This is going to take a while, but it's worth noting. Keep in mind, also, some of these are approximations, as my concept of time was greatly skewed.
THURSDAY:
9:30 am: I wake, shower, screw around the room.
11 am: I go to Unicorn to read.
Noon: I eat lunch with Jess.
1:30 pm: I go to Art Store to buy supplies for my Storytelling children's book project.
2:30 pm: I draw in the Common Room.
5:00 pm: I watch Burnt by the Sun with Jason and Oscar.
7:00 pm: Our Cozy Noodles by delivery arrives.
7:05 pm: I bitch out people who set shit on fire and almost catch a tree on fire, too.
7:10 pm: Hen run for drinks.
7:30 pm: Restart movie.
10:00 pm: Movie ends. Feel hella depressed try to get cheered up.
11:30 pm: Move down to Rat Trap to draw more. End up talking to Jeff for an hour instead.
FRIDAY:
12:30 am: Actually start drawing. Read and other things, too.
3:00 am: Hen run with Schenks.
3:20 am: Discuss all USSR notes with Schenks.
4:30 am: Return to drawing.
6:00 am: Go onto roof to spend some time NOT working.
7:00 am: Discover that I do not have enough white paper to print off everything for my project. Get white paper from Mike, while in 3DP, I notice Trace sitting on the couch, staring at Grant who is sleeping seemingly naked. Thoroughly weirded out.
7:10 am: Run to CVS. Buy binder.
7:20 am: Bind everything. Project done.
7:30 am: Eat the bagel that Jess and Mike picked up for me. Down two energy drinks and one Frappuccino.
7:45 am: Shatter one Lime Perrier and scream.
8:00 am: Take pictures of myself and Jess being crazy.
8:15 am: Shower.
8:40 am: Call Mom, talk too fast for her to understand me.
9:00 am: USSR final.
9:23 am: Finish USSR final?
10:00 am: Go to Unicorn with Jess.
11:00 am: Put things in storage with Jess and parents.
12:00 pm: Go with parents to study abroad office to drop off project. Now officially academically done.
12:45 pm: Go down to 3DP to say goodbye to Mike.
1:15 pm: Mike leaves.
1:30 pm: Go to Buff Joe's with Jess and some of the guys.
2:15 pm: Help Jess move her stuff outside.2:30 pm: Jess leaves.
2:58 pm: Make very sad lj entry.
3:30 pm: Start getting stuff packed.
4:00 pm: Frappuccino bought at Starbucks. Run to Hen.
5:00 pm: Start making dinner plans.
6:00 pm: Run over to Blom to find Eric and company...no success.
6:45 pm: Meet up with some of dinner crew to go to Joy Yee's.
7:30 pm: Sit down finally for some delicious dinner and smoothees.
9:00 pm: Try to pack more.
9:30 pm: Give in and sleep for a bit.
11:30 pm: Awoken by Jason and Jiwon.
SATURDAY:
Midnight: Up and moving again. Packing. Realize my luggage is missing. Make plans to go to beach.
1:00 am: Plan to beach canceled with JP's goodbye visit.
2:15 am: Schenks stops by, John stops by, many others follow in Jason's wake.
4:00 am: Jeff stops by. Decision to go to White Hen made.
4:30 am: Hen run.
5:00 am: Climb onto roof one last time.
6:30 am: After deciding to really get to packing, I sit with the hybrid, Jaff Schedinger for an hour and a half talking.
8:00 am: Really get packing.
8:30 am: Shower.
9:00 am: Screw around because sleeping at this point is a bad idea, even though I'm done packing.
11:00 am: Parents come, lots and lots and lots of loading of car to bring things to storage begins.
3:00 pm: Best/worst decision ever. I drive someone else's car to take Brett to drop a chair off in storage. Parking a car has never been so difficult.
11:00 am -- 5:00 pm: Lots of goodbyes and surrealness.
5:00 pm: Final checking out of Willard.
5:15 pm: Last moment standing in lobby, staring at mailroom and thinking about the last two years.
5:20 pm: Dinner with parents at Clarke's.
6:15 pm: Hit the road. Asleep before my parents turn west onto Davis. Literally.
9:45 pm (est): Wake up. Drink water. Fall asleep again.
SUNDAY:
1:45 am: Arrive in Ohio. Ask my mom, tiredly, "Can we move everything out of the car tomorrow?" My mom replies, "Jesus, CC!" and I think she's mad that I suggested it, but instead she thinks I am nuts for even considering moving things that night.
1:55 am: Already in my own bed. Passed out.
2:45 pm: Wake up. Begin living, kinda. Screw around all day, get dinner at Bravo with parents, get ice cream, screw around until...
7:00 pm: I pass out again.
10:00 pm: I wake up and think to myself, Shit. I might have finally slept TOO much. I watch a thunderstorm, talk with friends online, until...
MONDAY:
2:23 am: When I realize, yes, I did sleep too much and I should be asleep by now.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Baby's First All-Nighter(s)
Friday, May 27, 2005
Half-Way
I went to bed last night at 6:30 am.
Not because I was writing papers.
Not because I was reading.
Not because I was studying for an exam.
Just because I wanted to.
Just because I stayed outside Willard to talk to friends.
Just because I climbed up on the roof and watched the sun rise with a friend.
Just because.
An incoming freshman's mother emailed me about Willard because she saw my picture up as being a fireside chair on the website. I emailed her back, two weeks late, with every intent of making a short email explaining that she should email current fireside chairs and just say that Willard is pretty-cool-I-guess.
As I got writing, I found myself writing her an epic of an email, professing my love for a dorm that is full of people with such passion for life and enthusiasm to do the more unusual and most amazing things. I am so lucky, I realized, to be living here. I am lucky that for two years of my college experience, I've gotten to know the people I think are the most amazing people on this campus.
There's something about the culmination of a relatively disappointing last few weeks with finding new amazing people who refresh you when you begin to feel burnt out that is incredible. I have my oldest, newest, closest and best friends here around me, and I feel so lucky.
From running into the lake, to pudding wrestling; from winter quarter dance parties, to spring quarter euchre; from White Hen runs, to wine cleaning parties; from late nights talking in the Mouse Trap, to early mornings watching the sun rise; from throwing things from windows, to sneaking on roofs; from breaking into SAGA, to breaking into attics; from Quad parties, to Franzia/drum corps parties; from sitting by the radiator with honeynut cheerios, to cheesy movies on tiny futons; from knocking on walls to communicate with friends through rooms, to AIM'ing people next door; from extreme billards, to ultimate frisbee; from late night trips to the beach, to romps in the snow; from long ass dorm meetings, to crazy ass central meetings; from the first awkward New Student Week dance party I attended, to the first NSW dance party I helped organize; from the first nerves that exploded in hello, to the ones that blew up in a hug; from smoking cigars outside Willard, to driving with friends with my feet out the window; from the very moment I stepped into this dorm and saw people I knew in line to get their keys with me (Paul Bryan from Preview NU and Grant from Cincy), from the moment I stepped into my tiny ass crotch room freshman year and Jess and I made it work, from the moment I first felt at home and then had to leave it before coming home again, and even right now, thinking that I will be somewhere else next year, I wax nostalgic and feel honored to have shared my first two years of college with these amazing people.
I didn't intend for this to be my "Holy Shit! I'm Almost Half-Way Done With School!" entry, but it might have ended up being that.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
A Thought From Lake Michigan
The trick is that you take your hands and make a frame through which to see the world. Survey the entire horizon through that frame, slowly. In each crest and fold and dip and wave of life in front of you, there is a place that is yours. All you have to do is step through that frame and claim it.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Trees
"I don't want to be a flower," I told my mom as I slid into the station wagon's passenger seat. "I want to be a tree."
My mom smiled and her eyes flashed as she looked at me. "What do you mean?"
That day in my third grade class, Mrs. Perkins had told me I could be a flower.
The specifications of why I could be a flower now escape me. I think it involved something about being pretty or smart or really standing out. Standing out--like a flower? Flowers never struck me as really standing out.
"But I wanna be a tree."
"But flowers are prettier."
I let myself go labeled as a flower, if just briefly, and sat thinking seriously about the foliage matter at hand for the rest of the day. It wasn't until this moment pulling away from Lebanon's Louisa Wright Elementary that I voiced it again.
My mom was quiet and then looked at me as we sat at the stop sign by IGA. She reached her hand around me, running her fingers through my hair. "There's no reason you can't be a tree," she told me.
She was right. There wasn't a reason I couldn't be a tree, if I wanted. Flowers were pretty, sure, but that wasn't for me... to stand around, looking pretty or just doing what everybody else in the grass was doing.
And I guess I never have.
Saturday, May 7, 2005
Hometown Proud
Taken on the surface, small towns are wonderful places.
All is lush green here in Lebanon in May. Lush green spotted with the maroon and white uniforms smudged brown with dirt after a long day of softball. These little maroon and white troops stand in disarray outside the Dairy Queen, flanked by their moms wearing matching two-toned baseball shirts and their dads sporting half-shaven greasy faces that still reek of beer and sweat.
I wonder how I spent 16 years of my life in this one place, doing exactly what these people are doing.
Wearing my maroon and white tennis sweats, standing in line at Dairy Queen, a boyfriend at my side and the keys to my Beetle swinging off my finger.Running about town with John Mayer, Third Eye Blind or Eagle Eye Cherry blasting in the CD player, the sun blinding against the glass-washed windows of the bank and Trish down at the shop on Broadway inquiring after my parents. Swinging on the swingsets down at Harmon Park and going on walks on the golf course late at night.
Did I really do this for 16 years?
The other thing about being home is that there are so few people your age there. You suddenly realize you were unaware of the absence of the 18-23 year-olds in town during the schoolyear. But now that you're back, you notice that they're not around.
The only people around are aged up to 17 or are parents... and that's when it hit me.
Everything is maroon and white here in Lebanon. Everything moves together quietly, even if under the surface there is turbulence, toward some common goal of a town with a purpose. When everyone knows who you are, it's hard not to be part of this community.
Yet, here I am, twenty years old and on my own, essentially. I've been given this opportunity to throw off school colors and punch my fists in the air while breaking free. I don't have to identify with anyone but myself right now, and that's pretty awesome.Somewhere down the line, I might end up in another Lebanon, U.S.A. and I'll port my own child's school colors and stand in line with him at the Dairy Queen. Who knows? But for now, I'm throwing punches at the world and refusing to get tied down in a city where I remain nameless and a campus where, I assume, I remain mostly a mystery.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Textbook Sterotype
I just curled up on my big green couch, alone, with nothing but a space heater, some candles, a fuzzy blanket and Honeynut Cheerios, and sobbed my way through The Notebook for the first time.
It's official. I am a girl.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
fresh starts
Without really requesting it, I've been given the opportunity for a fresh start.
In the last two weeks, my computer crashed with everything on it and I lost my cell phone.
In a sense those two losses mean nothing, but in another, they were loaded (I repeat loaded) with the heaviness of the last two years.
My voicemail alone is a diary in a sense. I delete few messages. Without fail, every time I check my voicemail, I hear Jesse Butler's voice first as he sits in Cassano's Pizzeria with me, calling my phone and yelling, "SSUUUP CAAAAAAAAAIIIIIT LEEEEEEEEN! HOWZIT GOIN!?" I hear my mom's first message to me as she and my dad drive home from dropping me off at Northwestern. I hear Brandon calling to say he misses me in October. I hear Tate calling to sing me a Happy Birthday at 4 am on the day of my birthday. I hear Heather calling me to say she got home okay from the party she abandoned me at where I had protected her from scissors. I hear Matt calling to say to come out to the lakefill to study. I hear Jess calling this summer because we kept playing phonetag rather than talking to one another. I hear Amy calling to go to Kidd Coffee. I hear Brett calling to say he was in Old Navy and thinking of me. I hear Bryan calling to say that he was out driving and listening to Keane and figured I was doing the same. I hear John calling and just screaming my name. I hear JP calling after our connection gets lost and cracking jokes for five minutes. I would hear Julie calling to give warnings about sketchy men, if I could reach my phone. And that would definitely get saved, if I could save it. I'm not even sure what the last message on my phone was recently...maybe something from Amy or Carolyn or my parents about the Chicago roadtrip.
Among other things lost are all phone numbers and saved voicenotes (they were actually important) on my phone.
My laptop is the worst loss of all. I had not only hundreds upon hundreds of photographs from my first years at college on there, but also a 50-page diary (Microsoft Word, size 10 font, single-spaced) that I had been keeping since June of senior year. I looked it over fairly thoroughly recently and I was blown away by how much I had changed without realizing it. That had been my purpose is keeping it, too--to see how much I change. I had done a relatively good job keeping it, writing long entries at least every two weeks, sometimes in spurts of a dozen short entries in a few days. I cannot express enough my disappointment at losing this document. I will never again go without backing up files for more than two weeks.With Carolyn and Amy's visit to Northwestern (simultaneous with discovery of all lost files and losing cell phone), I think that a fresh start is inevitable. Although I already felt pretty free of everything, now that I cannot even reflect on it, I have no choice but to live in the moment. Now the question is what will the moment bring? The end of the quarter brought me to two paths, one that might circle to the same point it always has and another that leads to who knows where. I am pretty excited for this trip, even if I have left my baggage somewhere else.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
So You're Not an Arts and Sciences Major Anymore?
If this brochure (see subject heading) is published anywhere, then someone please pick it up for me.
Did you notice that I just used the proper if-then sentence structure?
That's because I have to do so.
That's because I'm now in Medill.
And that's all I've got for now. :)
Sunday, January 30, 2005
First times
I dropped a class, for the first time ever. I've never felt so morally and academically conflicted. I had fallen way behind in my reading for the class, had not memorized my sonnet for the week, and knew the class was not going to serve me any purpose in my newly (almost, after I turn in the paperwork this week) declared major. Setting aside my closet-workaholic ethics and moral dilemmas, I focused on the above reasonings and pressed "drop" right next to "English Literary Traditions 210-1."
And thus, no Caesar, I am not an English Lit major.Jess and I had a magical evening of romance together last night. We did our date right, on a whim and in search of a hamburger. Our hamburger quest led us to Southport Ave., Cullen's Grille (God love them for their orgasmic onion rings), the Music Box Theatre (for a visually-stimulating French movie event through the film Notre Musique), and Julius Meinl's, a Viennese Kaffeehaus with the most decadent of decadent raspberry-mango-white chocolate tortes my tongue has ever caressed.
We had moving conversations on the El ride home, interesting pick-up lines from 30 year old men at the bars of Southport, and crashed back at our room pre-midnight. Tate came and whisked my lover away from me, and after reconciling my evening to a night of a Porter and Seinfeld alone, I was pleasantly surprised by a visit from JP. After some nice conversation, JP exited and I wandered down the hall to waste a good three hours before finally falling asleep around 4:30 am.
I was awoken this morning by the rude, bitter USPS man who pulled more-or-less the "you're a privileged white girl at Northwestern" bullshit on me and I went back to bed angry to have dreams about singing Backstreet Boys in bed.