Starting Over, Starting Out

My phone rang way too early on a Tuesday morning mid-March, but the news was good: I'd gotten the job I'd interviewed for the previous Friday, was required to be at company orientation on April 3, and start April 7. Between that time, and a trip to NYC we'd had planned since mid-January, I had to pack what worldly possessions were going to come the 55 miles from my parents' house to a new apartment I hadn't started looking for yet.

It was a lot to squeeze into two and a half weeks.

First apartments aren't supposed to be glamorous. We'd like them to be, but the truth is, a lot of the time they aren't. My first one on Tompkins Street in Cortland, NY, while being only two blocks from downtown, wasn't anything to really write home about. But it was mine. Mine to come back to each night. Mine to pay the bills on, stock with groceries, and just be a place to call my own.

 

And it worked, for a while. It worked until it didn't anymore. Until living between a frat house, a sorority (with another one across the street), and generally just being in the middle of college housing (while not in college) wasn't where I wanted to be working the kind of hours I was working. There was also the small matter of no parking, and bottom line, it didn't feel like home anymore.

It took me about a month to find a new place. This was after multiple daily looks at CraigsList, scouring the newspaper, calling various phone numbers, and trucking out to Homer, McGraw, Tully, and on one occasion, Cincinnatus. All with nothing really promising, nothing that screamed home to me until one day. Until this place. 

There were a few must-haves for me when I was looking. One of them was full-size appliances in the kitchen. Saying I like to bake is an understatement. There's still the thought in the back of my head about going to pastry school, so I spend a bit of free time with my oven. (My current kitchen, pictured above, has brand new EZClose cupboards. It was a huge tipping point.) Also on the list of my requirements was a bathroom I didn't have to back into in order to use the toilet, and that actually had a tub instead of a tiny shower stall. 

This is my apartment. All of my furniture is secondhand and most of it certainly doesn't match (not that I care, I was just happy to have furniture in general), but it's here. So is my houseplant who's been with me since my first year of college, my framed photo of lower Manhattan pre-2001, and the photo board hanging on the wall features the most important people in my life, proudly on display. But more importantly, I can say that shortly into September, a few days after I moved in, this went from being a bigger apartment in a different location with new cupboards to being my home. A place to come to recharge, to have quiet nights in, and to host out-of-town friends who stop by for a visit. A home that gives me a sense of contentment I didn't feel in that first place.

It was a struggle to find such a place. I'm pretty sure, when I was looking to move in August, there were tears of frustration at one point. Thankfully, there's sites like Urban Compass that help people do just what I did - find that first apartment, get settled, and have that feeling of starting over, starting out.

Something to Be Thankful For

Last week was Thanksgiving. We had, as per usual, a boatload of people in the house. We also had a boatload of people staying in our hours for the week, too. My aunt and uncle from Maine, my two cousins and their dog from South Carolina, stayed at our bed and breakfast (what we jokingly call our house in the summer because it's like a permanently revolving door twenty-four hours a day with who is getting up for work, leaving for work, and coming home from work...but that's a different story for another time) and we had something like sixteen or seventeen people for dinner Thursday.

I had to work. It was an utter madhouse at the hotel: we did 685 for our buffet dinner, ran out of turkey, and had fun with each other so we didn't go absolutely batshit crazy. Well, we went batshit crazy anyway, but the highlight of having to work on a day when we were supposed to be with our families - which people continually thanked us for - was sitting down at the end after all the customers had left and the dishes had been taken back to the kitchen, and having our own sort of family dinner from the left overs. We were all tired and punchy and it was one of those things that I'll hang onto for a long time.

What I'll also hang onto is that a week ago Monday was my twenty-fourth birthday. With all that happened this year - and it's been a rough year - I honestly, at some points, didn't think I would see it. But I did. And to be able to celebrate it, and look forward to another year patched up and ready to take on the world is something that will make this birthday the most special that I will ever have. I will always remember this one. Not because of the food or the presents, but simply because I am still alive.

My family, the jokers they are, have hinted they're going to get me a cow tag - like you can buy at Tractor Supply - with the number 23 on it. I have to say I really like this idea, and I'm hoping to find it in my stocking on Christmas morning. And if anybody asks me about it, well, I have a story that's stranger than fiction. But they say the truth usually is.

Hope you all had a happy holiday, and oh, hey, it's December. When the hell did that happen?

Things to Know VII

- If I hadn't already been totally happy with where I'm going to go to grad school, the fact that they called me this afternoon would have sealed the deal.

- I can't imagine what it cost them for that 11.5 minute conversation.

- That predictable American girl stereotype about British accents totally applies to this chick.

- I'm not ashamed of the above.

- The library gave me permanent volunteer hours on the first Monday of the month, and I'm also still a sub when necessary.

- I'm more excited than I should be to have library hours tonight.

- November is National Novel Writing Month.

- I dug out The Icicle Man and have been playing in that sandbox since last week.

- It's rather fun to give my recently-turned-human character the emotional mood swings he's experiencing.

- Though I do feel kind of bad.

- I discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix.

- Due to the above, I can confirm what we already knew: I'm a Trekkie.

- I still cry during Star Trek: Into Darkness.

- I'm also going to cry while watching the final episode of Sherlock and therefore haven't yet.

- The next season starts in January and I'm not sure I'm ready.

- I have a cold, most likely can't take any old meds, and will be suffering through with copious amounts of orange juice, cough drops, and decaffeinated tea.

- All of my Twitter followers, you have been warned.

- I'm still waiting to hear back from an agent and choosing to take no news as good news so far.

- Don't ask me how many words I've written for NaNo because I don't have a clue.

Thankful Thursday

I knew, sort of, what a non-traditional family was. I'd  used them a lot in my writing, too: Ralurick spends his childhood with a single mother and his adolescence with his grandmother; Ella's raised by her grandmother; Topher's raised by everybody on his mother's side except his mother, and Matt seems to be the only one who has the seemingly requisite mother-father-siblings dynamic.

I have that, too. I have two parents who are still married, and a sister. But my nuclear family has grown a little bit. It grew six years ago with the birth of my niece. And it changed two years ago when, on the outset, everything went to hell.

We've always been fluid. Sunday dinners during the winter are one of my favorite unofficial traditions, and I can't remember when we started them. Whether they're at our house or my sister's is up for grabs throughout the day, and sometimes whoever isn't responsible for dinner itself brings dessert.

When I first came home from the hospital post-surgery, stairs weren't really something I could handle a lot. The result was that I took a lot of my meals upstairs, sitting in one of my mother's straight-backed chairs. When I gained a little more mobility - and less fear of falling without being able to catch myself - and my mother started going to work for the latter half of the day, I ate dinner with my sister and niece.

That has been, hands-down, one of the best things about my recovery. The ability to see those two smiling faces on a daily basis, to help with homework (we're not large fans of Common Core math because sometimes it feels like two women with four-year degrees don't have a clue what's going on and the kid is only in first grade), to read with her, and to sit on the back porch and look with new eyes on an old, trusted view.

For these two I am grateful and thankful beyond words.

Anybody In There?

*tap tap*

*taptaptap*

Anybody out there? Or, should I say, anybody in there? I know it's been a few months. Life got kind of nutzo for a little while - I'll fill you in a little bit - but for now, I'm back. And here's hoping this twenty-something workaholic can remember to type a few non-fiction messages every once in a while.

Fascinating

I like to learn new things, and am, at times, utterly fascinated by this world. I like to know how to put thing together, how to take them apart, and how they work. The thing that both fascinates and terrifies me is my own human body.

Today I went in for an echocardiogram, which is, pretty much, an ultrasound of your heart. I got to see my own heart beating, watch it do its thing. Watch the valves open, watch how it worked. The scientist in me - which is a very large part of me, along with that damn innate curiosity that would put a cat to shame - absolutely loved it. The other part of me was leery of it, and found it kinda freaky.

I'm pretty sure I smothered that part of me out of existence for a little while. The woman doing my echo was really awesome, too, explaining to me what I was looking at. It was really, really nice of her. Might have helped that she knew I was a science geek, but I'm thinking she was the type of person to answer questions any of her patients asked about it.

But seriously. I saw my own heart beating today. It was one of the coolest - and freakiest - experiences of my life having to deal with my own body.

The other side of this was that I was also given a 30-day event monitor. My father has already joked that I'm "wired for sound" now. It has significantly less leads than my halter monitor from about a year ago, but I've already tried to accidentally rip one of my leads off. It'll take some getting used to, that much I know. We'll call it my new fashion accessory and leave it at that.

Double Double Digits

It's the only way I could figure to describe the fact that today I'm 22. Double double digits. Two twos.

As for what I'm going to do on my birthday, well, I've got my copy of The Strategic Teacher open and a curriculum unit to pretty much finish. That's my plans for the day. My plans for the next year? To continue to wander, live, love, laugh, and enjoy every day on this earth, even if getting up at 7:30 and ending that day well into the next is the order of business.

I figured my next milestone was 30, whereas my mother has assured me it's 25. How about we just shoot for tomorrow, first.

Appropriately, this video - this song rather - has been one that's been stuck in my head. Here's to living uncharted.

Looking in All Directions

A little while ago I sat at my mother's good oak table in the kitchen (for future reference - and general FYI - we have two tables: one is a tile-top we use generally, when it's just us [my sister, niece, and our parents] or us and our aunt and uncle, and the other is the Amish-made oak table with four leaves that we only use at holidays or other occasions when absolutely necessary) and thought back through the various Thanksgivings I've experienced over the past few years.

Most of them were held at the house I used to live in; I was 11 turning 12 at the tail end of our week at Disney World, so we ate Thanksgiving dinner at Port Orleans; there was the year we ate at my sister's house (in which my uncle pegged me in the jugular with a roll from across the kitchen because I said "chuck me a roll"); one year I decided not to go to Rhode Island and was the only one in the house and spent the weekend painting the room I was going to move into when we moved; I spent on Thanksgiving in Rhode Island, having been picked up at college on the way through the Thruway; and last year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my English and Welsh flat-mates, who then surprised me with a cake because Thanksgiving was also my 21st birthday.

Of course, interspersed with that, have been the holidays I've spent puking my guts out because it's fairly well-known tradition in this family that for one of the three holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year - someone is going to be sick. There are years when I'm only down for the count at one, and the memorable year where I accidentally had two birthdays in the same year because I didn't have my party until February, due to illness.

Tomorrow, of course, is Thanksgiving. For as much as the last six months have been rather interesting - and at times more than difficult - there's still a lot to be thankful for. The family is healthy, we're happy (for the most part, there are some things that just....just can't be easily fixed right now or that are flat-out going to take time) and we're all going to be gathered in the kitchen and generally just being us.

I'm good with that.

Not to mention I have the biggest craving for stuffing that I can't seem to explain. Seriously. Big bowl of stuffing. Gravy. That's all I want.

And then the day after I'm really hankering for some burgers, chips, and birthday cake. But I have a feast to get through first. A feast by the name of Earl. Yes, we're the type of family to name the turkey we're going to be eating. It's been a tradition ever since I can remember, and we've gone through George, Igor, Edgar, Oliver, and many, many more. It took roughly 20 minutes to decide on Earl.

We're a little quirky. But I wouldn't have us any other way.

Have a fantastic day with your family (both chosen and the ones you have no choice in the matter) and your friends. Happy Thanksgiving.

Missing

For the most part I'm settled into my own skin. Even if it's currently sunburnt on my shoulders and tender enough that I've got no problems wearing a tube top bought years ago out in public. I've accepted the fact that I work during the summer. I pick up shifts here or there, and got three calls yesterday for sub jobs (one of which I denied because I needed to take my mom for a medical test - routine, nothing serious, and she's fine) and I have a waitressing shift - my primary job - tonight.

Possibly the only vacation I'm going to get is if we get tickets to see the MLS All-Star game against Manchester United. They're playing at Redbulls Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and considering all the places we've driven mom's tan Buick, it really wouldn't be an issue to get down there.

Which makes me sort of wonder if I'm missing something.

I've had a bit of time to sit in my own headspace lately, which has provided a lot of introspection. It would help, on another level, if I started (kept up with) journaling on a regular basis. And some of the stuff I'm comfortable enough sharing with you fine folks.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not missing out on something that makes summer....summer. Aren't there supposed to be fleeting, fling-y summer romances? Vacations and plane-rides (or, in our case, car rides as dad refuses to fly). Dates to be had with friends that haven't been seen in a while, including my best friend whom I haven't seen in a year, due to different semesters abroad (and dear sweet Baby J, I needed her last semester when shit hit the fan) and other stuff that girls are supposed to do when they're this age? Should I be spending some nights actually getting ready, dressed up, and going out to meet people?

Is the fact that I work so much the reason I haven't had a date in three years?

It's not that I don't like my job - I love it, actually. Even Monday nights when all I'm doing is playing babysitter to over a hundred teenagers, most of whom show more skin than I do in the summertime and it just, at times, doesn't seem fair. Still. I get in my car, get to work, do my job (do it well, too, considering what I make in tips that I then have to split) and drive home.

Maybe the payoff comes during the year. How I take the opportunities presented to me by the Colleges and do different things. Like going to Toronto and New York City for class sophomore year (which, kind of seems like ages ago even if it was just over two years) or going abroad for three months and getting stuck in London on the way back. Or going to Virginia and spending my Spring Break doing community service in a State Park down there. Which I'm planning to do again this year because it was so much fun. Or maybe it comes when I get to go to dinner or the movies with the girls, or buy my own groceries and spend the afternoon baking for my housemates. Maybe that's the summertime living I'm supposed to be doing that I'm transplanting into the school year.

Maybe that's the missing piece that's actually not so missing. I don't know. Even days like today, when I'm content, happy, and comfortable in my skin (and looking forward to going to work tonight because, in a way, it's fun) it still feels like something's a little...off. Like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit because one of them is warped.

Guess this is one of those things I'll figure out as I go. Kind of like if mom and I can make one of those layered cookie cakes that you buy in the store.

The Working Girl Returns

I've been kind of absent lately. I know. There's a reason behind it. Three, actually.

Waitressing, subbing, and refereeing. Not necessarily in that order, either.

However, due to the amount of time I spend in either my car or my mother's (depends on which is in the driveway for me to drive wherever I need to go to get someplace to do one of those three previous things) I've had the chance to sort of preview this summer's music. I'm more of a country fan (I'm a country child, so it makes sense) and these are two songs that I've heard and I've, honestly, fallen quite a bit in love with.

So, in the hopes that I can fan my blogger spark into something larger again, I share with you Dirt Road Anthem by Jason Aldean and Barefoot Blue Jean Night by Jake Owen.

Planning. Sort Of.

First of all, I have somehow managed to gather and corrupt forty followers. I consider this quite the accomplishment, considering that I'm just a college kid blogging about what it's like to go through this stage of life and occasionally getting sidetracked by other stuff along the way. Or getting lost. Those two are kind of interchangeable in my world.

To my forty bright and shiny followers - Thank. You.

This is the second full day that I have been home for the summer. The mountain of laundry I brought home with me has been done, and it was a nice way to invite in the summer because I got to hang out most of it yesterday to suck in the country air. Makes everything smell so good and when you take a big whiff the only thing that really permeates my braincells is home.

I have not, however, woken up in the morning with eighteen pounds of cat on my chest or fifty pounds of dog on my ankles. However, I have had my ears cleaned a number of times already.

Now that junior year is done (which, by default, makes me a senior and scares the hell out of me) and it's summer, it's more or less time to look ahead (or try to, at least) to what the upcoming three months will bring. Considering I picked up two work shirts while I was in town today, I think it just comes down to how busy I'll be when the full season rolls around. I go back to work on Wednesday. I'm quite alright with that, truthfully. Been waiting for it for almost two weeks now.

Which more or less means I'm going to be a sort of workaholic in the summer. All while spending as much time with the family - including the small child who's not quite so small anymore and still growing like a weed - and writing. I've got a book to try to finish (actually, if you think about, roughly three, really) and if anything else wants to come my way, well, that'll be welcome, too.

No big plans. Just tryin' to live day to day and sometimes that can be more of a task than planning something huge in the middle of the summer heat.

And, of course, I'll spend some of my summer just doing what I do best - Wandering.

If anybody's got any big summer plans and wants to share, go for it. Here's to the coming good weather and whatever it may bring.

Oneness

This is the third time I've tried to write this post.

My varsity soccer coach my junior and senior year in high school told me those weren't the best days of my life, and not to let them be. That there were bigger and better things out there waiting for us to find them, experience them. He was right, for the most part, that high school wasn't the best days of my life.

What he wasn't right about was WAZA. A travel team I'd been playing on for four years. Those girls, since the first day, they were more than teammates, they were practically family. We were family, actually. After our first practice our coach had said, "Welcome to the WAZA family," and he never stopped saying it. It was drilled into us that if our sister was against the boards, you go help her. You give her support.

Those girls were one of the best things that have ever happened to me. One of the best groups of people that I have ever come to know.

Friday afternoon we lost a sister. She'd fought leukemia not once, but twice - and won - only to lose to a lung infection.

It's been four years since we last stepped on or off a soccer field together. Four years, but with this we've come back to the family we were once. And still are.

That is how we'll grieve. We'll grieve with our blood family, and the family we chose.

We'll grieve for our sister.

WW What?

I haven't actually made any New Year's Resolutions. Then again, you don't really have actually write that resolution that everybody tries - and sometimes succeeds - in taking part and actually doing each year.

Losing weight.

The idea is kind of always in the back of my mind. Shed a few pounds, maybe get back into some of the dresses I used to wear when I was transitioning into high school/those early high school years. Or, if you really want to put a point to it, when I was a three-sport athlete and running a schedule that nobody in their right mind should really run on for more than a couple weeks. Not to mention I have a 5K in the spring to run with my sister.

So, tonight, Louise finally did something definitive about losing weight. Nothing like stocking up on weight loss pills or ordering weight-loss food off the internet or anything, but, well, my mom's been a part of Weight Watcher's for a year (maybe, I think, I'm not too sure on the specifics) and I more or less inherited some of the stuff that she doesn't use anymore (and she's going to try and get me some of the newer stuff).

Yup. I've become an unofficial, on my own, member of Weight Watcher's. I've calculated my daily points - I get 26 - and I start the whole kit and kaboodle tomorrow. Which means that last bowl of Neapolitan ice cream I'm going to eat tonight isn't going to count for my points total.

I'm excited at this. This is something definitive. Something that is, with me sticking to it, going to help me lose some weight. Coupled with exercise that I'll have available on campus (walking to class, Zumba [if I can make it on those nights, and depending on my homework schedule]) this just might work.

So, in a way...I guess this means I can start a sort of series about keeping on track. Or, if I can get really cheesy, on point. Yeah, I know. This is a little new for me, too, and it's a little bit freaky.

I'm on the same weight loss program as my mother. If it worked for her, might just work for me, too. And she's done so well and lost a lot of weight.

In other news, I got a haircut. Which I completely and totally love. When I get a photo of it - namely when I find my camera somewhere in this house - I'll post one.

I think that's all I got for now.

Habit

I've got no qualms about coming out and saying I'm a bad blogger.

How long as it been since I've last posted? How much upheaval have I gone through between then and now? Downright disgraceful on my part, truthfully. Never mind that I was running on about five hours of sleep that first official day back, still trying to reset my sleep schedule, and being bombarded with family and the fact that Christmas was only two days away. Excuses, excuses.

See what I mean?

Anyway, it's post the first of the year, so welcome to the first official post of 2011! Cue fireworks and singing of that damn song. Or, you know, you could just keep reading. That's cool too.

I thought about doing, before it hit New Year's Eve, a best of 2010 post to maybe reflect on what had happened, all the exciting - and not-so-exciting - and crazy, stupid, fearless, terrifying, etc stuff that I had done over the past year, reflecting on my three months (that feel like a dream, or that they happened to someone else and I watched) I spent in Wales, and whatever else happened that might have been newsworthy or just noted.

I didn't do one. Firstly because, like I've mentioned, I'm a bad blogger and secondly, I was just too damned tired to really focus and pull something like that together. I still have moments when it boggles me that I'm currently home and not still over on the other side of the Atlantic. Moments when I realize that I can walk down the hallway to my own bed, tripping over my own black cat, and not wander around the corner into the bathroom of some hotel in central London. Or wander to a public bathroom in an airport terminal.

So, things are adjusting. Or rather, Louise is adjusting to things.

But there are changes. If you were to sit on the back porch with me (proverbially, at the moment, as it's pretty damn cold here), with a cup of coffee, and just talk with me, you'll see changes. Little things, the way I'll go to say something and have to kind of think about whether that word means the thing I want it to or it means something different. The way my Facebook stream has a mix of both US and Welsh names in it, the way that one has subtly more or less switched itself to being sort of one top and the other a sort of background. Not that any of those people are to be considered background, but I'm hoping you're understanding what I'm having difficulty putting into words.

And that's partly why I haven't really reflected. For as good as I am with the English language, I'm struggling to put this experience into something that can be easily accessed, understood, and shared with the rest of the world. I don't know how to say what I'm feeling.

I don't know how to get what's going on in my head out onto paper or into a sequence of ones and zeroes that lets others read it, too.

Which, honestly, drives me up the wall to a point. We're used to me rambling, but this? For me to attempt to get this out would be crazier than what I normally post. Yeah. That's where I'm at.

But, hopefully - namely when I can find my camera in this post-holiday slow-down - I'll put up a couple pictures of those last couple days in the UK. Namely this post that's been in the back of my mind to do. Something about sneakers and a big, fancy word that I'm going to have to double check the definition of in a dictionary. Anyway. Hope everyone out there had a happy holiday season, a great New Year, and as for resolutions? That post (sort of) will come later.

Singing, Hot Chocolate, and Chill Night

These week - the week we're currently halfway through - is called Freshers Fortnight. Or, for those of us who don't really know what a fortnight is, consider it Freshers Week. It's the week where the Freshman have all sorts of cool stuff to do - mostly partying - but which also included a hypnotist (x-rated, no joke - one of my flat-mates did it last year and he was hypnotized to make it look like he was giving head) and this guy from Britain's Got Talent that can swallow billiard balls and then regurgitate them. There's also various themed parties (tonight is beach night, Saturday is pajamas) but there are also nights that are considered Chill Nights where, as it says, you more or less chill out.

Last night was one of those nights.

Six of us decided to go out together to the Student Union (more commonly known as the Union) to have a few and just sort of get to know each other better. What was supposed to be just a couple of pints and not very long turned into about an hour and a half there, on the balcony, sitting and talking. I didn't do any drinking last night- just didn't want to - and after looking at the time, we decided to head back and watch a movie.

Which turned out to be High School Musical 3, which at least three of my flat-mates knew by heart and were more prepared to sing along to. We even had the subtitles on (Huw is used to watching movies with subtitles because his girlfriend is partially deaf in one ear) and it was a great time watching and singing, and generally laughing at each other and at the movie. From what I've been told, it's the first and third movies that are great, but the second one is absolute crap.

I can't really explain it, but halfway through the third song, I think it just really hit me that I'm three thousand miles from home, and that the people that I normally lean on as we go waltzing through life aren't here at the moment. I had expected this maybe the third day here, the third day in an empty flat in a foreign country that I've just been tossed into, but over a week later (eight or nine days, at least) it really hit me.

I was homesick.

We're all sitting there in the dark, watching and singing to this movie, and I just started to tear up. So I just sort of got up and went across the hall into the kitchen to sit and try to get a handle on it. And it just really wasn't happening. Jenn and Jess came in, saw me crying, and wanted to know what was wrong. And they really understood as I was trying to tell them that it was really just hitting me that I was so far from home, and they put the kettle on, offered me tea or hot chocolate. I took the hot chocolate and the boiler was on, and I'm still properly teary-eyed when Huw opens the door, leans against it, and goes, "So, eh, our singing is really that bad, eh?" Which made us all laugh, and the next thing you know the boys come traipsing through the door and into the kitchen, more water is added to the boiler and we all sit down. I mentioned something about being three thousand miles away from home, and Huw goes, "That's a bit of a walk, isn't it, eh?" To which I replied, "More like a bit of a swim, really."

So with the movie on pause we sat in the kitchen drinking tea and hot chocolate and generally pissing ourselves with laughter at various stories. It wasn't how we had originally intended to finish our evening, but it wasn't a waste. And I realized then that I have the most awesome flat-mates that anyone could ask for while in a foreign country for three months.

And we will eventually finish HSM 3.

Wordless Wednesday

For a little explanation, because some of you are probably wondering what exactly this is, this is the pier that I jumped off of, on the right. Of course, it didn't have all those people on it (this was taken back during the Waterfront Festival, and the place was packed, as you can see) and if it had....

Anyway, near the bottom right of the picture is where I actually went swimming in this post.

Also, this is what I see every day when I go to work (except the multitude of people).

Multi-Use

Well, at least somebody's getting some use out of the Vera normally put to use toting the laptop hither and yon.

Fish Belly White

Yesterday, after cleaning the boat for two and a half hours, a few of my coworkers and I had the brilliant idea to jump in the lake after we got done because it was hot. It was one of those things that, yeah, you mention it, and you think, okay, maybe, we'll see, and we were actually traipsing out along the pier toward the little shack thing that sits on the end before you get to the breakwater, and I was like, oh, shit, well, okay...

For the first time in my life I jumped off the Village Pier. In a sports bra, compression shorts, and my favorite baby blue Adidas shorts (a random here, have these from my sister a few years ago) in front of tourists and the four people that I work with - including two boys. While my shoulders and my upper body and lower legs might be tan, my tummy is an extremely attractive shade of fish belly white.

Which, incidentally, as I was sitting on the railing looking at the green-blue water and thinking, damn it, this is pretty high, not once did it really cross my mind that my hips might not look all that attractive or that somebody might think I was a little on pudgy side.

Okay, well, it did for a little bit - until Bones said, "I'll peel left and you peel right" from his position on the railing to my immediate left. And then he dove in and what else was I supposed to do but jump? And it felt awesome. Not just the jumping off the pier itself into the fairly deep water of the marina (which isn't like jumping off the boat house dock at school, because you'll hit bottom there - at the pier, toward the end of it, you'll jump from a good ten feet up and go down, and there's water above and below you).

Apart from the fact that it might have been more than slightly illegal (but everybody does it anyway, especially on the hot days), it was really oddly freeing. Like when Todd chucks the desk set off the wall during Dead Poets Society.

And I was sitting next to Bones and yeah, there was some initial butterflies, mostly dealing with oh, God, my hips, belly...dear Lord, can he see where my scar is from my surgery? and then it was like, whatever. And with Bre on my right, with hips like mine in jeans and a regular bra, both of us on the railing... it was a freedom.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I was really freaking out all that much about being half-naked in front of a bunch of tourists. Tattoo, hips, and fish-belly white belly. And it didn't matter, at that moment, what anybody else thought.

Which, come to think of it, is a crazy way to live, isn't it?

Catch Up

Okay. Probably the last time that you checked in with me - if you checked at all - I was still in Jackson but getting ready for the last push and definitely ready to come home. Well, I came home exactly a week ago, and it's been an interesting week. I think I probably need to start with last Monday.

Last Monday - in the middle of finals - my parents were supposed to come and pick up the big stuff - bike, fridge, stuff like that. Only, after going to the wound clinic (my dad had burnt himself in late April, a few days before I left for Toronto - pretty badly, I might add) they were shuffled (my mom who had taken my dad to said clinic) over the emergency room at the hospital (not our local one, but the one about forty-five minutes to an hour away - it's bigger [and also the one I was born in]) where he was later admitted. So, things didn't really go according to the plan that we had expected. Which is okay, because mom showed up on Wednesday with my grandmother's van (which is bittersweet, because it reminds me a lot of the man - a grandfather in every way but by blood - who the family had lost in late January) and we packed that (my car was already packed, which, my mother complimented on) and home we went. Then it was off to the hospital to visit dad. We were thinking, originally, that he was going to come home on that Saturday. Erm...he ended up staying until Monday. In the meantime, back on Wednesday, I had a sightseeing cruise to do, and then the following day was a lunch cruise. So it was back to work for me, which, I was (and still kind of am) really excited about. So he comes home on Monday; I play some soccer with the U-19 girls for fun on that same day (which turns into a joint practice with the U-14 boys because the girls only had three show up to practice, plus me and a friend who also plays [only he plays for the U-19 boys, somewhere]) and from said friend - who is also my boss's son - I have a wonderful bruise on my lower leg/backside of my shin. It's probably not going to get very colorful (I don't really bruise pretty colors unless it's been something fairly major) but it's faintly blue, I think you'll appreciate how big it is. It was made when his knee ran through the ball, and I left my left leg - and my bad left ankle - hanging out to hopefully do something constructive, and got nailed for it. He didn't do it on purpose; he's not that type of guy.

Is he fairly good-looking? Yes, yes he is. Ask my sister, and she'll probably say something else there because she's seen him, and she knows me, but I'm trying to keep this fairly general because I'm not entirely sure who's reading.

Monday was also the day that I started working out again. Which explains why if I stop moving for any length of time, I get really, really stiff muscles and it's almost comical to watch me try to move. It hurts so much that I laugh. That's what happens with me - when I'm physically hurting so badly that most people cry, I laugh instead. It's the oh-my-God-what-the-hell-friggin'-OW! kind of laugh, but still. It's a laugh.

Now, I love irony about as much as the next person, and I'm not lying when I say there are days when I'm first in line to be Mrs. Murphy, step on up and have the good go vaguely off-kilter (because things don't ever go really wrong, only partially). It's starts with my soccer buddy and gets better from there. Namely, the guy that I was pseudo-dating (this were slightly more than a little complicated that summer, before I went to college) and/or seeing (there was also another one, at the same time [don't freakin' look at me like that, as there was nothing concrete with either of them and you should know me by now to know that I don't do shit like that]) is now my coworker. I went to work today, saw someone heading with a shirt like mine (the type I wear to work) and thought, you have got to be kidding me and then decided that somebody Upstairs really enjoys getting a laugh out of the life and times of one Molly Louise. It's fine. I mean, things were a little rough around the edges because I made a choice I thought I had to make - sorry, but I'm seeing someone else -which wasn't quite true in the sense that I would have liked (and I'm still the back up option, which I'm not only quite aware of, but I know that I don't have to be the back up option for anyone) and then went away for college. Well, two weeks of preseason, and then classes and medical shtuff (the h in that phrase is on purpose) and in the end, everything more or less turned out okay. Really, it did.

Well, okay, maybe there's some residual stuff floating around in my head from soccer a year ago, and the whole boys thing, and some more soccer, and some other stuff, but it's no worse than usual. And, on the bright side, I'll work through it. In one way or another - via the blog, the book, or the journal (yeah, I keep one of those) - I'll get through it and everything will eventually (hopefully) make some sort of sense. In the meantime, he's just my coworker (soccer buddy included, because he's also employed there) and I'm still just me. A college junior (now) who enjoys waitressing because she's people-friendly (fairly) and really, genuinely likes going to work.

Needless to say, it's going to be an interesting summer. At the least.

Roots

I'm not quite sure how many of you listen to as much country music as I do - and on a regular basis, too - but there's this song titled The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert. And I've heard it a couple of times. There are some wonderful lines in there, and while some of them don't really mesh with life for me (I can't play guitar, and probably will never learn - I'd rather learn piano first) they still conjure a potent image. A specific potent image.

A little green house - that used to be brown, and still is, on the second floor in the front - that sits beside a stone driveway. Stone meaning rather uniformly sized large gravel that's kind of sharp in the summertime when you walk down the driveway barefoot. Walking barefoot anywhere within a hundred yard radius is pretty much a given between the end of May and the beginning (if the weather cooperates) of October, anyway.

So there's this little green house in a place called Townsend. Ask me where I'm from and you're going to get that response, even if we don't have a post office, don't have a traffic light (but we do have a stop sign) and everybody has a back yard in varying degrees of largeness. This little green house sits across from what used to be the stereotypical country store where if it was dinnertime, and there was nothing to eat, it became a great night for cheeseburgers on the gas grill, and Louise, go get some buns from the store across the road.

The school bus stopped at the little green house from kindergarten all the way through junior year.

One of the song lyrics is, If I could just come in I swear I'll leave/Won't take nothin' but a memory/Of that house that built me.

The little green house built me.

It was a place where I learned to run before I walked (which is, rather ironically, still true of many things). Where I took naps on the floor (and more or less slept there at night, too). Did my homework curled up on the right end of the couch and usually had a cat lying over the textbook I was trying to read. Which still happens, now that I'm in college. I used to practice my soccer juggling skills in the living room. The shade for the overhead light has never been the same. And the ball was a bit flat at the time.

The house that built me was the house my grandfather grew up in. Where my parents had lived for thirty or so years of their marriage. Where I lived for seventeen years. Where I started my novel, on the back porch in August after the world more or less tipped, tilted, and slid off its axis for a little while. Where I wrote most of the book I'm still working on, six years later. Where, during breakfast, I used to watch that one spastic little fawn run from one side of the upper yard to the other while his mother looked on, thoughtfully chewing on an apple from one of the little trees.

The turkeys. Oh, the turkeys.

Actually, more like a flock of forty turkeys and one brave (stupid) gray, black, and white cat who thought he was invincible. And wound up making new friends that he couldn't catch off a bird feeder.

The apple tree that was basically scorched on one side hand in hand with the barrels dad used to bring home from work, and that first fire in the them. Be thankful if it didn't blow up in your face. Literally.

Some are more funny than others. That's true of life. The main point - that house and the people in it, built me. Much the same way that Miranda was built by the house she lived in. My roots are buried in the back yard, near the "stream" (use the term loosely) and the apple tree that's only half-living (and how it hasn't died yet completely I don't know) with a view of the sun settin' behind those western rolling hills. I'm not being poetic - that's just the way things are around here. The hills roll (my friend from Massachusetts called them "mountains" the first time she saw them, mostly because where we go to school is much more flat than a mere thirty-five mils south) the grass grows (exponentially from the first hard rainfall and warm spell, and good luck getting a handle on it) and the peepers hardly shut their mouths. Rain-clean earth is one of the sweetest smells there is - along with molten asphalt, and summer-breeze-dried clothes from the line - and an endless sky above makes you feel very, very tiny in the grand scheme of things. Very tiny and very much alive.

And if that doesn't work, jumping in the lake certainly will, as that hardly reaches comfortable temperature even in the middle of August.

Part of the house that built me is hearing the current hooligans (or people with much, much nicer cars than I drive - not newer; some are nearly twice my age, along with their drivers) going around the track. You get good enough to start recognizing the time of year (Porsche, BMW, or NASCAR) and the type of vehicle (Porsche, BMW, stock car) by sound. That and the type of people you start seeing in town. Wine Festival? Go the old way.

We're all built by different things, events, people, and places into who and what we are today. I was built mostly by a little green house in a place that not many have heard of - and partly by the house across the road, and those six months of inhabiting the same space as certain family members again, oh, yeah, and have I mentioned that we've been living here four years and only recently (November) got curtains for upstairs - and the people I share it with. There's a bit left in the building process. That's okay, though. I'd think I'd rather have it that way than not.