Shoelaces for Josie

It is official. I am twenty-boo. Birthdays have never been a big deal and after the big twenty-fun, the next “milestone” is 25. Yay for renting cars. My friend did point out one advantage to turning twenty-boo; it erases the stigma that I am a raging alcoholic just because my age is 21. At least there’s that, right?  I didn’t even live it up big. I went out to the local dive and had a few drinks with some friends but, really, I felt like falling asleep with the ashtray for a pillow.

I saw an old friend there. He and I have known each other for years. The whole night, this blonde kept floating between him and another guy. Right before close, I sat down next to him to see how things were going. About 2 seconds after I sat down and an eighth of the way through our conversation about his drinking schedule, the blonde shows up on his shoulder. Literally. Picture a little dashboard figurine and that was this chick only life-sized. 

I thought to myself: I wasn’t having a conversation or anything. I’m wearing a sweatshirt, my hair is pulled back and I have no make-up on. I’m sitting at least two feet away from this guy and it’s got to be obvious to everyone in this room that we are not going home together nor are we trying to.

Obviously Blonde Girl didn’t pick up on that little hint. Apparently my sweatshirt and no make-up were threatening on some level. I just kind of wanted to smack her and tell her to stop being so stupid and blonde and sex-driven. I almost called her out on it. I really wanted to pull her off her permanently suctioned position on his shoulder and, in very slow speech, tell her that “I aaam noooot haaaviinng seeexx with thiis peersooon toooniiight.  Hee annd I aare friennds wiith NO benefiits.”

However, I thought she might not understand that concept. So I didn’t and just walked away instead - effectively letting her think she had “won.” Get real. Get freakin’ real. Enjoy your dashboard Blonde Girl. He won’t be there in the morning and then who are you going to lean on?

Sometimes I think that maybe I should be addressing the big issues of life in this blog - that each entry should be about a big political coup or a diversity issue or a mass murder. I think that those things are big and important and that somehow I’m not holding up my end of the responsibility network by not talking about them.

But then I think that, no, I am just fine in how I approach this blog. There are a ton of people out there who talk about the big things. The media, other bloggers, people around the dinner table - if such a concept even exists anymore. The world does not need another person to pipe off about some big political issue. What the world does need is someone to talk about the little things because little things grow into big things. Everyone is attacking the big things and trying to figure out to fix them but no one ever looks at the little things that grew into the big things. I look at the little things. It’s what makes life.

The thing is, you may not even know I’m talking about the little things. I disguise them. No one ever wants to be preached at. So if you do it intrinsically, they don’t even know sometimes. Unless they’re sharp. And some of you are very sharp, I’m sure. Haha - now I’ve got all my readers looking intently for hidden messages.  What was that movie - the guy - with all the notes and the newspapers he was looking through for hidden messages.  Shoot.  A Beautiful Mind?  And why in the hell is this the worst popcorn I have ever consumed in my entire life?  Yeah, decipher that message Popsecret. 

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and just think that maybe today would be a good day to stay in bed. That’s how I felt this morning and I decided that’s what I would do. I had stuff I should have been doing. I just put it on hold. I have decided that I only have about a month left to be completely irresponsible, why not take it to the max?

My roommate and I were talking about our childhoods earlier today, going back and retelling some stories from the old days. It really made me think - the days of summer when I was growing up - gosh those were ridiculously carefree. No worries, no decisions - nothing but sunshine and making memories.

And then there are days that I wake up and I just really don’t want to talk to people. A lot of people think that’s weird or bad. I don’t think so. I just think that it means I don’t want to talk to people. Sometimes it’s whole days and sometimes it is portions of days. Right now I’m in the portion of a day where I don’t want to talk to the human race. So I’m watching the History Channel and thinking that it would really be nice if there wasn’t stuff on my couch so I could lay down.

It rained today. I felt like I was in Washington State. Or Ireland. It rained all morning and then the sun came out for part of the afternoon and then it rained again in late afternoon before the sun came out to set in all its glory. I’ve never actually been to Washington State or Ireland but I was imagining that it would be something like that. I think I could live there. I like rain. It’s so melancholy and I like melancholy. Melancholy is different from sad or depressed but I think a lot of people view it as interchangeable. Shame on them.

But it rained and that made me happy. I did a lot of stuff today. I went through all my clothes and got rid of a stack this big.                                                                               That’s in scale - one inch equals approximately one foot in real space. It was really exciting for me. It felt good to purge. Ok, it didn’t. The whole time I was putting items in the give-away stack my mind was screaming at me But I might WANT it some day! And then I had to force the voice of reason to speak up and tell myself that, who was I kidding?  I hadn’t worn those track pants in two years. It’s not likely that I’m going to be employed anywhere that will let me wear bright yellow pants with holes in them and the crotch hanging to my knees. Le sigh. They are dead to me now…but oh the memories.

Ironically enough - actually there’s nothing ironic about this now that I think about it - but I have a story about rain.

Interestingly enough, I was walking back to my house tonight after a meeting and I was thinking back to the summer after my freshman year of college when I worked at a church camp as a cook and an activities director. I know, I know. Anyway, I always had to be in the kitchen to make breakfast at some insane hour like six in the morning. Before sun time. One day, it was pouring buckets. Serious buckets. I, of course, lived in the furthest possible building from the kitchen and so I just thought that if I sprinted there, I would get less wet. 

I ran down this hill and turned the corner where the grass changed into gravel. About three giant steps into gravel-land I completely wiped out. I don’t know what I tripped on. A rock probably. Or my own foot. Or I was going so fast I got top-heavy and tipped myself over. Either way, I did the best rendition of a superman dive that a 5′4″ girl can do, completely knocking the breath out of myself and sliding for about two feet on the gravel. Not pea gravel either.

Needless to say, I lay on the ground for about five minutes with thousands of buckets of rain drilling my body, thereby completely defeating the original plan of not getting wet.

See. It wasn’t ironic at all. It probably wasn’t even interesting. I just thought it was funny and I laughed to myself the whole way home. And that’s my story about rain.

It’s funny how the world keeps turning no matter what happens. People die but the basketball game still gets tipped off at 7:05 on the dot.

I was watching CNN and a documentary about the Virginia Tech shootings was on. It’s getting a lot of media coverage and rightfully so. Any time you turn on the TV it’s on, especially if you tune in to any of the 24-hour news services. This is huge. 32 people died. No. They were murdered. Dieing is one thing. Being murdered is another.  But with all the coverage, with the constant diet of VT massacre stories, will it become an inconsequential matter - something you get used to seeing?

I think it would be easy to become numb to it, to block it out, to see it on TV but not really take it in. I don’t think anyone would purposefully take a disinterested stance on this issue but I do think it will happen for those who didn’t suffer direct losses. It happens. Our worlds are punctured by what happens out there. We notice. We talk about it. But sooner or later and usually a lot sooner rather than later, our worlds shrink back to its one-person focus. It’s natural but sometimes you have to fight it because some things need to be remembered.

And I think at that point, it’s really important to focus on one thing. All those people that were killed? They were real people. It’s easy to see them on TV and have no feeling because you don’t know them but someone did. Lots of someones did. Those victims were daughters and sons, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, students, teachers, brothers and sisters. Those are things that all of us are too. In our one-person worlds, we are all of those things in some form or another.

I have four sisters and one brother. I have a mother and a father and a host of friends sprinkled across the world. Ok, mostly in the United States. And then I look all around me and I see everybody else with all of these ties too and then I think about VT.

32 people dead. Millions of ties severed. Forever. 

Sometimes I wish I had a British accent. “Hello, would you care for another cup of tea?” I think I would make a very good Brit. Except that I don’t like tea. Gross.

There are some days I wish I could drink top-of-the-shelf liquor. And then there are days I’m ok with drinking the cheap stuff - it makes me feel more American.

I really don’t like it when people click their tongue rings. Or when they click their fingernails. Basically, I don’t like it when people get click happy.

I’d like to learn how to fence, sword fencing. I think swords are big though, bigger than me. That could prove to be interesting.

If I was to buy another coat, it would be a navy blue peacoat.  But I won’t buy another coat because I already have one and you can only wear one at a time.

I like funny people just as much as the next person. I just happen to think the number of funny people left in this world is down to about ten. Consider the billions of people in this world and then figure out your odds of you being one of the funny people.

Because I think I’m going to need a place to live this summer. Well, not think, I know I’m going to need a place to live this summer and the options are spreading thin at this point. For obvious reasons, renters do not rent for three month chunklets of time which leaves this person semi-SOL.

One would think that one would have friends to help out in a time of need. And I do have friends. It just so happens that none of them actually live in this town which helps me not one iota. I could live with Edgar Allen in Sue City but that’s one heck of a commute, especially considering the $36.20 I put in my Lexus Buick today. I didn’t even realize it was that much until the gas thing clicked off because I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. My boss sent me to take pictures at a golf meet *shudder* and so I went and no one was there. So I called him and told him, “No one’s here.” He said to come back to the SL, his bad on screwing up the location.  So I did and I was in the middle of getting gas when he called to tell me it was actually at Fonda *like La-Fawn-Duh minus the la* and not Newell. I, of course, was slightly irate since I had been halfway there already but had come back since he told me to. 

Considering my tight schedule and my new position as, ah-hum, assistant news editor, I thought it pressing I be at the press night for the student newspaper. So I told him I couldn’t go back to where I had already halfway been and left it at that. I hate golf.

On a sidenote, I may not get along with my family but my mother makes amazing pickles. I have never determined why, though, do the long pickles taste so much better than the round ones? 

My bruise has officially arrived. It’s big. And purplish. And cool. Until I tell people how I got it. Then they just laugh and wonder how a senior in college managed to get hit in the leg with a softball. Oh well, I can take it.

You know, I think it’s important to believe in yourself. You have to have confidence in yourself and your abilities before you can make it to the places you want to be. But people who preach that as the sole important factor are full of crap. Plain and simple. Life is about so much more than having confidence in yourself. You could have more belief in yourself and what you’re about than Bill Gates but if no one gives you the opportunity to let that belief go to work then you’re not going to get very far. Life is about combinations I think.

Like right now, myself and a bunch of the people I’ve lived with, partied with and gone to school with for the past four years are trying to find out the right combination in the next step after graduation. And what is one person’s combination is not going to be another’s. For instance, I know without a doubt my combination is not working for Wells Fargo in Des Moines. Hellllllllll no. Apparently it’s a lot of other people’s combination and that’s fine, just not for me.

A lot of the people I went to high school with stayed around my hometown. It’s not a bad town I don’t suppose.  It’s small - somewhere around 1000 people. I guess they like the home thing, being close to the family and whatnot. As I was telling someone the other day, when I get vacation time, I’m using it to go to Ireland. And then Australia. And then India. And then I’m going to buy a house on Lake Tahoe and learn how to ski. I’m not going to be using it to go home. I’ve seen Iowa in all its glory for 22 years…why would I want to use my vacation time to come back to something I already know so well? 

I decided today that I must learn how to play softball. I write about baseball and softball but I have never really played. Sure, I played in high school gym class but Mr. Eastrise, although he was the head coach of the baseball team and just led them to a state championship, never really took an active role in teaching me how to play properly. So today I learned how to throw, how to catch, how to get hit by a softball *my leg hurts and there will be a monsta-huge bruise tomorrow.* I also was struck once again, perhaps most poignantly, about what I regret most about my childhood. I desperately wish that I could have played sports the whole time I was growing up and it’s my deepest regret about the way I was raised.

Sure, I ran track. And I was good. Really good. But I could have been really good at basketball too and I know I could have been good at softball.  I could have been a four-sport athlete and I know without a doubt that I would have loved every minute of it. And I wish I could go back, I wish I could have a whole set of experiences. I feel cheated. I feel like I missed out on something really amazing. I know I missed out on something amazing and the thought of that makes me want to tear up a bit. 

At the same time, I know it could not be any different. I should count myself lucky I got to do one sport I suppose. My dad hates sports. You think I’m lying but I’m really truly not. He hates them and he doesn’t like athletes. And here, sports are my life. I don’t know how it happened - me being born into a family that mostly hates sports or doesn’t have any interest in them - but it did. 

I don’t want to be one of those parents who lives through their children’s lives. I’m afraid I will be. I don’t want to be that parent that pushes their children into doing sports but, believe me, if they have any interest in them at all, they will have every opportunity to play and to compete. I’ll be damned if they grow up, look back and feel like I do right now. 

I like weekends. Who doesn’t? This weekend seems to have disappeared on me, though.  Obviously it is Monday and I don’t know how that happened. It’s like Saturday and Sunday never were. I had to run a golf meet on Friday and Saturday. I have no qualms about voicing my exact opinions about this sport. I do not like it. I think it’s pointless and there’s no action. It is beyond me how anyone can find this interesting. Granted, I am a bit jaded from having to sit for 11 hours, waiting for scores to come in so I can record them all and run them through my stat program. But still - I think I’m standing on very valid ground for my thoughts and opinions about this game.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I had to sit for 11 hours and actually have something to watch. But no, I’m stuck in a clubhouse, watching billiards on ESPN and listening to some old guys smoking cigarettes argue about the best way to hold a golf club. Come on.

Right, well, enough of my rantings. I’ve already given more space to this sport than is necessary.

The Virginia Tech shootings. The number of dead is estimated at 31 or 32 right now. That’s 31 or 32 families whose lives will never be the same. Horrible.