing. Some I read, some I didn't. How I was so perfect, but now I was cold. How I had changed so much. How he knew he wasn't perfect yet, but he would see me when he was angelic enough. It sent shivers up my spine.

He kept writing, telling me that I was asking unfair things of him, wanting him to be a doctor or a lawyer, making huge amounts of money each year. In his mind, he was seeking out any excuse, any reason, for me to stop liking him. He saw my desire for continued education, for traveling the world, as a worship of material things. He told me I would never be happy being so superficial, that I would never be happy until I listened to God, which was assuredly pushing me into his arms again.

He would write to me after every blog entry, believing that I had written it solely for him. He would pick apart every sentence, every turn of the phrase, because he thought it held some cryptic message that only he could understand. Because his life revolved around me, he was convinced my life also revolved around him. If I mentioned something unhappy or unfortunate, he told me that it was because I was denying God's will and that he was disappointed in me. Different things I wrote about would conjure up memories or dreams for him, and he would write to me about them. They were all the same -- how we could be so happy together, that we both had to push for self-perfection, how I needed to stop having such impossible goals for him. He never quite realized that my dreams were my own and they never matched up with his. I didn't want them to. I knew we weren't going in the same direction.

Sine the last time I told him never to contact me again, he has sent me two e-mails. I have them directed to my trash, but I can still see that they're in there. He thinks his relentless pursual will win over me in the end. God is still telling him that we're meant to be together.

For me, I have a few regrets. I think I handled the situation as best I could with such an unusual specimen. But if I could do things differently, I would like to go back in time and punch him in the stomach before I got on the plane. God is actually telling me that it would be justly deserved.

Teardrops on my guitar

How do you pick the person you want to be with forever?

They say you meet that person and just know. But what happens if you meet that person and you "just know" -- but they don't like you?

I've been there. His name was Jason and I was 16 years old. I met him when my best friend at the time moved away. I went to stay with her for a few days and met up with her at play practice. She was on stage and I was sitting in darkness in the back of the room. A few other kids were at a round table next to me, talking and getting ready for their scenes. Then Jason walked in.

When he introduced himself, I recognized the name. She had told me all the names of people in her class - the cute boys, the nice girls, the ones she thought she would be friends with. I knew all of them. I had a list of the people I was most looking forward to meeting when I came to visit. I think he was number seven on my top 10 list. Not too high in a class of 22.

I didn't think much at first. He was tall and wearing a gray sweatshirt. I think he had just come from basketball practice. He sat down at my table, and we talked a bit. I don't remember what about. He opened up his bookbag and pulled out the biography of some golfer. He had to write something up for class that was due tomorrow. It looked like a big project, and I knew he also had the play. I asked if he needed help, and he said no.

We didn't talk too much, but we didn't have to. I watched the way he interacted with the other kids, the way he moved. There was a hint of shyness in his eyes and smile. Just enough hesitancy in his confidence to show you he wasn't full of himself.

It didn't take all night. By the time Leah and I got in the car to go to her house, I was bursting. "That's the Jason from your class?" I sputtered. I couldn't believe she hadn't mentioned him more than she did. He wasn't who she thought was cutest. I would meet them tomorrow, and they paled in comparison.

I spent five days there. I got to know him a little better. We said hi, shared shy smiles. We still didn't talk much, but I watched him interact with others in class, in the hallway, in the theater production. I find more truth in obversation than I do in spoken words.

When I went home that Sunday, I sobbed. I was hysterical. I wasn't sure what had happened or why I was so upset. I just knew that I was leaving. And maybe I also knew that I was driving away from something I might never find again.

I saw him occasionally on visits. I spent five more days there the next year. This time they were the two leads in the play. They had a kissing scene. I thought I was going to die.

Almost two and a half years after I fell for him, I wrote him a letter. I've always been driven in my writing. Writing allows an outlet that my shyness won't permit face-to-face. It was a sweet note. I told him how much I liked him and how much I loved getting to know him. I ended it with a quotation from a famous movie, a movie I still cringe to watch to this day, as it brings back the embarrassment of that letter! But I'm not really embarrassed -- I'm proud of myself. I would do it again.

He wrote back, telling me I was a sweetheart but that he already had a girlfriend. I knew as much. I wasn't sure what I expected. I'd already experiened more powerful feelings. This was just a gentle closing of the door that was only peeking open anyway.

I haven't felt like that again, and I can't say that I've even come close. When I try to track my feelings for different guys and potential relationships, I always see a huge dropoff after his name in my mind. No one even close.

Whenever I'm faced with the choice of a relationship, he always come back to me. "Can I see myself liking [insert name] as much as I liked Jason? Do I like [insert name] as much as I liked Jason?" Not even close.

Whenever I think that love isn't real or that it's all just a mirage, I look back on five years ago, how the sight of him would make my knees weak, and I think, maybe it's out there. Maybe it can happen again. I can't stop looking for it. I look for him, the feelings of him, in every guy I see. I won't settle. I can't settle. Not when I've already seen what it's like.

People grow up, and they change. I wonder if I would still feel the same about him if I met him for the first time today, and I'm not sure. It's been so long. But I'm still so thankful that I met him, that I have something to hold onto when I feel like the forever kind of happiness has brushed me to the side. Because I would rather be alone, every day of my life, than to pretend to love someone like I loved him.

And the earth's axis stops spinning

Just as an advance warning -- I am changing the URL of my blog. If you're still interested in my life, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you the new link.

Happy Fourth!

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

I just had the busiest weekend of my life! I drove up to the Quad Cities on Friday night to stay with my friend Leah. We were BFF all through high school and then drifted apart before we started college. I hadn't seen her in three years! You know you're getting old when you can say things like that. It was so great to see her and catch up as much as we could, even if we did have matching killer headaches. She packed me a snack lunch in the morning, nailing everything I like and would eat, which is a rare feat. She used to pack breakfasts of croissants and marmalade for me when we were in London and Paris in 2003, and I was running late in the morning.

So after I got my snack and hand-drawn, three-page directions, I headed off to central Iowa for a BabyNames meet-up. There were 15 members there, plus probably 30 kids and "DHs". I was the youngest member there and the only one without kids, but everyone was so nice! It was so fun to put names with faces. I've been a member of the site for seven years now -- scary! I also got to meet one of the founders of the site, who is super nice. She brought me a BN moose. :) I especially bonded with Anna and Lydia, who are six and four, respectively. Their mother is a doll, and so are they. I sat with them as they filled their pockets with the prettiest rocks they could find, and then they held my hands, one on each side, for the group picture. I wanted to take them home with me.

Early Sunday evening, Amy and I drove down to St. Louis to see The Fray in concert. They were SOOO good. By far my favorite band. My favorite part was when the four of them did a rendition of Shakira, and one of them deadpanned, "Hey girl, I can see your body moving" as another guy danced around in a gypsy outfit. Priceless.

I got a phone call today from my comm law professor from last semester, whom I was obsessed with. I actually told her I was obsessed with her, only in more acceptable terms. Anyway, she was calling to inform me that our paper had been subpoenaed for information on two articles that I wrote! It was a long time ago - March and April 2006, I believe - about a principal accused of, essentially, molesting children. I misunderstood her at first and thought we were being sued, but thankfully the attorneys are just looking to gather all the information they can get on the case and they wanted my notes, which I don't have anymore. The former principal is filing a defamation lawsuit against the school district, which I knew was coming. It was really nice timing, as I'm sick of everyone and their chihauhua asking me what I'm doing after I graduate. A sign, God? Okay, a phone call from my favorite, empowered woman professor and attorney is pretty good. Thanks.

I've never been so excited for Independence Day before. I've also never had a real job during the summer. NO WORK, hooray!

I was super ticked last week, and fortunately I found therapy in bike rides through the winding countryside. I must have ridden 30 miles last week. My legs look amazing. I saw my hot neighbor three times. Good week!

Inspired

The story of the Virgin birth naturally did not astonish her, but she was greatly puzzled by the Sacrifice, and still more by the Devil, and the theory of Damnation.
"'Why, you blessed child,' she said, 'you've got the wrong idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was such a God - for there wasn't. Or such a happening - for there wasn't. Not even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody. But only this - that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything - which you certainly knew before.'"

"What is eternity?" asked Ellador.
What indeed? I tried, for the first time in my life, to get a real hold on the idea.
"It is - never stopping."
"Never stopping?" She looked puzzled.
"Yes, life, going on forever."
"Oh - we see that, of course. Life does go on forever, all about us."
"But eternal life goes on without dying.
"The same person?"
"Yes, the same person, unending, immortal." I was pleased to think that I had something to teach from our religion, which theirs had never promulgated.
"Here?" asked Ellador. "Never to die - here?" I could see her practical mind heaping up the people, and hurriedly reassured her.
"Oh no, indeed, not here - hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we 'enter into eternal life.' The soul lives forever."
"How do you know?" she inquired.
"I won't attempt to prove it to you," I hastily continued. "Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?"
Again, she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. "Shall I be quite, quite honest?"
"You couldn't be anything else," I said.
"It seems to me a singularly foolish idea," she said calmly. "And if true, most disagreeable."
"What do you want it for?" she asked.
"How can you not want it!" I protested. "Do you want to go out like a candle? Don't you want to go on and on - growing and - and - being happy, forever?"
"Why, no," she said. "I don't in the least. I want my child - and my child's child - to go on - and they will. Why should I want to?"
"But it means Heaven!" I insisted. "Peace and Beauty and Comfort and Love - with God." I had never been so eloquent on the subject of religion. She could be horrified at Damnation, and question the justice of Salvation, but Immortality - that was surely a noble faith.
"Why, Van," she said, holding out her hands to me. "Why Van - darling! How splendid of you to feel it so keenly. That's what we all want, of course - Peace and Beauty, and Comfort and Love - with God! And Progress, too, remember; Growth, always and always. That is what our religion teaches us to want and to work for, and we do!"
"But that is here," I said, "only for this life on earth."
"Well? And do not you in your country, with your beautiful religion of love and service have it here, too - for this life - on earth?"

-- Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1915.

The day I escaped from work

So I bailed out of work this afternoon.

It was a beautiful sunny day with little breeze - or, at least, a change from the hurricane-style swirls we experienced yesterday. I was sitting at my desk with an assignment - the assignment I finished yesterday. You can only frequent BabyNames, People.com and every shopping site on the web so many times. World news wasn't happening that fast, and I don't count Paris Hilton going back to jail.

Don't you think that's a little ridiculous? I'm not getting paid by the hour. In fact, I'm not getting paid at all. My time is precious! I could be sleeping, for God's sake.

My boss left for somewhere, cheerfully as always. My two co-workers headed out the door for lunch, without saying anything to me. That was enough. I scrawled a note and dropped it on my boss's laptop. The note said, in part, that "I have an appointment this afternoon." Yes, I thought, wryly, as I escaped into sunshine, an appointment with SOMETHING BETTER TO DO.

She tells me a lot that she wishes I had graduated so that she could hire me. Maybe, I silently think to myself, you could start by paying me. That might put us on better terms.

I'm really frustrated. I'm frustrated with the 8:30 to 5 schedule, the 25-minute commute. I'm frustrated with cement and I'm frustrated with finishing supposedly 2-day projects in 2 hours. Mostly, of course, I'm frustrated with myself for being so passive. What I SHOULD say is that I'm too overqualified to be an unpaid intern, and that unpaid internships are perhaps the cruelest job ever. Do you know that I lose money by just getting in my car every day and driving to work? Oh, you're inviting me to grab lunch with you? That's nice. Well, let me just spend $10 today to do all your stupid work and stare with glazed eyes out the window to freedom.

As my boss walked out the door today, on one of her many trips into the sprinkles of sunlight, she motioned to the handful of teenage boys wearing neon yellow shirts and carrying dust pails, and said, "Hey! You could be doing that this summer instead." And I smiled, just like I should, but inside I was thinking, "I'm 21 years old and I can write better than you - no, I wouldn't be picking up discarded trash in front of the Capitol. BUT EVEN IF I DID, I would be getting paid for it. Beast.

So hopefully I can work up enough courage to tell someone to jump off a cliff. Or just do it myself.

I made the most of my afternoon. I stopped by the library and mingled with the elderly as I continued through my summer reading list. Charles Dickens was painful. I had forgotten since high school. After that, I came home and enjoyed my free lunch, compliments of our kitchen. Then I went out to mow, almost severing Midnight with the lawnmower. I had hopped on and started the mower, and Piper jumped out from underneath. I was like, Holy crap! That was a close one. I paused for a couple of seconds and then turned on the blade, which sounds like the apocolypse in an iMax theater. And then MIDNIGHT jumped out. What cat doesn't move when a LAWNMOWER starts?! He only decided to get out of my way when he realized the blades were about to make him our latest cat fatality.

Sigh. And then Julie drove her new car into a ditch tonight. Not quite the surprise that it should be.

I have a longterm plan for my life. Well, two plans actually. The first plan, which I'm sure I've discussed before, is to buy a beachhouse in North Carolina and live there with my sister Amy and our two dogs. We will be life partners. NOT SEXUALLY, obviously. I'm sick of how people's futures center around their sexual partners. 'You are cordially invited to our wedding,' aka, I Would Like to Announce that We Will Be Having Sex Together for the Rest of our Lives.

Anyway, if that falls through (with Amy bailing on me), or if by some chance I become more enchanted with the idea of marriage, I have picked my wedding party. My MOH will be my sister Amy, and my bridesmaids will be my sisters Julie, Lyndsey and Lexie and my niece, Whitney. My nephew Holden will be the ringbearer, and my best friend Carly will be the 30-year-old flower girl.

In a completely unrelated funny story, I was in the kitchen with Scott the other day, when he said, randomly, "You know, Amy eats whatever you eat. If you told her to eat cat food, she would." I considered this. I will admit that I had noticed a pattern - that Amy would casually ask me what I had for lunch, or what I wanted for dinner, and then when I told her, she would fix it for herself. So I brought it up with her a few days later and mentioned what Scott had said. She laughed at herself, in good Amy fashion, and then paused, as if she were thinking hard about it. "You know," she said, slowly. "I think I would eat cat food if you told me it was good for me."

THE POWER.

36 hours in the life of ...

Here is a rundown of my last 36 hours --

Friday
6:00 a.m. -- awaken, morning routine
8:00 a.m. -- leave for work, get stopped by random train downtown
8:38 a.m. -- arrive to work (late). get ushered into my new "office" upstairs.
8:45 a.m. - 4:36 p.m. -- proofread cement prices, finish cement press release, proofread principal website, write copy for principal leadership website main page
4:36 p.m. -- Boss is shocked that I finished last project in less than 20 minutes. She tells me to leave. I do, gladly.
5:00 - 7 p.m. -- Home. Family leaves for three days in Arkansas after a two-hour goodbye ceremony (involving multiple reentrances for bathroom breaks, pillows, medicine and chocolate cake (Lexie)).
7:20 p.m. -- shower.
7:40 p.m. -- Carly picks me up. We drive to Barnes and Noble, where we meet with a friend who I haven't spoken with in two years. This wasn't a case of busy schedules not matching up. This was a case of purposeful avoidance on both of our parts.
8:10 p.m. - 10:52 p.m. -- Perry arrives. Meetup goes swimmingly. Girl stands up to leave. We hug. The olive branch has passed.
10:55 p.m. -- Sonic, to stave off Perry's hunger.
11:20 p.m. - 1 a.m. -- Carly's house. Try to get 1970s VCR to work. Fail. Go upstairs and watch 11-year-old Carly and her friend in a Six Flags' music video. Carly has her shorts hiked up to her chest. Oh, 1997. By popular vote, we choose Jumanji as our movie du jour.
1:04 a.m. -- Hug Perry goodbye. I won't see him till Christmas, as he leaves for Kenya tomorrow, and I'll be back at school when he returns for a few days before school starts up for him in London. Carly drives me home. Get out of car, dragging a garbage bag of clothes she wants me to try on. Walk in garage. See chicken roosting on four-wheeler gear shift. Curse loudly and throw garbage bag in house. Go back outside and look around for deadly weapon. Decide on Dad's driver, located in golf bag. Swat chicken off four-wheeler and out of garage (nicely). Comment on fact that my life resembles Sanford and Son. Collapse in bed.

Saturday
12:30 p.m. -- Good morning! Crawl out of bed. Have missed five phone calls at this point. Shower.
2:15 p.m. -- Come downstairs to eat lunch. Girl whose mom boards horses at our house is sitting at our kitchen table, drawing a picture with crayons. This is not unusual. She says it's for me. I ask her to hang it on the refrigerator. Girl asks to go play downstairs. I say, whatever. Doorbell rings. Girl's brothers. Each wants glass of water. Sigh.
2:45 p.m. -- Finally ready. Put on shoes to go. Amy and I are heading out back door. Doorbell rings. Girl asks if she can answer it. I say yes, since it's probably for her anyway. I talk her through the deadbolt. Door swings open. Boys run in yelling - CALL 911! Our mom fell off a horse! I am the practical one. I open my mouth to ask further questions, and Scott grabs the phone and dials 911. Then he hands it to me and settles back into his Lifetime movie. Dispatcher asks what happened. I tell her that a woman fell off a horse. Then she starts asking specifics. I have no idea, obviously, as I haven't seen her yet. Somehow her sons, who are about 12 and 15, are unsure as to whether she's conscious. That was frustrating.

Hang up phone. Scott says, "At least pretend like you care." I glare at him. Contemplate running down to the barn to check on her or attacking him with the blender. I choose to go down to the barn, leaving Concerned Brother to his TV movie.

Horse Lady is laying in the pasture, sitting with her head in her hands. I'll be honest - my first thought was, She's sitting up and I just called 911?! She couldn't stand up, she said, because she was too dizzy. EMT arrives in a pickup truck, wearing a black wifebeater. Two ambulances arrive minutes later. Neighbors appear from their houses. I meet the new neighbors next door. Horse lady is placed on a board. She is not happy, and keeps wanting to stand up. She tries and then starts to fall. She then throws up, multiple times. Her 6-year-old daughter, the one who drew me the picture, stands by making helpful comments like, "Mom, that saddle needs a seatbelt!" and "I think that horse needs a timeout." Her brothers tell her to shut up. An EMT asks the oldest son what he thought happened to the horse. "He spooked!" he replied. "It could have been the chickens -- or the sheep!" Sheep? Is this really my life?

I wander over to the fence, where my sister Amy is talking to the two neighbor kids. We watch respectfully as the EMTs work to tear my dad's fence apart. I shudder. "Ashley, what are we supposed to do?" Amy whispers. "I don't know," I whisper back. "Mom only left us instructions on how to do the laundry."

EMTs convince Horse Lady to go to the hospital. Another EMT drives Horse Lady's van with her four kids. They leave. The neighbors leave. Tranquility is restored.

Amy and I walk back up the house. I begrugdingly whine, "All I wanted was to go to the library today." That seemed to sum up our afternoon.

4:10 p.m. -- Arrive at library, armed with summer reading list I made during work the previous day. Check out The Alchemist, A Tale of Two Cities, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Soooo excited to start reading them! Amy and I walked out to the car. We were about to pull away when I looked to my right and saw a familiar-looking woman in the car next to me. "Hey," I said, "Isn't that the lady who always walked around undressed in the women's changing room at the pool?" The lady straightened up in her chair so we got the full-on profile look. Confirmed. She looks a lot different with clothes on.
4:30-5:30 p.m. -- church.
6:00 p.m. -- Amy and I made dinner - pasta with broccoli, yum!
7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. -- video store

Annnd... Horse Lady just called and her tests came back OK. Yay!

Cemented in my brain

Nothing's better than wisdom imparted to you by your dad in front of the kitchen sink.

"Washing dishes by hand is like changing a baby's diaper," says the father of eight, swiftly scrubbing a discarded bowl of cheesy tuna casserole. "Pretty soon you'll be able to change a diaper with one hand and eat a sandwich in the other."

I think that stopped me from wanting children in the future. Or wanting sandwiches, for that matter.

I started one of my jobs yesterday. My boss told me to come in at 10 a.m. so we could figure out my work schedule. Okay. I come in and my boss is on the phone, so another coworker ushers me into the conference room. "So I hear you're working all day Thursdays and Fridays!" she says. Really? I'm glad I had a say in that. The three of us sit in the conference room for a bit, tying bows for a display project. After we're done, my boss shows me my desk and assigns me to write 10 press releases. Then the other coworker adds two more projects. REALLY?! Because I thought I just came in to discuss my work schedule!

So what I expected to be a 30-minute meeting turned into a seven-hour affair. You want to know what I did all day? I wrote press releases on cement. CEMENT. I think I do okay with frilly, descriptive writing, but testing me with cement is cruel and unusual. I thought my brain was going to implode. Each press release was to be three descriptive paragraphs about the product. What do you write - that cement product C is a little bit harder than cement product B? Oh, my Lord.

Today was a bit better. I got moved upstairs to the loft, which I like because it's my own funky little space. My boss told me to make myself at home, so I took off my heels, laid down in this extremely comfy chair, placed my head on one armrest and my knees on the other, steadied my red marking pen in one hand and a stack of cement list prices in the other and promptly almost fell asleep. I decided that maybe the ginormous chair wasn't such a good idea after all, so I moved closer to my caffeine-laden Coke Zero instead.

Maybe I'm not cut out for ... work. Or maybe - what I suspect is closer to the truth - I just really, REALLY want a paid position. And maybe I also want to stretch my brain to depths further than punchy adjectives describing freaking cement.

Mistaken identity

I meet with Laura, my boss at the advertising agency, tomorrow to work out my schedule. I meet with Diane, my boss at ALA (aka TB history) next Tuesday. I accepted, so this is my first summer with a "real" job. Maybe I'll be so impressive at the advertising agency that they'll pay for more than downtown parking, too.

My family is going to Arkansas this weekend to stay with one of my mom's good friends and former business instructor. That would be Mom, Dad, Kevin, Lyndsey and Lexie. Basically, with only four kids left in the house, I'm going to feel like an only child. I'm not sure what I'll do with myself. Maybe I'll lay out if it's nice. Even on the beautiful days, I have SUCH A HARD TIME just going out to the pool and laying down. I just need to move around. I can control myself when a friend's over, but not when I'm by myself. I'm sure the gusting wind doesn't help me stay in place either. There were upwards of 25 mph gusts today, and we live on a hill. You can't even walk outside without careening sharply to whichever way the wind is blowing.

I just finished a book my friend Erin loaned me for the summer. It's called "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath. The heroine of the story, Esther Greenwood, slowly goes insane, and then tries, on several occasions, to commit suicide. This closely mirrors the author's life, except that she actually succeeded in killing herself at age 31. It's scary because you can see the psychotism (invented?) building. I always worry that I have that button in my head, too, and I'm afraid it will be pressed. I think I tend to overreact to sensitive situations - be it mine or other people's - but still. I feel like I understand the intricacies of mental illness more than I would like to.

I'm slowly easing my way into the summer routine. I think it will be better when my schedule is structured by the two jobs. I'm really excited about starting up school again in the fall. I think it will be so great to be a TA, and I'm so excited I was picked. Of course, hopefully by then I will have cemented my post-graduate study plans. I've been thinking law school for a few months now, and that seems to have stuck. Right now, I'm thinking a divorce attorney or a sexual harassment/abuse attorney. Sooo random, but I think it would be very rewarding to help people get their lives back in order. We'll see. It's fun (right now) to have so many options.

I went up the office yesterday afternoon to see if my dad needed any help. I was up there for two minutes before I was like, "Geez, Dad, how do you stand this? It's boiling in here!" And he said, idly, "Oh, is it? I hadn't really noticed. I'll open the windows again. Amy was mowing the yard, and I couldn't hear the phones over the noise." I stared at him, gaped mouth. "Are you kidding me?" He said, "No! I didn't even know she knew how to mow on the zero-turn. I looked out the window and saw her zipping around the trees." I was like, "Dad, I can't tell if you're messing with me or not." And he said, "No, she really was!" I lifted up my tanktop a little bit so that he could see the bits of grass still stuck to my black shorts. "THAT WAS ME."

I can't even get credit for my slave labor. I kid. I adore mowing the yard. It's a little unnerving how Amy and I are (quickly) morphing into the same person.

Kevin got a $425 check in the mail today. He won a full scholarship for art camp this summer. He actually had a butterfly painting displayed at a gallery in St. Louis last year. I did make fun of him for the butterflies, of course. I now call him Boy Genius.

We have 13 new baby kittens. Yes, that's THIRTEEN. Addison has one, a black fluffy named Midnight (also Bubbles, RIP). Fuzzy has six - two grey, two black, two white. So cute, but annoyingly squeaky. Then there are two more sets down at the barn, two blacks and one white in each. I really enjoy going out to play with them. I'm starting to understand my little sisters a bit more, too, because I find that whenever I get frustrated now, I make a hissing noise. Amy pointed this out to me. It should bother me, but to be honest, I kind of like it.

"That lady said 'Excuse me,' so I squeezed in my buttcheeks." -- Amy

Is it August yet?

No, no, no. It hasn't been that bad - just hectic. Maddie came home with me Sunday. We weren't sure if she would be able to because it looked like she was going to regionals. As of early Saturday afternoon, she was in 12th place in the D1 Central Regionals. As of late into my Saturday night shift on the copy desk, however, she was holding her own in last place for being disqualified. She told me later that she was on the 13th hole, picked up her ball and then realized it wasn't hers. It had been almost identical to her ball - brand, special markings, purple circles, and all, but it had a couple of extra lines on it. Immediate DQ.

That's OK because she made up for it when she played my dad on Monday. We went to a golf course in town that sponsors an annual LPGA tournament. Fittingly, Annika Sorenstam, a fellow Swede, won last year's. Maddie outshot my dad by 12 strokes on a course he's been playing for nearly 30 years. I was in charge of keeping score. Maddie did everything else, including driving the golf cart. She also kept me giggling as she told me exactly what my dad was going to do on each stroke. "He's going to pull left on this one," she confided. "A common mistake." Sure enough! I even got a few shots in myself. Maddie placed a ball four feet from the hole, and I managed to get a par! I think I'm a natural.

We had a lot of fun, going out to eat at Darcy's, swimming in the pool with the kidlets, playing with our 13 new baby kittens, watching Simon Burch downstairs on the projecter screen while stuffing our faces with popcorn and pretzels. Lexie took Maddie and me down to the barn, where she proceeded to chuck large rocks at the chickens, causing a large raucous. Don't worry - I dragged her out by her arm before the roosters could peck her eyes out.

I had an interview today for a research project on the history of tuberculosis in Illinois, from 1900 to present. Apparently there are 200 cases a year here; I didn't realize it even existed. To be honest, all I know is that it's a bacteria because that's what the woman told me. I think I'm going to accept because I could work with Carly. And make a couple of thousand bucks. And work with Carly!

Speaking of Carly, I'm driving to Chicago to pick her up from O'Hare tomorrow. I haven't seen her in four-and-a-half months. Good thing I'm kind of used to this by now, since I'll be playing the 'traded in for a Filipino Spaniard' game again next semester. I can't say I blame her, though - foreign tongues are hot.

My sister's glasses are hot, too, and that's why I'm wearing them. Same prescription, same brain, same cynical sarcasm - is it possible to have two soulmates? Actually, I think I have at least a handful. Too bad none of them are boys.

Warning: Picture of foot enclosed.

So using Carly's style of accurately estimating percentages, I am 134.2389% positive that I just broke my right foot. OWWWWWWWWW.

I was in the shower, and I had just extracted a handful of conditioner. I placed the bottle of conditioner back on the rack, and I proceeded to work the goop through my hair. WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, completely out of nowhere, the bottle of conditioner jumps from the rack and stabs itself into my foot. Twice.

Now, granted, this wasn't a normal bottle of conditioner. It was unusually large because I like them that way, and because I go through them more quickly than the average person. Also, I think I had been overzealous in my squeezing because the suspect bottle of conditioner was so tightly wound that the front and back almost touched in the middle of the bottle and all of the conditioner was engorged on the sides. If you can imagine.

And just because I am often accused of embellishing my stories to make them sound cooler, I have enclosed a picture. Doesn't it look like the marks of Christ?



My foot apologizes for not being properly done up. My toenail polish is a mess because I didn't realize that today would be a photo op.

Also, you may be able to see a bruise on the left side of my foot, a little below the stigmata. That's from yesterday. Yes, this has happened before.

P.S. If anyone dares to make fun of my long toes, I will never speak to you again.
P.P.S. The second picture is 10 hours post-incident.

Ne'er were truer words spoken ...

The first sentence in an e-mail from my journalism professor when informing me of my standing in his class (and remarking on my final 12-page paper) --

"I have to say you are one of the more unusual subjects."

I'm not sure what this means exactly, but I have no doubt it's true.

P.S. I got an A in the class. Yay!

Slacker Award!

Hello friends. I know it's been awhile since I last updated, but I had to wait a certain amount of time before I could be secured of the Slacker Award. I'm pretty sure I won it now, so I'll let you know when that arrives with ribbons and bows at my house.

Life has been insane. I can't really tell you where the last few weeks have gone - or really what I've been doing - because I don't quite remember. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure that I haven't been doing any schoolwork because I still have a ridiculous amount left. Like that ten-page paper due next Wednesday. Noooo.

An update - I am slowly finalizing my plans for the summer. I will be interning at an advertising agency in Springfield, directly across the street from the Old State Capitol and down the road from the new presidential library. My "office" has a huge bay window, and I surely will be entertained by the dozens and dozens of disappointed tourists who file past each day. My boss is super cute and bubbly, and everyone in the company is young and fun. I'll be doing a lot of copy editing and copy writing, as well as writing press releases and giving input on design work. I also may help with planning events and finding/dressing models for ads. And I may even get paid for it! But probably not. One semester till that degree!

It's also likely that I'll be waitressing at a fondue restaurant with a friend of mine. But that plan is underwraps, so I'll update more later. Tehehe.

As for the fall semester, I will be taking 13 hours and 3 classes - Advanced Editing and Design (designing the newspaper) and Introductory French and German. I was also hired to be an Editing T.A., so next semester, I'll pretty much just need to pay my rent to the Missourian, since I will be living there. I get to work between 1 and 39 hours a week, making minimum wage and further worsening my eyesight. I can't wait!

My mom and dad had me edit the book for their company a couple of weeks ago. It took me almost a week to go through all 150 pages of that dang thing, plus a good chunk of the life out of my favorite purple marking pen. But I finished and I happily shipped it off - selecting media mail as my postage of choice because it was the cheapest. My parents said they needed it soon, but ground was to take 2 days and media mail 2-3, so if I could cut the price in half by sending it that way, why not, right? Except for the part where it's been almost a week and it hasn't arrived. My father is frantic. Apparently they're running low on books and need to put in a new order, so all they're waiting for are my edits. I got to hear his spiel about how the US Postal Service cannot be trusted and how I SHOULD ALWAYS send UPS or FedEx. I'm sure this will affect me the same way as did other things my parents have told me - like "only wear bright colors so you don't look so washed out" (Mom) or "pull your hair back so your face doesn't look so thin" (Mom) or "don't drink Diet Pepsi because it stunts your growth" (Mom) or "don't pluck your eyebrows because then they'll come back in black and you'll look like a wildebeast" (Mom). All Mom. I guess it's time for my dad to impart some of his wisdom on my life, too.

(By the way, today I'm wearing black; my hair is straight down; I had a Diet Pepsi for breakfast; and I'm carelessly pulling at my eyebrows between typing, as per my usual nervous habit.)

But I guess I will use UPS and FedEx from now on.

And there go all four of my readers ...

I write this with much consternation. I have a feeling I may lose at least two of the four people who read this blog, so that's quite unfortunate. But may the truth set you free.

I was driving to the library tonight while on the phone with my mom. She was giving me the scoop from the last week. As I mentioned in the photo essay, we are the proud parents of two new kittens, Bubbles and NoName.

Sadly, Bubbles, the white boy kitten, has died.

We're not sure how, but someone left the garage door open one night when it was pretty chilly, and when the girls went out to check on the kittens the next morning, Bubbles was dead.

Death is not new to us, or to our pets. I had my first brush with the nether world when I was in third grade and my cat Kelly got hit by a driver who didn't know how to parallel park. Since then, we've had many deaths by car accidents, two deaths by heat stroke and one death by being eaten alive. Sorry, but we have!

My mom was telling me how Lexie had been carrying Bubbles like he was a baby, rocking him and cooing to him, bouncing him up and down, making his little mouth drop open a little bit. And I smiled and awwed to myself because I love hearing stories about Lexie being sweet (possibly because they're so few and far between). And if anything, I reasoned, Bubbles had been loved to death, and what a way to go, right?

These thoughts were interrupted as my mom continued, wondering aloud how she ended up with a child who had such a need for attention and such a sick sense of humor. "I don't encourage her," my mom lamented. "I tell her to take it outside, and I don't laugh at her."

"Excuse me?" I asked, feeling like I had missed something.

I had indeed missed something. These loving acts of snuggling with the kitten, waving its droopy paw at everyone in the family who passed by, shoving the hapless Bubbles in my anxiety-ridden sister Julie's face - they were all a ruse.

Lexie was doing all of these things AFTER THE KITTEN HAD DIED.

After the kitten had died, but before rigor mortis had set in, apparently.

This is worse than the time last fall when another kitten died - I can't remember which one, or the cause of death for that matter - and Lexie's best friend Hannah's mom (following?) decided the poor kitten needed a proper burial. She came by the house to pick up the kitten, but before she left, decided to step in and say hi. Amy was the only one home, so she stood in the doorway, trying not to die, as Hannah's mom chatted amiably, HOLDING A ZIPLOCK BAGGIE WITH THE KITTEN INSIDE OF IT.

These are the things that give you nightmares, and my house is full of them.