St Patrick's Day

I came to a realization today concerning adults. Things that are important to us (taxes, jobs, car maintenance) are not important to children. AND things that are important to children (such as St Patrick's Day) are not important to adults.

I came to this realization at about 7:20am this morning when I walked into the elementary school that I volunteer with on Thursdays and was immediately accosted by children who wanted to know if I was wearing green and if they could pinch me because I wasn't. This morning finding a clean shirt was more prominent in my mind than finding one in any particular color.

I remember thinking on Tuesday that I should remember to wear green. Because these kinds of things are important to elementary students. And then this morning I rolled out of bed, pulled on a striped shirt, and drove to the school. Fortunately for me I pulled the "adults trump holidays" card and so the children did not actually pinch me. I also pulled the "aquamarine blue is green today" card - which the children kind of nodded at.

My question is: how did a holiday centered around a christian missionary become an American holiday that focuses on pinching people and pots of gold that are hidden at the end of rainbows? And why is an Irish story celebrated in America in the first place? And of course leprechauns somehow got tossed into the mix.

(Leprechaun trap: tall ladder. "do not climb")

I suppose though we also celebrate things like pi day. So the answer then is "why wouldn't we celebrate it?"

I think I will create my own holiday and begin celebrating it.

Grocery Store Lines

I am a judgmental person. And because of this I figure that most other people in the universe are judgmental as well. Part of this, in theory, is caused because of my choosing to major in English. English professors are snobs about learning and analyzing things. So naturally I figure I have caught part of the same illness. I like to think that I am more aware of social stigmas and archetypes than most people.Which obviously means I can function on a higher level then those who simply feed into popular expectations. Right?

In my normal daily tasks I will sometimes stop and wonder how people are perceiving me. I think about it when I go to the mall in sweats and a messy pony tail. I think about it when I wear high heels and a semi-formal dress to buy cookies from a store before going to a party. I think about it when I remember that I have never in my life had a pedicure. I think about it when I walk down a city street and remember that in my childhood I used to walk barefoot through weedy hills and milk goats. I think about it when people introduce themselves to me in a new class and they literally know nothing about me.

I can wear a lot of hats: The student. The farm girl. The roommate who locked herself out of the apartment last week. The girl checking out books at the library. The flirtatious girl with a big smile. The girl who sings along to the songs playing in the background at the grocery store. –Because I am comfortable doing things that don't conform with typical social behavior I like to think about myself as unaffected. However I think I may just be too lazy to care what people think. Or, more accurately, too lazy to change even when I know what people think of me.

A favorite exercise of mine is to judge myself when I check out at the grocery store – or, rather, guess how the cashier would judge me. It is like a game. On the days when I buy lettuce and tomatoes and whole wheat bread I win at being healthy and nutritionally minded. In my head the cashier is SO impressed. 

On days when I replenish my chocolate chip supply, buy sugar, and splurge on potato chips… I figure they think I am unhealthy and probably a couch potato. Which means I loose.

Then I start wondering where they would put me in life. Do I look like a college student? A young mother? A working woman? A teenager buying groceries for their mom? Then I want to pick a scenario and play it out. Then I think if I'm good at it I should go into acting. Then I think of myself as a famous actress. Then I remember that I'm in a grocery store staring at tomatoes.

Ants

About a year ago Ashley, my best friend, and I were viciously torn apart. Sort of. Ashley got accepted to a graduate school in a different state and left me. Although, in her defense, she did offer to let me quit my job and move with her to Idaho. I have a policy about Idaho. There are some states which have a certain ring to them, they just sound cool. New York. If you tell someone you live in New York you will automatically get cool person points. I feel that California, Florida, or Washington DC will have the same effect. Conversely, I feel there are a few states which automatically sap cool person points. . . such as Idaho. So I selfishly kept my job, cried, and didn't move to Idaho.

One thing I love about Ashley is that she Always has crazy stories to tell. One such story was the story of the ants. First of all I feel I should preface this by saying there are two types of people in the world: Type A and Type B. Type A people are the high-stress, I go jogging at 4am so I can shower and be at work by 7, let-me-put-that-in-my-daily-planner, I wear fitted suits and brand name shoes type of people. Type B people are I don't believe in mornings, I eat my ice-cream out of the carton with a fork (because all the spoons were dirty), the last time I wore make-up was five months ago, the floor is my closet kind of people. *This is putting things VERY drastically, most people are a mix of Type A and Type B, I just wanted to give you an idea of the disparity between the types.

Ashley is a Type B. Definitively.

On Halloween Costumes

I have never been very invested in Halloween. I think I was raised with a bias against such things by a rather pious mother. (I also grew up disliking The Emperor's New Groove and Harry Potter 6 and 7.) Also I am lazy. First of all, brainstorming costumes takes effort. Second of all, actually making and wearing a costume? Soooo much work.

In my defense: I started thinking about Halloween in July (of last year, and started this blog post last year, and am finishing it almost a year later). I don't know if I can really call what I did "preparing" for Halloween because I was not thinking of costumes and drawing out plans of what I would wear or how I could look.

What happened was that I was bored on a Saturday afternoon. What I did was make up paranormal valentines with my roommate. Paranormal being the Halloween related part. Ingredients that went into this misadventure: me, my roommate, the fact that we'd been in our apartment too long, the fact that we'd known each other for too long, pen and paper.

Indulge me.

We began with poor puns:

The Mummy: "I'm all wrapped up in you."

The Ghost: "My love for you is transparent."

The Werewolf: "You bring out the animal in me."

On Ducks

Most of my life is lived in a kind of normal way where I say stupid things, and do strange things, and have funny stories to tell. Then, every once in a while, I have a light-bulb moment where I remember that I am a college graduate and have a brain and can think deeply about things.

The most common time this epiphany of academia hits me is after watching pop-movies.  I like to sit down and pick the plots and characters apart with Ashley. By the time I get done with these discussions I feel that I understand the movie so well and know all its weaknesses and strengths that I should become a movie director and leave my drab life behind. I should at least be a film critic. —Or screenwriter. Or director.

Other times I read books and then find myself writing essays about them—in my head, actually writing things out is completely overrated. A book has to really annoy me to get me to the point where I'm actually typing out my critique. Although I did once write a mini-novel review of a book I loathed and posted it to goodreads (because that is where serious humanity majors post their critiques). Why is it that essays are hard to write, but I can think up 3,000 words on a fiction title that bugged me in a matter of minutes?

And then . . . there are the times I have my brilliant epiphanies about things that are not at all scholarly, or even have the slightest potential to make me seem remotely wise.  I had one of these false epiphanies the other day about ducks.  Yes, ducks.

Just a Quick Run. . .

I have a tendency to inconvenience myself. Sometimes I don’t think far enough ahead and I do silly things like leave my lunch in the fridge at my apt. Then I spend my lunch hour thinking to myself well that was dumb, I could be eating right now if I’d brought that food I purposely prepared for myself with me. Unfortunately often I inconvenience myself because I am capricious. (If you don’t know what that means I'm helping you expand your vocabulary -look it up.) Sometimes I decide to go on spur-of-the-moment adventures. . . Adventures are fine. My problem is that I allow myself to be distracted even when I know I don’t have time. Example:

I recently got asked on a date—it happens sometimes. I said I’d go. He said he’d pick me up after work . . . and the day rolled around.

That day I drove back from work, found I had a lot of extra energy, and decided I wanted to go running. Most people would have looked at the clock, thought to themselves oh I only have an hour before the date. I should NOT go running right now. My brain doesn’t work that way.

Birthday

I had a birthday recently—seems like most people have one about every year or so. When I was a child I used to go all out (and by "I" I mean my mother) and have huge, elaborate parties. Medieval wars with marshmallow cannons and cardboard castles, outer-space explorations with aluminum helmets and edible aliens, sleepovers with no sleep. . .

Then I hit teenage-hood. I have a complex about getting older, I think the first time I cried on my birthday was when I was thirteen.  It's not that I had a phobia of wrinkles or that I wanted to stay a lame barely-teen for eternity. Crazy as it sounds, I just LOVED being thirteen so much. Guess you could say I had a happy childhood—minus birthdays.

The tearful birthday tradition continued. I cried when I turned fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen. No parties, no celebrations—in my defense, I did not dress up in black and morn like something had just died (maybe just thought about it). By the time I hit twenty I'd gotten a little better control of myself. Looking back I am soooooo glad I did not freeze myself at the young age of fifteen or sixteen, even though at the time that was all I wanted. To be stuck as a fifteen-year-old for the rest of your life. Yuck.

Finally, my college breeding hit, at twenty-one (almost) I wasn't going to stop aging because I threw a fit, and that I had friends, and I decided to party it up. I invited everyone I knew to play games and eat cake, and that's exactly what we did. I think we had at least two or three different kinds of cake and ice-cream, youtube watching, and games.

Some people know when there is a good thing, and then they know when to stop so there's not too much of a good thing (yes, there can be too much of a good thing). I tend to go overboard. For my next birthday instead of just having a party I decided to do intense things. Not intense things like normal people might do, but intense things like a person like me would do.