Thursday, March 29, 2012

New to the bucket list...

Today I was at work wiping tables and this guy says: "You know what you need? Two of those rags and then you can wax on and wax off."

And I thought that was brilliant, and I am gonna do it because it will be a lot of fun to Danny Larusso the place up. I'll hum You're the best around and pretend Mr. Miyagi is training me for an epic battle with the Cobra Kai and work will be a lot more fun.

Also, Charlie has a whole set of names to call me cause he can't remember the right one. Maybe I can get him to add Amy-san to the rotation. Cross your fingers for it, everybody.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The Beard Brothers

Lancey Pants and Joshua came over tonight. Here's what went down. Cause stuff always goes down.

"Did you just fart?"
"yep."
"Hehehehe." (laughing on the floor for reals.)
"Girls really fart!"

"your laugh is way different since you broke your ribs."
"yeah, josh, you've changed. You are not the same person you were before!" 

" you guys are such girls."
" cause we check our outfits?"
"yeah. we don't even do that except on sundays."
"please. I was wearing my red shirt today. I was looking good. right, josh?"
"yeah man. I told you. paired the nice pants with the shirt and that hat."
"see. he knows how to dress me. I'll be like Josh what do I wear with this and he'll be like dude wear the nikes with the nice pants and I'll be good to go."

" I feel like I am really a girl about my clothes. I only buy nice ones, man."

" Seeing people's poop and seeing them naked brings you together. Katie knows me better than 98 percent of people cause she saw my poop."
"Are you guys talking about the time Lance didn't flush?"
"yeah, and naked. brings you together, man."
"katie saw you naked?"
"no that was me."

" yeah he dried me off. it was when we were both broken. my collarbone and his ribs. I was like Josh dry me off and he did. Cause who wants to put on a shirt with your back all wet? that's gross."
" I've done way worse things than dry a man's back. like lancey, you don't even know."

" we hung out way more before I moved here."
"when this was your bedroom and that was your cabinet?"
"yeah. when I lived with you guys."

Every girl apartment needs boys who will talk about awkward stuff without being awkward, and make them watch Will Ferrel movies, and throw bottles of vitamin water at you, and tell you your plaid pajamas are legit, and nickname you Amelia Bedelia. Love these boys.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

A Weird and Wonderful Day

Several strange events of the day, all of them weird, some of them wonderful:
1. I woke up at four something this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Please! How does that happen after four and a half hours? What are you doing body? Real Mature!

2. Today was three shift Tuesday. Started feeling a wee bit odd during shift number two and decided to ignore it. Soon after the start of shift number three, I decided ignoring it wasn't gonna cut it anymore seeing as how my vision kept blacking in and out.

3. My bosses made me go drink water and sit down, which was good cause I was feeling like I just took lortab. For those of you who don't know, that one time I went to work on lortab the day after I got all four wisdom teeth taken out was not a pretty one, and this had potential to be a repeat. Apparently, the water break wasn't good enough cause Collin asked me if I was feeling alright and set up a high power fan four feet from me for the rest of the shift.

4. People kept coming up and asking me if I needed help with anything. Uh.. do I look that bad?

5. I sliced my thumb open with that metal divider rack I was cleaning. Again, I think I looked worse than I realized because Collin, instead of directing me to the band aids, led me to them, put my finger over a trashcan and sprayed and cleaned the wound himself, applying some kind of coagulation powder in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the profuse bleeding, and bandaged me like a kindergartener. During this process, I felt an odd sort of impulse to giggle, which I am pretty sure is not a good sign seeing as how I was bleeding all over the place.

6. All day I felt an odd disconnect from my limbs, like I wasn't really the one working them. Huh.

7. I got home from work and was watching The Office and laying down trying to feel normal again, getting a little lonely, when I heard a knock on the door. Who should be on my doorstep but my long-lost friend Shane out of the blue!

8. He has perfect timing, and was also very nice about being clobbered on my porch. Which was good, cause I needed a hug real bad. I don't think I have ever opened my front door to a better surprise. 

9. Good quotebookage:

" You know, sometimes I doubt how bad I am, cause you are pure evil. Comcast evil."
" You were embarrassed? I guarantee every girl there was drooling."
 And finally: "If you have any poo, fling it now! That is what we say in awkward situations."

You be the judge of what was weird and what was wonderful.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Harrowing adventures of Amy and the Banks Boys

Bucket List Item #46 was a qualified success.

Said Item number 46 was skiing, something I had never done before this lovely spring break on an escapade with my pretend family the Banks, despite the fact that I grew up here in the midst of the greatest snow on earth. 

See, I had lots of fun. We had some excellent adventures. We rode the ski lift twenty something times and quoted bon qui qui a fair amount as well.  We gathered good quote bookage from the kids on the mountain. For example:
little girl addressing her sister, somewhat condescendingly:
 "katie, I think I am just a better skier than you."

little boy laying on the mountain with his mom standing over him:
"But I have to pee!"

teensy child careening down the mountain:
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
 We laughed hard about that one, and only felt kinda bad about it.

In short, I loved it! I also had a panic attack on the top of a mountain and bum slid some of the way down.  For reals, it was a group effort getting me down from the top of that hill.

The day started off with some spectacular crashes on the bunny slopes, which was fine cause Justin always waited for me to get ready to go again, only told me once that I was "being a girl!", and didn't make fun when I hyperextended my knee, an experience that may or may not have included some expletives. They were all really nice about teaching me, and I was getting pretty good at following instructions, soaring down those bunny slopes and learning to "walk like a duck".

Then Justin decided he wanted to take on the big hill and go all the way to the top. I said I would wait at the bottom. Turns out though, dear Justin is very persuasive. For example:
using the tone: "But I want you to come with me."
making the fact: "I'll stay with you the whole time!"
anticipating both his brother's response and my entirely predictable reaction:
"She'll be fine! She can do it, right Brandon?"
"Oh, I know she can't do it."
 "Fine! Well, I am doing it now!"

The ride up to the top:
Getting steeper and scarier.
 "Justin. Justin. Justin!"
"Calm down, honey. You're fine."
"NO. I am NOT."
"Look at that teensy kid. If they can do it, so can you."
"Shut up!"

Passing the point we thought was the top, continuing to rise what looks like several hundred feet of narrow switchbacks:
" Oh. My." Ragged Breathing.
"You're fine. Breathe normal, hon."
"Justin. Shut up and get me off this thing. I'm gonna kill you, for reals."

( This point in the story is where my mom interrupted, saying, "You are so sweet.")

So we are going down the mountain. Justin is going along, waiting at the bottom of the hills for me to slowly catch up. I am crashing every five feet cause I am paralyzed with fear and therefore unable to turn, especially in such narrow tree lined deathtraps. Finally we come to a hill. I am crashed at the top, Justin is waiting concerned at the bottom. My feet are pointing inward and I am unable to right them. I am terrified and in pain, trying to listen to the instructions being lovingly called from the bottom of the slope but really only taking in the fact that the next part down is a drop off so steep I can't see over the edge. I finally get my feet out of the skis and right myself when I am overcome with terror and end up throwing my skis and poles down the hill so I can just slide down. The problem is that once I start I find I cannot stop, and the ledge I can't see over is fast approaching. After some desperate finger clawing into the ice, the kind you see in movies, I am able to stop next to Justin where it isn't so steep.

So there we are. I am laying on the hill hyperventilating a little bit not wearing skis with no notion of how I am gonna get off this mountain. My devoted and patient friend keeps telling me I am fine, which isn't really helping.  He is trying to figure out what to do with the emotional wreck laying at his feet, and the emotional wreck is praying hard, when who should ski past but Justin's dad and little brother.

Justin:"MICHAEL!"
Amy: " oh my gosh. prayer works."

So Michael Banks ended up coaxing me back into my skis and into a standing position. Justin skis down the mountain with Dalen, which is fine with me cause I love him dearly but he wasn't helping. I am left alone with his father, which is a miracle because this patient saint of a man patiently stayed with me while I actually stair stepped sideways down the slopes, fell over some more, prayed some more, tried some more to control my breathing. We eventually made it to the bunny slopes and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Off we went. I got down to the car okay by myself, except that one time I crashed into the netting and spent ten minutes untangling my skis from the mesh. I get down and start taking off my skis, with difficulty because my whole body feels like jelly by now.

And then Justin showed up again. (Poor boy, he's out of practice dealing with emotional wreck version of me. A sure sign we live too far away from each other.)

The adventure ended with a text message from my sister reading "You alive?"to which I replied:
"By the grace of God and Michael Banks."

Friday, March 23, 2012

It's a big world, after all

Global society, the Internet, the Concord, all the good stuff that makes the world supposedly shrink everyday, you know? I have something to say about that.

Bull. It's not as small as we think. Not when you have friends you love in Argentina and Germany or even a different university. Not when you have siblings and little girls you miss across the country in different states. Not when the semester ends and every one of your friends flits away to Idaho and Nevada and maybe other continents. Not when you need shared experiences even more than you need communication.

If only I could gather up all those people and keep them in a five mile radius around me. If only that was possible, and not an incredibly selfish and futile wish. If only that letter with my name on it would get here one of these days!

I miss Justin and Cesar and Nate and Gina and Alex and Erin and the whole rest of my family.
That is all. End whine. 

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Awkward Encounter # 342

So this one time I was walking up the hill to work, and my earring was loose. So I had my head turned sideways and was fixing it as I walked past the fraternity house with the basketball court by the sidewalk. I guess I was tired enough that I wasn't internalizing the images my eyes were taking in, cause I didn't notice that I was walking past a bunch of guys playing basketball with no shirts on until one of them waved, winked and yelled, "See anything you like?"

It was at this point that I realized that my head, turned solidly in their direction, gave the impression that I was checking them out. So after a timid wave back, I figured I might as well have some fun with it, and I winked back and nodded before continuing on my merry way.

The pure awkwardness of the moment gave me a nice bubbly feeling*, matched only by the one produced when I realized that that boy was flirting with me. Snap. Endorphins. Suddenly the rest of my day was a whole lot more fun. And that is the power of flirting.

*Since the implementation of the Awkward Hands Theory into my daily life, I find that awkward experiences no longer horrify me. In fact, I kinda thrive on awkwardness. Hence the bubble feeling.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Quote Wars and a Career Choice.

I have recently engaged in a Facebook war with my boss. He thinks the only things you should post on Facebook are good quotes. No one knows why. But somehow, his brain says that if you don't post inspiring quotes, you are not a good Facebooker, which is of course the ultimate failure.

I am not all that worried about my quality level as a Facebooker, but after a certain amount of jabs, I gave in and started posting cool author quotes, because heaven knows I am full up on those. And you know what? Facebook wars in the middle of the night is amusing. Also, my work life is a lot better when Collin and I rave about C.S. Lewis together, as opposed to him telling me I am a bad Facebooker and that is why I don't have a boyfriend.

In this search for good quotes, I have delved into my bookcase more frequently than normal, thumbing through my favorite books for the parts that really stand out. ( at which point I realized that annotating has, in fact, come in handy. all my high school teachers were right, and I concede the point gracefully. ahem)

Tangent coming to a point. All this thumbing through reminded me of how much I love, adore, and perhaps revere the people who wrote these books. What genius and what God given talent! (Alan Paton is an inspired man, by the way. Everyone should read Cry the Beloved Country. ) So I was sitting on my floor surrounded by old copies of these books I have read and written all over and carried with me everywhere and cried on and laughed about, and I suddenly felt really good about my career choice.

Drum Roll: I finally gave in and declared myself an English Education Major, secondary. That's right folks. I'm gonna be a mini Parrish. Because if I get to indoctrinate the youth of America with books like these, my life will be pretty great, and maybe someday some of them will be sitting on their floors in the middle of the night surrounded by old copies of books they read and wrote all over and carried everywhere and cried on and laughed about. Maybe someday one of those books will have my name on it, and some kid will sit in his teacher's office talking about my book and shout "oh, you existentialist!". Maybe someday those kids will feel personally invested in getting something out of what they read. And that is a vision that comforts me during my white nights.

I'm gonna make those suckers annotate until their highlighters are sucked dry and they will thank me for it someday, yes they will! Probably on a blog that I will never see.

 It could be a thankless job, but someone's gotta do it, and as long as the thought makes me feel giddy, I figure I am as good a candidate as any.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Pretend they're Green

So I was making soda bread and lamenting the fact that I definitely cut the x's too deep when it occurred to me that these loaves look a wee bit like four leaf clovers. And there's the silver lining!
 I am a master baker. kay not really, but I like to pretend I am Ben. Seeing as how he moved away, I have to be the Irish Advocate this year. I am pretty okay with that.

                                                              Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Friday, March 9, 2012

Dwight Replaced

You all remember Dwight? aka the purple chair we got in a game of Bigger or Better and stuck in our living room until the end of the semester when someone actually had to claim him. Along with our shared fish Eomer, my roommate Sarah took Dwight home with her. I was extremely forlorn without my chair and my fish.

The problem with Dwight was that I didn't have room for him, even though I desperately wanted to keep him. This problem was solved this week in a strange incident of karma. Having gained Dwight in a game of Biggger or Better, it seems only fitting that another game of Bigger or Better landed me with my new sitting equipment, a stool named Penelope.

What luck when Calvin knocked on our door! I answered and fell instantly in love with the stool that guy was sitting on on my porch. I knew that stool wanted a home. It wanted a home and it wanted a name, and I accordingly rushed around searching for anything stool-worthy that I didn't need too much. I came up with my sled, a five dollar walmart item stuffed in the back of my closet, originally purposed for Old Main Hill, but never actually used. Not bigger, but thankfully, those boys thought it was better. And so Penelope came to live with me. Stephanie and I stripped off all the A-team stickers plastered on her and soon we plan to paint her. As such, I consider the official adoption pending.

Karma, right? I regained my furniture fix, but this time in decoratable, portable form.
Now all I need is a new fish.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Signs you are (kind of) a grown up

The other day I was in my old room at my parents house with some of my family, packing stuff to go home, when the bag of graduation stuff up there on the shelf fell off and I went for a stroll down memory lane.

This bag is what I once called "the bragging bag", seeing as how it contains all those physical representations of hundreds of hours of work in High School. There was my diploma, the big plaque they gave me for being  an Outstanding Senior, my cap, my tassel, two sets of cords and a medallion. I like that bag.

A strange thing happened, though. I suddenly couldn't remember for the life of me what those cords were for. I still have no clue. At that point, James informed me that forgetting that detail means that I am now officially an adult, well and truly out of high school.

Hmm. That's a new thought. I thought. And then I looked at my yearbooks and couldn't remember which one was which year at all, and that apparently cements it. I am a grown up now, I guess.

Further evidence: (this is kind of scary)
1. I am moving 2500 miles away and I didn't ask anybody's permission.
2. I think in thousands instead of hundreds.
3. I pay car insurance, instead of paying my parents for car insurance.
4. Within my family, I have transitioned to the opposite end of the driving scale, to wit: instead of deciding who is picking Amy up and bringing her home for the weekend, I am now a viable candidate for "who is picking Matthew/ daddy up?"

Evidence schmevidence. I still don't believe it.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Moodswing Upswing

Sometimes, I get really lonely and have emotional breakdowns when things turn out the opposite of how I planned them. This weekend was one of those, filled with some soul crushing disappointment and some humbling experiences and some desperate out loud prayers. (which were all answered in an extremely timely manner, I might add.)  I laid in my car and turned the radio up really loud*. I almost cried cause I couldn't find the right answers in my geology book. I actually cried my eyes out on the phone with my parents in the middle of the night.

The conversation ended with my dad telling me to "cry your cry, wash your face, and go blog about it." And I was still sobbing a little bit when suddenly, an angel called me, aka my sister Rose who listened to me cry for a minute and then, way more enthusiastically than is reasonable for such an hour, got out her textbooks and answered every question on my study guide, not only explaining with that insane excitement I use when people start talking about 19th century British Literature, but emailing me little figures and pictures of all the different types of earthquake waves. Like a boss.

By the time I went to bed, I almost felt human again.

And then! Today was as brilliant as yesterday sucked. Great stuff , including, but not limited to:

-Finalizing my graduation plan.**
-Changing my emphasis for the last time. Be proud.
-Eating Thai food with Stephanie, who fills my heart with joy.
-An FHE group came to my door playing bigger or better***, at which time I traded a sled for a wooden stool that is fairly oozing with charm and potential names.
- Watching my favorite movie of all time. ( It was terrible! Terrible! But driving fast behind the ambulance was fantastic!")****

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that life is still worth it, even if it sometimes smacks you in the face. Thai Food makes up for it.

* When diet coke is unavailable, this is the coping method of choice.
** Knowing full well I will be 25 before I graduate, I choose to clap anyway.
***Do you all know about the phenomenon of Bigger or Better that exists in FHE groups? If you don't, please read about it here.
**** Name that movie for 2,398 points and a spot in the inner sanctum.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Crazy Sauce Theory

I went to Taylorsville High School. And when I say went there, I mean I lived there. Sixteen hour periods of time at school were not at all uncommon. I had sleeping spots. I had a toothbrush there. I had extra clothes stashed in various spots around costumelandia and a pillow hidden in one of the music rooms. I went back to see a show a year after I graduated and found some shoes and a scarf I'd been missing.
Crazy sauce, right?

I spent so much time there working on some pretty intense projects, and I became really good friends with my teachers. Mr. Schmid in particular was kind of a mentor. We were good friends. (He does tailoring on the side with his wife, who I also love.  I kind of seriously want Schmid to make my wedding dress someday, possibly in a geometrically patterned silk, as opposed to a floral one, of course. )  The thing is, Schmid is extremely eccentric. The most eccentric man I have ever met. And he came up with some pretty insane ideas for shows. In fact, I can't think of a single conventional idea that ever came out of that man's mouth.

 That being said, I was thinking the other day about a conversation that took place my senior year during a rehearsal for Les Miserables ( yeah. we pulled that off in a High School. bam.). We were doing it at the same time Riverton High was doing it, and we were (completely egotistically, kind of jerkishly) talking about how ours was better than theirs. (we didn't have to be brats about it, but it was true.)

We were discussing why we could pull off these big, sometimes weird, usually cool ideas. And we came to the conclusion that we were just crazy enough to think we could do these impossible things. Specifically Schmid was just crazy enough to think we could ever pull this stuff off. He was always coming up with these insane ideas that seemed completely impossible.

Like the time:
- when we built a twenty foot turntable from scratch in a week cause he thought it would look cool.
- we made forty foot high fisherman's nets out of butcher paper that actually held people's weight.
- we built a whole new stage out into the pit by ourselves
- we did a six and a half hour show for Schmid's master's thesis, dubbed "the marathon show"
- we made from scratch "hundreds of hats in a hurry!" literally.
- we did all of that with no skills, no major injuries, and a bunch of broken staple guns.
- we pulled all that off with absolutely no budget.
- through all this, we became this little family of "Schminions", and we all had a place. 

While he is sometimes a crazy man who sews with one shoe and swears at us, he has just the right amount of crazy to pull stuff off that other High Schools never even attempt.

Lesson I learned from High School Drama # 32:
If you have one crazy man leading you and enough students who want to spend sixteen hours a day at school doing things like welding bridges together from scratch and sewing eighty pairs of pants in two days, you can accomplish things that don't normally get done in the public school system. I like to call it the Crazy Sauce Theory. ( I am slowly developing a series of theories that I live by. So far we have the awkward hands theory, the crazy sauce theory, and the railroad tracks theory.)

Usually this theory discourages me. I don't try to do really big awesome things because I get scared. And then I was thinking about it today and I actually felt great about myself. You know why? One of the biggest things on my bucket list was to go to Schenectady with my dad. Another of the huge ones was to move across the country just because I can. And this august, I am knocking those both off the list. I am expanding my box, and I am doing things I am terrified to do, because if I don't start now I never will.

I am hoping I am just crazy sauce enough to pull this off. We'll see.

Seriously, Listen.



Umm, so you all know that my roommate has the most gorgeous voice ever, right? And she writes songs with her best friend Seth King who lives over there across the grass hill of death in apartment three.  (I secretly wish that they would get married. Okay, not that secretly. I tell them they need to get married all the time.)

This is their first original song. And it is fabulous. Especially the part at the beginning where Seth tries to be Colbie Caillat and Cristina laughs at him. Makes my day every time.

I get to listen to this live in my living room. Be jealous.

Thursday, March 1, 2012