...my grandmother's children didn't have to decide whether to take her off dialysis and let her die. Yesterday, around the time they had planned to gather to make the decision, she shut down completely. The hospital made her comfortable, everyone came for the end (all the locals, at least--which, that day, included my mother), and she died with everyone around, quietly.
What must my Aunt Jan and Uncle Earle think? They began my freshman year of college with two charges to nurse--my grandmother and my Uncle Tom--and now both of them are dead. I hope they don't feel guilty that they finally get some rest. They're not so young themselves (Aunt Jan is the oldest sister), and did that caretaking for quite some time.
My dad is adopted; I had six grandparents. Two died before I ever knew them (one died before my father ever knew him, for that matter), three in the ensuing years, and the one remaining could no longer tell you who I am. But that's how it is; quantity did not mean stronger relationships. My grandparents were much more distant figures, never like Tim and Tom's, like Zinni's.
But I did not expect, even though my dad had one family more, that my mother would be the orphan first.
I should have done real homework last night, stuff due tomorrow, instead of the anthro and the late-night philosophizing; I am almost hopelessly behind now, having misjudged how much time I would have this afternoon, and my ability to stay awake through it. I guess being a little sick does mean I can't just shoot through on five hours, like I could last semester.
But it's time to shower and have dinner and APO meeting.
-Laurel
1.30.2005
Silver on the Tree
Stephen opened his mouth.
"Don't say it," said his father, "don't say it! You know how many [cruel and prejudiced people] there are. You can't convince 'em and you can't kill 'em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction--which you did."
...Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth. He was filled with a terrible anxiety, a sense of urgency for the Light, and knew that it would remain with him, silently shouting at him, far more vividly than the fading memory of a single bigot like Mr. Moore.
...[But] Barbara smiled at him briefly, and Will could sense her formless maternal concern that her youngest brother had been upset by the violence...
His spirits lifted. The Old One within him thought: The other side. Don't forget. There's always the other side of people, too.
-Silver on the Tree, Susan Cooper
I scared Tim tonight, a little, looking up CIA facts on HIV in other countries while he was there, and telling him of the calculations I'd made, once, when I was feeling masochistic: should he and I each manage to save five people from poverty every single day for the rest of our lives (given that each of us lives exactly eighty more years from this past January 1st, which I realize is highly unlikely), we'd reach a combined total of 292,000 people.
Which is not too shabby, except that a) that's obviously not going to happen, at least not at that steady a rate, and b) the UN estimates that one billion people live on a dollar a day or less (check this).
This kind of thing has been driving me crazy so far this semester...until about last night.
The thing I don't like about my classes this semester is that they're all (except for honors-seminar) so darn philosophical and grand-scaled, and they all hate concrete answers. Anthro so far basically says, okay, everything you know? Everyone else has a different answer, and LoLA is all like, we're going to have all these open-ended discussions and be Zen and read poems about the utter weirdness of Christianity!, and Intro to Critical Analysis is like, ¡oye, conneciones al "mundo actual" no son tanto intelectual, así vamos a enseñar esnobismo!.(Basically, "hey, 80% of what you did in American and British Lit was tainted by trying to learn about people, so we're going to make you talk about literary form and abstract concepts! In Spanish!")
Anydangway, I said all that to say all this--reading Silver on the Tree, with the paragraphs quoted above, the beginnings of a modicum of sense have begun to creep into my brain. Look at that number, Tim and me together saving people. 292,000, and that's an incredibly idealistic number. We'd be lucky to save 2,920.
From poverty itself, permanently? We'd be lucky to save 292. Whoever you put in that equation. So take Tim out, put Ananda in. A media arts major and an English major, perhaps with families? ...Put Chris in, he's going to be a doctor. Now, he wants to work at a clinic that treats people who don't have insurance. That's a lot of people. Change saving from poverty to saving lives, and he may, over the course of a busy lifetime, save something like 292,000 individual lives. There, he's reached the number. ...For the rest of a suffering billion, he'd have to do it 3,424,657.5 more times.
I have been talking, aching, nearly screaming to do something that makes a legitimate difference on the planet, and instead I find that a whole lifetime of work, at least on my individual, English-major, don't-want-to-be-president scale, won't even show up as a radar blip. Yet I am commanded, by that faith which still means the whole flawed world to me, to feed and clothe and visit.
I'm going to have to cling to the idea that I've been furiously rejecting for years--that small actions are everything. The degree to which our world is screwed up is such that I will make almost as little lasting difference to the planet as someone who was never born. Yet I find myself here, and the only thing I can really do is to be the change I wish there was--in the hopes that just one more person will decide to do the same, that just one more person can know love and peace.
So what is a small action, and what is a large? Paul tells some of those he writes to that they should aspire to lead a quiet life, working with their hands. That always blew my mind. Something so simple, so seemingly insignificant. And from someone whose life was nothing like quiet, nothing like insignificant.
I've yet to decide whether things like making a casserole for a grieving family are on anything like an equal scale with life-saving. But given who I am and what I do, I know which one is more do-able at this moment. Probably at all moments. (Okay, bad example perhaps, given that I don't have a kitchen at this house. But work with me here.)
I wish this meant that I would be less of a guilt-ridden head case, but I don't find that likely. Some days it will be even worse, knowing for good and all just how infinitesimal my work will be, not even certain what my work is. Am I supposed to be a writer, a public servant, a professor? I will probably not have that much more patience with painting faces, knowing that I could be filling stomachs.
But instead of "infinitesimal," the previous paragraph's final word choice, I had started typing "fruitless," only to erase it.
Tim and Mike are long since AIM-idle, sleeping by now, peaceful boys, and I've spent more than an hour on this. The time/date at the bottom are always when the entry is started, unless I change it (as I did last Sunday's entry). Albert will be up and perhaps in church by now, in France. I don't know how much of this will sound like night-philosophy when I get up, sweeping and melodramatic. Especially when I wake up the same, tired and fussy and easily-angered.
Think I'll save five lives tomorrow? I don't. Change? Not significantly, at least not likely so. Better? That is attainable. I will have to define it loosely, realizing that five people could better my own on the same day.
It is not what I really want...and in a way, it is.
-Laurel
"Don't say it," said his father, "don't say it! You know how many [cruel and prejudiced people] there are. You can't convince 'em and you can't kill 'em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction--which you did."
...Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth. He was filled with a terrible anxiety, a sense of urgency for the Light, and knew that it would remain with him, silently shouting at him, far more vividly than the fading memory of a single bigot like Mr. Moore.
...[But] Barbara smiled at him briefly, and Will could sense her formless maternal concern that her youngest brother had been upset by the violence...
His spirits lifted. The Old One within him thought: The other side. Don't forget. There's always the other side of people, too.
-Silver on the Tree, Susan Cooper
I scared Tim tonight, a little, looking up CIA facts on HIV in other countries while he was there, and telling him of the calculations I'd made, once, when I was feeling masochistic: should he and I each manage to save five people from poverty every single day for the rest of our lives (given that each of us lives exactly eighty more years from this past January 1st, which I realize is highly unlikely), we'd reach a combined total of 292,000 people.
Which is not too shabby, except that a) that's obviously not going to happen, at least not at that steady a rate, and b) the UN estimates that one billion people live on a dollar a day or less (check this).
This kind of thing has been driving me crazy so far this semester...until about last night.
The thing I don't like about my classes this semester is that they're all (except for honors-seminar) so darn philosophical and grand-scaled, and they all hate concrete answers. Anthro so far basically says, okay, everything you know? Everyone else has a different answer, and LoLA is all like, we're going to have all these open-ended discussions and be Zen and read poems about the utter weirdness of Christianity!, and Intro to Critical Analysis is like, ¡oye, conneciones al "mundo actual" no son tanto intelectual, así vamos a enseñar esnobismo!.(Basically, "hey, 80% of what you did in American and British Lit was tainted by trying to learn about people, so we're going to make you talk about literary form and abstract concepts! In Spanish!")
Anydangway, I said all that to say all this--reading Silver on the Tree, with the paragraphs quoted above, the beginnings of a modicum of sense have begun to creep into my brain. Look at that number, Tim and me together saving people. 292,000, and that's an incredibly idealistic number. We'd be lucky to save 2,920.
From poverty itself, permanently? We'd be lucky to save 292. Whoever you put in that equation. So take Tim out, put Ananda in. A media arts major and an English major, perhaps with families? ...Put Chris in, he's going to be a doctor. Now, he wants to work at a clinic that treats people who don't have insurance. That's a lot of people. Change saving from poverty to saving lives, and he may, over the course of a busy lifetime, save something like 292,000 individual lives. There, he's reached the number. ...For the rest of a suffering billion, he'd have to do it 3,424,657.5 more times.
I have been talking, aching, nearly screaming to do something that makes a legitimate difference on the planet, and instead I find that a whole lifetime of work, at least on my individual, English-major, don't-want-to-be-president scale, won't even show up as a radar blip. Yet I am commanded, by that faith which still means the whole flawed world to me, to feed and clothe and visit.
I'm going to have to cling to the idea that I've been furiously rejecting for years--that small actions are everything. The degree to which our world is screwed up is such that I will make almost as little lasting difference to the planet as someone who was never born. Yet I find myself here, and the only thing I can really do is to be the change I wish there was--in the hopes that just one more person will decide to do the same, that just one more person can know love and peace.
So what is a small action, and what is a large? Paul tells some of those he writes to that they should aspire to lead a quiet life, working with their hands. That always blew my mind. Something so simple, so seemingly insignificant. And from someone whose life was nothing like quiet, nothing like insignificant.
I've yet to decide whether things like making a casserole for a grieving family are on anything like an equal scale with life-saving. But given who I am and what I do, I know which one is more do-able at this moment. Probably at all moments. (Okay, bad example perhaps, given that I don't have a kitchen at this house. But work with me here.)
I wish this meant that I would be less of a guilt-ridden head case, but I don't find that likely. Some days it will be even worse, knowing for good and all just how infinitesimal my work will be, not even certain what my work is. Am I supposed to be a writer, a public servant, a professor? I will probably not have that much more patience with painting faces, knowing that I could be filling stomachs.
But instead of "infinitesimal," the previous paragraph's final word choice, I had started typing "fruitless," only to erase it.
Tim and Mike are long since AIM-idle, sleeping by now, peaceful boys, and I've spent more than an hour on this. The time/date at the bottom are always when the entry is started, unless I change it (as I did last Sunday's entry). Albert will be up and perhaps in church by now, in France. I don't know how much of this will sound like night-philosophy when I get up, sweeping and melodramatic. Especially when I wake up the same, tired and fussy and easily-angered.
Think I'll save five lives tomorrow? I don't. Change? Not significantly, at least not likely so. Better? That is attainable. I will have to define it loosely, realizing that five people could better my own on the same day.
It is not what I really want...and in a way, it is.
-Laurel
Globalized
For anthropology, I was assigned an extended version of the thing we did in Global History in 9th grade, the "list the countries that made 10 articles' worth of your clothing," or whatever. This time, it was every piece of clothing I owned. And right now, I have a lot of clothing at school, because I didn't take my summer clothes home over Christmas break, and then I brought back all my winter stuff. (You should see how much stuff I've got in my dresser drawers and in layers on my plastic hangers. It's totally disgraceful.)
So I did this, and came up with something like 20 different countries across my overflowing closet. Excerpt from my informal write-up:
Conclusions:
1) The First World doesn't seem to make a lot of clothing.
2) Africa doesn't appear to make a lot of clothing, either.
3) The more mass-produced a t-shirt is, the more likely that it was made in a Spanish-speaking nation.
4) China is big on footwear.
5) I'm being clothed in some cases by countries I can't find on a map.
6) I probably own more articles of clothing than most other 19-year-olds on the planet, let alone most college students.
It's something to think about, all of it.
-Laurel
So I did this, and came up with something like 20 different countries across my overflowing closet. Excerpt from my informal write-up:
Conclusions:
1) The First World doesn't seem to make a lot of clothing.
2) Africa doesn't appear to make a lot of clothing, either.
3) The more mass-produced a t-shirt is, the more likely that it was made in a Spanish-speaking nation.
4) China is big on footwear.
5) I'm being clothed in some cases by countries I can't find on a map.
6) I probably own more articles of clothing than most other 19-year-olds on the planet, let alone most college students.
It's something to think about, all of it.
-Laurel
1.28.2005
::scowls:: Not fair, not fair...
Was alllll set to make good on one resolution and get to SonLife, and felt fine yesterday and half of today except for being tired and a little nose-runny...
...and between e-board and the end of dinner I came down with 3/4 of the flu symptoms the health center sent out, including fever and chills. Which constituted a major reality check about going anywhere. (It was so weird. Casey and Tim and Jenny all said I was really warm, but I couldn't feel any warmth on my forehead at all until I got back to the house...I was sitting there with my coat on, still cold.)
Slept for several hours and am up now, feeling mildly better (or, at least, not feeling any worse) but still pretty weak, hot, detached. Good thing Tim read the health-center e-mail first and kept me from taking any aspirin, which was the first thing I thought of doing (apparently acetaminophen/ibuprofen = good, aspirin = bad...why?).
So doing my mound of homework tomorrow should be, ehm, entertaining. 'Cause right now, whether it's smart or not, I'm too tired to do any thinking, and I'm'a drink Juicy Juice and finish the last Dark is Rising book.
I am starting to use "I'm'a" entirely too much.
-Laurel
...and between e-board and the end of dinner I came down with 3/4 of the flu symptoms the health center sent out, including fever and chills. Which constituted a major reality check about going anywhere. (It was so weird. Casey and Tim and Jenny all said I was really warm, but I couldn't feel any warmth on my forehead at all until I got back to the house...I was sitting there with my coat on, still cold.)
Slept for several hours and am up now, feeling mildly better (or, at least, not feeling any worse) but still pretty weak, hot, detached. Good thing Tim read the health-center e-mail first and kept me from taking any aspirin, which was the first thing I thought of doing (apparently acetaminophen/ibuprofen = good, aspirin = bad...why?).
So doing my mound of homework tomorrow should be, ehm, entertaining. 'Cause right now, whether it's smart or not, I'm too tired to do any thinking, and I'm'a drink Juicy Juice and finish the last Dark is Rising book.
I am starting to use "I'm'a" entirely too much.
-Laurel
::looks puzzled--and annoyed::
Okay, so just what do you do when someone you know from honors last semester forgets that you have access to her LJ, or doesn't remember that you're in APO, then posts that she's planning on pledging just because she's got a crush on a fellow pledge and it'll be an excuse to talk to that person?
She's certainly sad and lonely enough that she could use people to talk to, but come on.
-Laurel
She's certainly sad and lonely enough that she could use people to talk to, but come on.
-Laurel
1.27.2005
Good gracious, did they put pepper in these gingersnaps? ::fans mouth and switches to Goobers::
Greetings from the House on the Hill. It's time for a brief pre-choir report.
The following things are going well: stuff with my car (snow tires r0xx0r, d00d!), stuff with the job search (scored an interview over spring break!), honors, folk dancing, stuff with the heating in my room (has returned to "functional," yeah!).
The following things go fairly: anthro, soc-psy ('cause it's boring), LoLA, choir, meals, APO.
The following things are sucking out loud: Spanish class, New Year's resolutions (especially that one about not getting mentally angry at people), and cleaning my room.
Thank you.
-Laurel
The following things are going well: stuff with my car (snow tires r0xx0r, d00d!), stuff with the job search (scored an interview over spring break!), honors, folk dancing, stuff with the heating in my room (has returned to "functional," yeah!).
The following things go fairly: anthro, soc-psy ('cause it's boring), LoLA, choir, meals, APO.
The following things are sucking out loud: Spanish class, New Year's resolutions (especially that one about not getting mentally angry at people), and cleaning my room.
Thank you.
-Laurel
1.23.2005
Of life and death and relevance
All these politics
Of life and death and relevance...
...it's my existence.
-"Existence," Kevin Max
Had another nightmare last night, about the third in as many days, this one the most vivid and the worst of all. I was driving my next-door neighbor's car--emerald green--and, poorly judging traffic, made part of a left turn where the road made a T, then had to stop to wait for a line of cars coming over the hill. A car started coming at me from the other side, and finding myself in its lane, swerved to the left, going into a ditch off the side of the road. I was unhurt, but in swerving to avoid me, they were hit head-on by another car.
It looked like Main Street here, though I knew it was supposed to be home. When I got out of the car and went over to the one I'd hit (even though I hadn't, I felt it was my fault), the two conscious passengers were in the backseat, attempting to revive the third. The two that were okay were a youngish guy, with light brown curly hair; and his wife, straight hair of a slightly-blonder shade, to mid-neck--he was a doctor, and she had some medical knowledge, too. They were talking medical jargon quietly, urgently among themselves and trying to use a defibrilator on the other passenger, who was bundled up in a black jacket; I couldn't see his face, but he looked full-grown. There may have been a minor gash on the doctor's forehead, but I don't remember anymore.
Finding myself useless and frightened, I went into a hairdressers' place across the street to make sure 911 was being called. I must have wandered around the place in a fright. What brought me back was the ladies at the register (it was like SuperCuts, sort of) talking about the accident--"two hurt and the third killed"--and I raced back to the hit car, the only car around now, trying to bring home the idea that I was responsible for the ending of somebody's life.
I think I'd forgotten that I hadn't hit them, somebody else had. ...It wouldn't have mattered, though.
The two conscious passengers sat in the front now, the mother staring out of the front windshield in a daze. I looked through what must have been a glassless window into the back. The defibrilated patient must have been full-grown, but he was nowhere to be seen, and this dead third passenger wasn't--it was a little boy that must have been their son, with the same curly hair as his father, and the same black winter jacket in smaller form. Maybe a year old, in a child carseat, looking like he was sleeping, except that the strange hardness in his face told me that he'd never wake up. I stood numb, wide-eyed in horror--as I'd left the hairdresser's, I'd
The doctor was reassuring his wife, saying maybe somehow I'd saved both of their lives, though the son was dead. I remember wailing, almost screaming at him, "how?"
He got out and got so close to me I thought he'd grab me by the shoulders, and tried to explain, in words I barely recall and will not try to reproduce, that maybe in hitting them, I'd saved them from a worse fate down the road. How could anyone be sure?
I knew I should call my parents--what could I tell them?--but I ran after him as he turned back toward the car door. "Let me tell you how it happened," I said, trying to give him as much information as I could about something that could take away his son. I was in the middle of explaining it when my eyes opened and I found myself staring at the wall, realizing almost instantly that it had never happened, I hadn't caused anyone's death; but my heart was pounding, and my mouth so dry that I almost had to peel my tongue off the top.
...My mouth almost never gets dry, no matter how frightened I am.
It was about 7:45; I didn't have to be up until 8:30. I meant to stay up, since falling back asleep seemed both dangerous and inappropriate somehow, but I was so exhausted that instead I drifted in and out of sleep (more dreams, though fragmented and neither pleasant nor scary; I must be so sleep-deprived already, because they were also pretty detailed) until my alarm went off.
With this inauspicious start to the morning, I got ready and came downstairs to go to Mass with Tim. I had been planning, until last night, to go down to IV as normal, as it's pretty much the first service of the semester. As it happens, I also missed both the home-cooked lunch afterward and what must have been Tom's worship-team debut, but Mike and Chris had decided that they weren't approaching Jude's so early in the morning, when nothing was plowed after the big snow, so lest Tim cross half the village alone, I promised before bed last night to go with him. (I also got to learn about "that whole saint thing," as in the Catholic saint-prayer tradition; I feel educated now.)
The snow was up to our ankles in some parts, our shins in others (that's where we were walking; the snow drifts were much higher than that), and we followed deep truck tracks down the driveway as much as we could. The road was better-plowed, though a quarter-inch of snow still covered the whole, and we did okay on that, but were wading again after the stairs down to the main part of campus. We passed Tom as he was trying to get into the IV-service building (team practice, I shouldn't wonder) and finally detoured through the campus center to get paper towels and warm our runny noses and shivering frames; it was still freezing outside, and windy, though the sun shone. (According to weather.com, at this moment it is still only a single degree out, and -15 with wind chill, so it must have been at least as cold at nine-thirty this morning.)
We finished making our way to St. Jude's (I don't know how late we were; sometime between five and ten minutes), the wind still blowing icy sparkles across our faces, and as we came in Tim dropped his voice and said, "Hope you feel like singing; you're gonna be sight-reading."
Apparently there is a part of the church where, if you're there, you're basically part of the choir for that morning. The rest of the church was full, and he took us there. I may be wrong about the whole thing, but had it been a normal morning, we plus an older couple there probably would have just about made a quartet, except that the alto would have played Tromping Protestant again, because, as pretty as I think Catholic service music is, what I really know of it is very little.
However, it was not a normal morning; all, all music was cut out (everything spoken), and basically the Bible teaching, save the reading of the verses, was cut out, too. Father Gene's aunt, who was fine just a couple of weeks ago, is now on life support for something, and is, as far as I can tell, being taken off of it today and let to die. Since he was to be there for the whole deal (maybe also to give last rites, now that I think about it?), and had only heard about it at about eight o'clock this morning, he was essentially attempting the shortest Mass on record.
He told a story about her and his uncle, them driving in a car when he was little, him in the backseat, and their brakes failing. They stopped the car by taking it into a ditch, the same way my car went in the dream. No one was killed; as far as I know, no one was even significantly hurt.
It was a very child-oriented Mass, actually; the kids who brought up the offering were these two little girls, one so small she had to be followed by her mother as she carried the basket in toddling steps, her high, tiny pigtails sticking out almost wildly, her eyes wide and her smile bright. (They were all altar-girls today, too, which I thought was interesting.) And during congregational prayer, whatever it's really called, one mother was thankful for her child's birthday, and right after everybody said "Lord, hear our prayer," the girl's little brother, who couldn't have been more than two (I'd make him a year and a half), echoed it in a shout in his gurgling little voice, and everybody laughed.
...Somebody knew someone who'd just lost a son, twenty-three years old.
After the service, which actually ended thirty minutes early, Tim managed to get us a ride to the campus center by a lady named Kim, whom neither of us really knew (he asked someone he did know, and she offered instead)--it really was freezing out there (or, as Mike would point out, "No, man, it's below freezing!"); crossing campus and then going back uphill would have been too much at a clip. We had breakfast, since we hadn't before, and found Lily and Devin there. After eating waffles with them and talking for a long time, we eventually got up the nerve to walk the rest of the way back, which was icy-cold. From there, Tim took a nap, and I've been typing this pretty much ever since.
I'm going to take my medicine, go back to bed, and wait for whatever else this day has coming.
-Laurel
Of life and death and relevance...
...it's my existence.
-"Existence," Kevin Max
Had another nightmare last night, about the third in as many days, this one the most vivid and the worst of all. I was driving my next-door neighbor's car--emerald green--and, poorly judging traffic, made part of a left turn where the road made a T, then had to stop to wait for a line of cars coming over the hill. A car started coming at me from the other side, and finding myself in its lane, swerved to the left, going into a ditch off the side of the road. I was unhurt, but in swerving to avoid me, they were hit head-on by another car.
It looked like Main Street here, though I knew it was supposed to be home. When I got out of the car and went over to the one I'd hit (even though I hadn't, I felt it was my fault), the two conscious passengers were in the backseat, attempting to revive the third. The two that were okay were a youngish guy, with light brown curly hair; and his wife, straight hair of a slightly-blonder shade, to mid-neck--he was a doctor, and she had some medical knowledge, too. They were talking medical jargon quietly, urgently among themselves and trying to use a defibrilator on the other passenger, who was bundled up in a black jacket; I couldn't see his face, but he looked full-grown. There may have been a minor gash on the doctor's forehead, but I don't remember anymore.
Finding myself useless and frightened, I went into a hairdressers' place across the street to make sure 911 was being called. I must have wandered around the place in a fright. What brought me back was the ladies at the register (it was like SuperCuts, sort of) talking about the accident--"two hurt and the third killed"--and I raced back to the hit car, the only car around now, trying to bring home the idea that I was responsible for the ending of somebody's life.
I think I'd forgotten that I hadn't hit them, somebody else had. ...It wouldn't have mattered, though.
The two conscious passengers sat in the front now, the mother staring out of the front windshield in a daze. I looked through what must have been a glassless window into the back. The defibrilated patient must have been full-grown, but he was nowhere to be seen, and this dead third passenger wasn't--it was a little boy that must have been their son, with the same curly hair as his father, and the same black winter jacket in smaller form. Maybe a year old, in a child carseat, looking like he was sleeping, except that the strange hardness in his face told me that he'd never wake up. I stood numb, wide-eyed in horror--as I'd left the hairdresser's, I'd
The doctor was reassuring his wife, saying maybe somehow I'd saved both of their lives, though the son was dead. I remember wailing, almost screaming at him, "how?"
He got out and got so close to me I thought he'd grab me by the shoulders, and tried to explain, in words I barely recall and will not try to reproduce, that maybe in hitting them, I'd saved them from a worse fate down the road. How could anyone be sure?
I knew I should call my parents--what could I tell them?--but I ran after him as he turned back toward the car door. "Let me tell you how it happened," I said, trying to give him as much information as I could about something that could take away his son. I was in the middle of explaining it when my eyes opened and I found myself staring at the wall, realizing almost instantly that it had never happened, I hadn't caused anyone's death; but my heart was pounding, and my mouth so dry that I almost had to peel my tongue off the top.
...My mouth almost never gets dry, no matter how frightened I am.
It was about 7:45; I didn't have to be up until 8:30. I meant to stay up, since falling back asleep seemed both dangerous and inappropriate somehow, but I was so exhausted that instead I drifted in and out of sleep (more dreams, though fragmented and neither pleasant nor scary; I must be so sleep-deprived already, because they were also pretty detailed) until my alarm went off.
With this inauspicious start to the morning, I got ready and came downstairs to go to Mass with Tim. I had been planning, until last night, to go down to IV as normal, as it's pretty much the first service of the semester. As it happens, I also missed both the home-cooked lunch afterward and what must have been Tom's worship-team debut, but Mike and Chris had decided that they weren't approaching Jude's so early in the morning, when nothing was plowed after the big snow, so lest Tim cross half the village alone, I promised before bed last night to go with him. (I also got to learn about "that whole saint thing," as in the Catholic saint-prayer tradition; I feel educated now.)
The snow was up to our ankles in some parts, our shins in others (that's where we were walking; the snow drifts were much higher than that), and we followed deep truck tracks down the driveway as much as we could. The road was better-plowed, though a quarter-inch of snow still covered the whole, and we did okay on that, but were wading again after the stairs down to the main part of campus. We passed Tom as he was trying to get into the IV-service building (team practice, I shouldn't wonder) and finally detoured through the campus center to get paper towels and warm our runny noses and shivering frames; it was still freezing outside, and windy, though the sun shone. (According to weather.com, at this moment it is still only a single degree out, and -15 with wind chill, so it must have been at least as cold at nine-thirty this morning.)
We finished making our way to St. Jude's (I don't know how late we were; sometime between five and ten minutes), the wind still blowing icy sparkles across our faces, and as we came in Tim dropped his voice and said, "Hope you feel like singing; you're gonna be sight-reading."
Apparently there is a part of the church where, if you're there, you're basically part of the choir for that morning. The rest of the church was full, and he took us there. I may be wrong about the whole thing, but had it been a normal morning, we plus an older couple there probably would have just about made a quartet, except that the alto would have played Tromping Protestant again, because, as pretty as I think Catholic service music is, what I really know of it is very little.
However, it was not a normal morning; all, all music was cut out (everything spoken), and basically the Bible teaching, save the reading of the verses, was cut out, too. Father Gene's aunt, who was fine just a couple of weeks ago, is now on life support for something, and is, as far as I can tell, being taken off of it today and let to die. Since he was to be there for the whole deal (maybe also to give last rites, now that I think about it?), and had only heard about it at about eight o'clock this morning, he was essentially attempting the shortest Mass on record.
He told a story about her and his uncle, them driving in a car when he was little, him in the backseat, and their brakes failing. They stopped the car by taking it into a ditch, the same way my car went in the dream. No one was killed; as far as I know, no one was even significantly hurt.
It was a very child-oriented Mass, actually; the kids who brought up the offering were these two little girls, one so small she had to be followed by her mother as she carried the basket in toddling steps, her high, tiny pigtails sticking out almost wildly, her eyes wide and her smile bright. (They were all altar-girls today, too, which I thought was interesting.) And during congregational prayer, whatever it's really called, one mother was thankful for her child's birthday, and right after everybody said "Lord, hear our prayer," the girl's little brother, who couldn't have been more than two (I'd make him a year and a half), echoed it in a shout in his gurgling little voice, and everybody laughed.
...Somebody knew someone who'd just lost a son, twenty-three years old.
After the service, which actually ended thirty minutes early, Tim managed to get us a ride to the campus center by a lady named Kim, whom neither of us really knew (he asked someone he did know, and she offered instead)--it really was freezing out there (or, as Mike would point out, "No, man, it's below freezing!"); crossing campus and then going back uphill would have been too much at a clip. We had breakfast, since we hadn't before, and found Lily and Devin there. After eating waffles with them and talking for a long time, we eventually got up the nerve to walk the rest of the way back, which was icy-cold. From there, Tim took a nap, and I've been typing this pretty much ever since.
I'm going to take my medicine, go back to bed, and wait for whatever else this day has coming.
-Laurel
1.22.2005
In this generation, we will make the world a-shine.
CPPC for APO is over. Tim is president again. I got VPS, which makes me super-happy. Tom got VPM, which he kinda got gypped out of last year, so he's probably pretty happy himself. Ada has Tom's treasurer job (man, who knew she spent three years working for an accounting firm of some sort?), and Chris (who writes much better than he thinks he does, so I'm quite satisfied) is taking mine. Heather is doing PR, and Evan and Kelly are executing the historian job that I didn't bother touching.
I know this has little relevance outside of our chapter, but I'm so impressed at how ideally everything turned out. And it was shorter than we thought, and no one got angry, though there was a little bit of debate on a couple of things (though not the elections, really--we did a lot of discussion, very calmly, which was good).
So I get to finish out my minute-writing and newsletter-compiling until April, and work with Heather on PR (as far as I can tell, since it's not written as to how quick the succession is supposed to be), and then...I get to plan service projects to everybody's heart's content. I'm trying for everybody's, not just my own.
The job front is looking decent. The APO front is looking good.
Now, if I could get out from the schoolwork hole I'm already falling into, things will be pretty much ideal. But for now, this's feeling quite all right.
-Laurel
I know this has little relevance outside of our chapter, but I'm so impressed at how ideally everything turned out. And it was shorter than we thought, and no one got angry, though there was a little bit of debate on a couple of things (though not the elections, really--we did a lot of discussion, very calmly, which was good).
So I get to finish out my minute-writing and newsletter-compiling until April, and work with Heather on PR (as far as I can tell, since it's not written as to how quick the succession is supposed to be), and then...I get to plan service projects to everybody's heart's content. I'm trying for everybody's, not just my own.
The job front is looking decent. The APO front is looking good.
Now, if I could get out from the schoolwork hole I'm already falling into, things will be pretty much ideal. But for now, this's feeling quite all right.
-Laurel
Don't even bother commenting on this. Really.
::screams and pulls hair and sticks nonconducive object into computer and sends resume out written by hand in doctor-scribble, and then uses plasticware as a weapon against APO, simultaneously using nonexistent secretarial privilege to call off CPPC, since nobody appears to be planning to come to it on more than five hours' sleep anyway::
::and then schedules physical plant installation of oven [also nonexistent] at the very same time that Devin thinks she's going to hold her cute little house meeting::
-Laurel
::and then schedules physical plant installation of oven [also nonexistent] at the very same time that Devin thinks she's going to hold her cute little house meeting::
-Laurel
1.21.2005
"What no man can own, no man can take..."
Yesterday, on the way to Wal-Mart, Tom put in my U2 CD, which surprised me off the bat, inasmuch as he'd just gotten done being skeptical of the title (HtDaAB, 'Nanda). We listened to "Miracle Drug" (I explained it, 'cause I think that's the only way the song is truly very cool, if you know the story behind it) and "Yahweh," which had caught his interest as he pored over the titles from the back. He didn't make any comment about either of them, but produced, seemingly out of nowhere, a Steven Curtis Chapman CD, took mine out, put his in. ...That's fine. They don't sound anything like each other, but I know and like both. Just that he hadn't made any comment at all, which struck me as a little odd.
This morning I checked his away message that he'd put up before sleeping and found the last few lines of "Yahweh."
It feels dorky that I felt so much happier instantly (I'd just been having a really weird series of dreams, so it'd been a bit of a skitchy waking). But I totally did.
-Laurel
This morning I checked his away message that he'd put up before sleeping and found the last few lines of "Yahweh."
It feels dorky that I felt so much happier instantly (I'd just been having a really weird series of dreams, so it'd been a bit of a skitchy waking). But I totally did.
-Laurel
1.20.2005
:-\
So I bought some cough syrup. I didn't think it was possible to find any for $1.86, but it is. Here is the obvious reason why: it tastes pretty disgusting. I think that if you're going to artificially color a medication, you might as well go ahead and artificially flavor it. I'll take fake cherry, no prob.
In other news, if anybody wants to pray for my grandmother, that'd be specta-tacular, 'cause apparently her going off the deep end got worse. She's in a nursing home at the moment, barely stringing two sentences together for visitors, and when they do, they apparently don't make any sense. She hasn't been like this ever. She was fine at Thanksgiving.
So my Aunt Jan, who originally didn't even want her in a nursing home, is talking about taking her off of the dialysis she's getting. Which would poison her. She would die. I guess they think that's more merciful.
I had to post a message like this last year (away, though, not blog) when the same grandmother got sick, and she got better. Try for a miracle?
-Laurel
In other news, if anybody wants to pray for my grandmother, that'd be specta-tacular, 'cause apparently her going off the deep end got worse. She's in a nursing home at the moment, barely stringing two sentences together for visitors, and when they do, they apparently don't make any sense. She hasn't been like this ever. She was fine at Thanksgiving.
So my Aunt Jan, who originally didn't even want her in a nursing home, is talking about taking her off of the dialysis she's getting. Which would poison her. She would die. I guess they think that's more merciful.
I had to post a message like this last year (away, though, not blog) when the same grandmother got sick, and she got better. Try for a miracle?
-Laurel
1.19.2005
::attempts not to hack up a lung or forcefully expel tonsils::
It is 8:37 in the morning, I've gotten maybe six-and-a-quarter hours of sleep, I'm so tired that I've got a headache, my cold is acting up horribly, I have all five classes today that I'm enrolled in (choir is an audit), and my folk dancing muscles hurt.
But yesterday was nothing short of spectacular. That is all I have to say, for now, about that.
-Laurel
But yesterday was nothing short of spectacular. That is all I have to say, for now, about that.
-Laurel
1.15.2005
Horizon-expanding, sort of
So it turns out that I like chai.
Glenn and I went down to the coffee shop (the one right near his house). Matt and Kathy and Bunny were supposed to be invited, but--::laughs a bit::--if I wanted them there, then it was a bad idea to leave the inviting up to Glenn, because that means it never got done.
So we were there in the corner for well over two hours, waiting for our chais to cool, then drinking them and talking about--well, all the randomness we end up talking about, only this time we had almost a whole year's worth (even before the breakup, our communication went down the drain). And then there was a seemingly-endless game of checkers, which he should have won, but he played so I could stay even with him, so we called it a tie at four kings each and too-good defenses on both sides.
It was a nice time. I haven't seen him one-on-one since...well, there was a bit after Brigadoon when I gave him the last present, but the only prolonged thing was this exact time last year, if not exact day: the last day before I went back to school after Christmas break.
Okay, I'm massively hungry, and should get a snack if dinner isn't ready. Must...not...break into package of Twizzlers for school...
-Laurel
Glenn and I went down to the coffee shop (the one right near his house). Matt and Kathy and Bunny were supposed to be invited, but--::laughs a bit::--if I wanted them there, then it was a bad idea to leave the inviting up to Glenn, because that means it never got done.
So we were there in the corner for well over two hours, waiting for our chais to cool, then drinking them and talking about--well, all the randomness we end up talking about, only this time we had almost a whole year's worth (even before the breakup, our communication went down the drain). And then there was a seemingly-endless game of checkers, which he should have won, but he played so I could stay even with him, so we called it a tie at four kings each and too-good defenses on both sides.
It was a nice time. I haven't seen him one-on-one since...well, there was a bit after Brigadoon when I gave him the last present, but the only prolonged thing was this exact time last year, if not exact day: the last day before I went back to school after Christmas break.
Okay, I'm massively hungry, and should get a snack if dinner isn't ready. Must...not...break into package of Twizzlers for school...
-Laurel
Massive power failure at LiveJournal.com
In this difficult time for so many of my friends, I would like to offer my sympathy.
You could always join Blogger, where the really good journaling is. ;-) Think about it, virtually everyone here knows HTML at least, so all the techies congregate here. This creates an intergeek accountability matrix that forces everyone running Blogger to make darn sure that nothing happens with the servers/technology, because if it did, you would have, like, 4930248542908245 tromping nerds e-mailing you with, you n00bs, why didn't you [insert solution here]???
Or at least that's my theory.
n00b: if you're not aware of this term, it stands for "newbie," an geeky online term of derision for anyone who appears not to know what they're doing. Ananda's little sister, who is merani without a capital M, also uses it in any place that one would use "dork" or "pest", so that I can call my brother a n00b for spilling honey mustard salad dressing all over me, as he did last night.
Oh, and by the way, for anyone who isn't on here often enough to notice, you can tell without scrolling down my blog whether or not I've changed my "At the Moment" side-column. When I change that, I also change the quote at the top of the window. Like now. :-D
-Laurel
You could always join Blogger, where the really good journaling is. ;-) Think about it, virtually everyone here knows HTML at least, so all the techies congregate here. This creates an intergeek accountability matrix that forces everyone running Blogger to make darn sure that nothing happens with the servers/technology, because if it did, you would have, like, 4930248542908245 tromping nerds e-mailing you with, you n00bs, why didn't you [insert solution here]???
Or at least that's my theory.
n00b: if you're not aware of this term, it stands for "newbie," an geeky online term of derision for anyone who appears not to know what they're doing. Ananda's little sister, who is merani without a capital M, also uses it in any place that one would use "dork" or "pest", so that I can call my brother a n00b for spilling honey mustard salad dressing all over me, as he did last night.
Oh, and by the way, for anyone who isn't on here often enough to notice, you can tell without scrolling down my blog whether or not I've changed my "At the Moment" side-column. When I change that, I also change the quote at the top of the window. Like now. :-D
-Laurel
1.13.2005
About that whole college-as-coincidence-generator thing...
...met this kid Trevor tonight whom I've been seeing around since the beginning of the year, but had no idea he was the friend that Jayj long ago said went to my school until we got talking about colleges and he said where he was. I was like, "wait, you're there?! *I'm* there!"
I've been seeing him all over the place--he lives in Tom's building (though not on his floor), and he's in the university chorus (though not choir with us), and he's even at dinner sometimes, with the anime kids. Like, holy cow, no wonder he looked familiar. I figured I'd just seen him with Matt and Jayj, y'know?
Saw a lot of people tonight that I either haven't before or hadn't in a long time. Christy was there, which was cool. Jayj was there, which was also cool. Meeting Trevor was hilarious. Ethan, another friend of Jayj's, was a good guy. Bunny never showed, but since also-attending were Matt, Kathy, 'Nanda, Daf, Jeff, and Erik, we had enough people for some bowling entertainment.
Adjourned to the McDonald's across the street for cheap junk food and more all-inclusive conversation (when there're so many bowlers you're playing on two separate screens, you only talk to about half the crowd at once for a lot of it), then went en masse to my house, where Daf and Jeff brought a DVD of The Producers (original movie version). Wow. That is one cracked-out movie. But pretty good, though I still favor Spaceballs and Men in Tights.
Tomorrow (well, today, since it just turned to midnight): hopefully all the reading I haven't been doing, plus some more readying for school. Must tape the spines of a few books I'm bringing back.
-Laurel
I've been seeing him all over the place--he lives in Tom's building (though not on his floor), and he's in the university chorus (though not choir with us), and he's even at dinner sometimes, with the anime kids. Like, holy cow, no wonder he looked familiar. I figured I'd just seen him with Matt and Jayj, y'know?
Saw a lot of people tonight that I either haven't before or hadn't in a long time. Christy was there, which was cool. Jayj was there, which was also cool. Meeting Trevor was hilarious. Ethan, another friend of Jayj's, was a good guy. Bunny never showed, but since also-attending were Matt, Kathy, 'Nanda, Daf, Jeff, and Erik, we had enough people for some bowling entertainment.
Adjourned to the McDonald's across the street for cheap junk food and more all-inclusive conversation (when there're so many bowlers you're playing on two separate screens, you only talk to about half the crowd at once for a lot of it), then went en masse to my house, where Daf and Jeff brought a DVD of The Producers (original movie version). Wow. That is one cracked-out movie. But pretty good, though I still favor Spaceballs and Men in Tights.
Tomorrow (well, today, since it just turned to midnight): hopefully all the reading I haven't been doing, plus some more readying for school. Must tape the spines of a few books I'm bringing back.
-Laurel
arrrrrrrrghhh...
Am sucking at the New Year's resolutions, particularly the ones about shutting up about APO, and whatever one I may have made about not being Crisis Laurel and going from tragedy to comedy every 120 minutes. Never mind; mine, at least, aren't made to be broken.
When did I stop being able to cope with adulthood and turn instead into this total twelve-year-old? I'm worse now than I was then, for the love of decency, except that the melodramatic writing was even worse. Think of that, and tremble!
-Laurel
When did I stop being able to cope with adulthood and turn instead into this total twelve-year-old? I'm worse now than I was then, for the love of decency, except that the melodramatic writing was even worse. Think of that, and tremble!
-Laurel
But while we're on the subject of LiveJournal...
...this link, courtesy of 'Nanda.
::another pre-emptive raspberry to John:: No, I did not put this up because I'm a tromping liberal. Anyway, I'm not a tromping liberal, I'm a tromping slightly-left-of-moderate, mostly because I think that if you can't kill the babies, killing the adults is kinda stupid, too (plus, statistically, it kinda doesn't deter crime); and because I think that if everybody really believed that we needed such a well-armed citizen militia, per the Second Amendment, then there would be more dust on our firearms (when was the last time somebody in a red coat tried to set fire to your patio?) and fewer deer heads on our walls. Thank you.
::stops being obnoxious::
I put it up 'cause of the British life idea, which reminds me of fifth grade, when we were asked to picture America without its independence, and Aneya read her essay in an English accent and talked about tea.
It is sixty-something degrees and sunny. In January. Is that not spectacular?
Bowling outing tonight; more on that later, I imagine.
-Laurel
::another pre-emptive raspberry to John:: No, I did not put this up because I'm a tromping liberal. Anyway, I'm not a tromping liberal, I'm a tromping slightly-left-of-moderate, mostly because I think that if you can't kill the babies, killing the adults is kinda stupid, too (plus, statistically, it kinda doesn't deter crime); and because I think that if everybody really believed that we needed such a well-armed citizen militia, per the Second Amendment, then there would be more dust on our firearms (when was the last time somebody in a red coat tried to set fire to your patio?) and fewer deer heads on our walls. Thank you.
::stops being obnoxious::
I put it up 'cause of the British life idea, which reminds me of fifth grade, when we were asked to picture America without its independence, and Aneya read her essay in an English accent and talked about tea.
It is sixty-something degrees and sunny. In January. Is that not spectacular?
Bowling outing tonight; more on that later, I imagine.
-Laurel
1.12.2005
The more power something has to be good...::sigh::
I am totally sorry for bummer-posting again, but considering how many of my school-friends' LJs are going, I'm just joining the club anyway (thanks to Albert, however, for being a bastion of mild-mannered binary sanity stability).
Internet: source of dictionaries, online copies of great works of literature, informational exchange and verification, enlightening LJs and blogs, click-to-donate sites, poetry forums...
...and online communities of girls with pro-anorexia sentiments, supporting each other in the cause.
Like, are my eyes that darn wide, or did such a community never cross anyone else's mind as having the potential to not only exist but thrive?
I picked up on this from a girl I know whose LJ I read who I think used to be anorexic before I knew her, and who can read these things now and know that the girls are wrong--which is good. But I originally said community, singular, and she says it's so plural that if you search on LJ for anorexia forums, you will practically miss the recovery-oriented ones because there are so many supporting-the-cause ones. You can't just post to them and be like what are you doing, can't you see you're killing yourselves?! because they know enough to ban comments from those who don't belong to the board. Not that it would make much difference in most cases.
I know freedom of the press is a civil liberty, though I'd like to question whether letting a seventh-grader run an online forum that constitutes a public health hazard was ever supposed to be part of the rule. But come the heck on, LiveJournal.com, doesn't your agreement say anything about freedom to shut down journals with offensive/dangerous content? Check out how a couple girls are considering recovery and the others try to argue them out of it. Doesn't that sound a little dangerous to you?
I'm not talking about dragging anybody to court, I'm talking about showing enough guts to shut down these horrendous things. If they run an e-mail forum after that, at least it'd be harder for newbies/wannabes (look at the phrase I just used, anorexia wannabes) to find them. Granted that I don't love the idea of e-mail spam now titled trying 2 loose weihgt thru anorexia?? get support!!!!!!, but at least the links'd be relegated to junk-mail bins, where they belong.
If that's not a good solution, then somebody find one, instead of sitting back and telling me it won't work.
::adds anti-anorexia organizations to mental list of groups to shower with money and supplies if ever gets chance::
-Laurel
Internet: source of dictionaries, online copies of great works of literature, informational exchange and verification, enlightening LJs and blogs, click-to-donate sites, poetry forums...
...and online communities of girls with pro-anorexia sentiments, supporting each other in the cause.
Like, are my eyes that darn wide, or did such a community never cross anyone else's mind as having the potential to not only exist but thrive?
I picked up on this from a girl I know whose LJ I read who I think used to be anorexic before I knew her, and who can read these things now and know that the girls are wrong--which is good. But I originally said community, singular, and she says it's so plural that if you search on LJ for anorexia forums, you will practically miss the recovery-oriented ones because there are so many supporting-the-cause ones. You can't just post to them and be like what are you doing, can't you see you're killing yourselves?! because they know enough to ban comments from those who don't belong to the board. Not that it would make much difference in most cases.
I know freedom of the press is a civil liberty, though I'd like to question whether letting a seventh-grader run an online forum that constitutes a public health hazard was ever supposed to be part of the rule. But come the heck on, LiveJournal.com, doesn't your agreement say anything about freedom to shut down journals with offensive/dangerous content? Check out how a couple girls are considering recovery and the others try to argue them out of it. Doesn't that sound a little dangerous to you?
I'm not talking about dragging anybody to court, I'm talking about showing enough guts to shut down these horrendous things. If they run an e-mail forum after that, at least it'd be harder for newbies/wannabes (look at the phrase I just used, anorexia wannabes) to find them. Granted that I don't love the idea of e-mail spam now titled trying 2 loose weihgt thru anorexia?? get support!!!!!!, but at least the links'd be relegated to junk-mail bins, where they belong.
If that's not a good solution, then somebody find one, instead of sitting back and telling me it won't work.
::adds anti-anorexia organizations to mental list of groups to shower with money and supplies if ever gets chance::
-Laurel
::giggles::
I won this startling little game on my second try, but it may have scared me more if I'd had the sound on.
-Laurel
-Laurel
1.10.2005
This is the part where I lighten up. Again.
Appointment to get other half of Hep-A vaccination (now that I'm over six months back from Peru) came and went. Thanks to sugar water (aka Tropicana Twister, blue raspberry flavor) and protein (aka chicken ramen) and not getting three shots at once this time, I didn't turn icky colors and almost pass out, which is totally excellent. And the doctor recognized the Larry the Cucumber on my shirt. And I remembered, driving home, to stop for all the schoolbuses letting off kids, which is a stupid thing to have to be proud of, but let's applaud progress wherever we find it, shall we?
So I'm going to, for goodness' sake, take a nap.
-Laurel
So I'm going to, for goodness' sake, take a nap.
-Laurel
college = second adolescence
Yeah. Not too happy about that.
So does the world seem to smack anyone else around when they say mean things? After a long nap, I went downstairs and ended up watching TV with my mother, since it wasn't Gilmore Girls, but the Packers game and the news, and on the news there're still all these reports on the tsunami, and the fears of tsunami orphans being sold into child prostitution, and all this stuff where, you know, I'm a great big American idiot.
And my mother's mother had a screaming fit yesterday or the day before or something and is going into a nursing home. So yeah.
In other news (I'm getting all the bad out of the way first), my ZIP code is apparently at higher risk for nasty stuff because we're near a toxic-waste site. Like, not a significant one exactly. For us, it's mostly things like ink. But somebody did some study on health concerns by ZIP code in our part of the state, and our city had like five of these risk sites, and one of them is in my ZIP code (just across the street and down from me, actually, if I'm not mistaken), and another is in Megan's. ::shrugs:: I'm not actually worried, but like, jeesh.
However, I have a completely random news story that I, for one, think is spectacular: I couldn't find a link, but in the newspaper, it talked about an interpretive dance based on the theories of Albert Einstein. Like, people moving in ways that illustrate Brownian motion, stuff like that. ::giggles::
Six days until I go back to school, w00t! Have decided not to try out for the school play-thing, because a) I couldn't get a hold of the script to read it (always a bad sign, much's I love B-for-Becky), and b) it's not like I have the time anyway.
But everything else should be quite fun.
And despite the fact that I have Suite: Judy Blue Eyes playing (throwback to the days of singing with Simon and John), I've got Cake's Short Skirt, Long Jacket stuck in my head. Which is a hysterical song, if nothing else.
Okay, 'sall for now.
-Laurel
So does the world seem to smack anyone else around when they say mean things? After a long nap, I went downstairs and ended up watching TV with my mother, since it wasn't Gilmore Girls, but the Packers game and the news, and on the news there're still all these reports on the tsunami, and the fears of tsunami orphans being sold into child prostitution, and all this stuff where, you know, I'm a great big American idiot.
And my mother's mother had a screaming fit yesterday or the day before or something and is going into a nursing home. So yeah.
In other news (I'm getting all the bad out of the way first), my ZIP code is apparently at higher risk for nasty stuff because we're near a toxic-waste site. Like, not a significant one exactly. For us, it's mostly things like ink. But somebody did some study on health concerns by ZIP code in our part of the state, and our city had like five of these risk sites, and one of them is in my ZIP code (just across the street and down from me, actually, if I'm not mistaken), and another is in Megan's. ::shrugs:: I'm not actually worried, but like, jeesh.
However, I have a completely random news story that I, for one, think is spectacular: I couldn't find a link, but in the newspaper, it talked about an interpretive dance based on the theories of Albert Einstein. Like, people moving in ways that illustrate Brownian motion, stuff like that. ::giggles::
Six days until I go back to school, w00t! Have decided not to try out for the school play-thing, because a) I couldn't get a hold of the script to read it (always a bad sign, much's I love B-for-Becky), and b) it's not like I have the time anyway.
But everything else should be quite fun.
And despite the fact that I have Suite: Judy Blue Eyes playing (throwback to the days of singing with Simon and John), I've got Cake's Short Skirt, Long Jacket stuck in my head. Which is a hysterical song, if nothing else.
Okay, 'sall for now.
-Laurel
1.09.2005
I warn you now, this one is pure vitriolic anger.
Okay, so maybe it wouldn't kill me to watch a movie with my mother, even if I don't really like movies, and even if I'm sick and all I really want to do today is read and sleep.
Here's something else that wouldn't kill anybody: how about the rest of my family starts getting a life? How about my father starts doing something besides working, eating dinner, watching the news, and sleeping on the couch? How about my brother stops thinking that our mother is stupid, which I know he does because he's said so?
And how about my mother goes back to doing things with her time? She used to go bowling and have bowling friends. She used to get together with Amanda's mom. She used to have a church group. She used to help out at school.
And then the bowling league folded, and then she got a full-time job, and she was too tired to do anything when she got home but make dinner (which my brother invariably complains about), watch TV, watch old movies, and read. And then she got tired of church, so that ended the group and therefore the friends.
So now she comes home and watches these endless episodes of Gilmore Girls, and because for some reason I can't name, because I don't watch the show, because I haven't really been a TV-watcher for years now, Rory reminds her of me. So I'm supposed to be Rory now, and she's supposed to be Lorelai, and we're supposed to be all close and do all of these things together, except that all she likes to do is watch movies and TV and read. And I only like the last one, which is a one-player game. And she and I like to cook, but the way we do it, that's also a one-player game, because we need privacy for it. And I was supposed to go to the gym with her, but I was sick, because I've been sick all break, and I was trying to be well enough to go visit Tim, so I skipped out on it. Okay, so that one was stupid. But I really didn't feel good.
So when I come home and do exactly what I did in high school--reading, sleeping, DDR, cooking, which never bothered anyone before--suddenly, because I don't want to do things with everybody, because I'm usually not interested in doing things with everybody, because they don't do anything I'm really into, suddenly I'm this self-centered, ungrateful child. So my dad comes and basically tells me that I should ask my mother to a movie, only I'm sick and was about to take a nap, so he caught me at a cranky moment, so when he realizes that I don't really, from the bottom of my heart, want to do it, then it's not good enough that I will do it, because apparently it isn't love unless you just can't wait to get up and do something you weren't really planning on doing. So he gets angry at my telling him that he's guilt-tripping me, because apparently he shouldn't have to guilt-trip me.
Fine. So I could have gone and asked her to the movie the first time he asked, without making a fuss over it and finally being nasty when I said I would. In that, I was a whiny moron. Point scored. Everybody happy to hear me say I was wrong?
But can I at least get some recognition that maybe, just maybe, if they all got out and did interesting things, instead of watching TV people do interesting things, maybe they wouldn't miss me so much? Even if it's on a weeknight, when they didn't plan on doing anything besides watching TV? That maybe then I wouldn't be expected to be the golden answer to my parents being stuck in a rut and my brother being stuck up his butt?
And I love how I'm expected to get a full-time job someday, a quiet safe prosperous one so my father doesn't worry, and turn into just what they are.
-Laurel
Here's something else that wouldn't kill anybody: how about the rest of my family starts getting a life? How about my father starts doing something besides working, eating dinner, watching the news, and sleeping on the couch? How about my brother stops thinking that our mother is stupid, which I know he does because he's said so?
And how about my mother goes back to doing things with her time? She used to go bowling and have bowling friends. She used to get together with Amanda's mom. She used to have a church group. She used to help out at school.
And then the bowling league folded, and then she got a full-time job, and she was too tired to do anything when she got home but make dinner (which my brother invariably complains about), watch TV, watch old movies, and read. And then she got tired of church, so that ended the group and therefore the friends.
So now she comes home and watches these endless episodes of Gilmore Girls, and because for some reason I can't name, because I don't watch the show, because I haven't really been a TV-watcher for years now, Rory reminds her of me. So I'm supposed to be Rory now, and she's supposed to be Lorelai, and we're supposed to be all close and do all of these things together, except that all she likes to do is watch movies and TV and read. And I only like the last one, which is a one-player game. And she and I like to cook, but the way we do it, that's also a one-player game, because we need privacy for it. And I was supposed to go to the gym with her, but I was sick, because I've been sick all break, and I was trying to be well enough to go visit Tim, so I skipped out on it. Okay, so that one was stupid. But I really didn't feel good.
So when I come home and do exactly what I did in high school--reading, sleeping, DDR, cooking, which never bothered anyone before--suddenly, because I don't want to do things with everybody, because I'm usually not interested in doing things with everybody, because they don't do anything I'm really into, suddenly I'm this self-centered, ungrateful child. So my dad comes and basically tells me that I should ask my mother to a movie, only I'm sick and was about to take a nap, so he caught me at a cranky moment, so when he realizes that I don't really, from the bottom of my heart, want to do it, then it's not good enough that I will do it, because apparently it isn't love unless you just can't wait to get up and do something you weren't really planning on doing. So he gets angry at my telling him that he's guilt-tripping me, because apparently he shouldn't have to guilt-trip me.
Fine. So I could have gone and asked her to the movie the first time he asked, without making a fuss over it and finally being nasty when I said I would. In that, I was a whiny moron. Point scored. Everybody happy to hear me say I was wrong?
But can I at least get some recognition that maybe, just maybe, if they all got out and did interesting things, instead of watching TV people do interesting things, maybe they wouldn't miss me so much? Even if it's on a weeknight, when they didn't plan on doing anything besides watching TV? That maybe then I wouldn't be expected to be the golden answer to my parents being stuck in a rut and my brother being stuck up his butt?
And I love how I'm expected to get a full-time job someday, a quiet safe prosperous one so my father doesn't worry, and turn into just what they are.
-Laurel
::blinks:: ::snorts::
Eight months since Peru...
...and, I have just realized, I still have round, mottled spots on my legs from where my forty-something insect bites were.
So a week of chicken pox couldn't scar me, but a night on the river...
See? This is why I will never really be a nature person.
-Laurel
Note several minutes later: Oooh! Oooh! The Hunger Site is donating all their clicks to the tsunami victims for the next however-long. Go and support!
...and, I have just realized, I still have round, mottled spots on my legs from where my forty-something insect bites were.
So a week of chicken pox couldn't scar me, but a night on the river...
See? This is why I will never really be a nature person.
-Laurel
Note several minutes later: Oooh! Oooh! The Hunger Site is donating all their clicks to the tsunami victims for the next however-long. Go and support!
1.08.2005
::smacks head:: Now I get it!
So this is why I got that A-minus in psych, instead of that A.
Key quote: "It stressed the 'negative effects' of long hair on 'human intelligence development', noting that long hair 'consumes a great deal of nutrition' and could thus rob the brain of energy."
Heck, with the dining hall, I don't have any nutrition to spare for my follicles.
(Thanks to Melly for the link, and to Dave Barry for not suing me as I shamelessly cop off the style of his blog postings.)
-Laurel
Key quote: "It stressed the 'negative effects' of long hair on 'human intelligence development', noting that long hair 'consumes a great deal of nutrition' and could thus rob the brain of energy."
Heck, with the dining hall, I don't have any nutrition to spare for my follicles.
(Thanks to Melly for the link, and to Dave Barry for not suing me as I shamelessly cop off the style of his blog postings.)
-Laurel
1.07.2005
"I like the sound of my own voice..." -U2
Had another culinary day, this time to get rid of some of the buttermilk that was left over from the samosa project. Made oatmeal pancakes this morning and chocolate cake an hour or two ago. Haven't gotten to taste it yet; waiting for my parents to get home with sub sandwiches for dinner (yay!).
I'm apparently a Life Member of Alpha Phi Omega now, something most people don't apply for until they're college seniors. APO's been trying to get people earlier while their tie to the organization is still strong, so they sent home applications a couple of months ago, apparently. Now, usually my parents are really good about asking me about these things, but they kept forgetting this time, and then, when the deadline drew near, finally went ahead and sent the stuff in.
So I feel like a humongous nerd, because it's one thing to breathe APO, but it's quite another to get Lifer status two years early. But Kristin assures me that it's not really that bad, and at least I got some rental-car discounts, not that I'll be allowed to rent one for another two years ('sokay, I'll let my parents have the code; my dad gets sent to other states occasionally for part of his work--just two or three days at a time, but enough to need to get around, I imagine).
Went to 'Nanda's tonight for her birthday party. Megs was there, and Daf and Erik and me. It was great fun, but this cold, having given me a general reprieve while I was at Tim and Tom's, has come back worse than ever, and tonight I hacked myself half to breathlessness. So I got home and made myself some chicken-flavored ramen soup, for want of any real stuff. Added my own spices to what was already there, though--some spinach-and-herb-mix flakes, some "Italian seasoning," and a dash of ginger to go along with the salt and garlic and onion and MSG that the Top Ramen people already provided in the little packet. Strong eats, requiring quite a lot of Tropicana Twister to balance out the salt, but such broth always makes me feel at least more serene, and it actually has, for whatever reason, taken the edge off my coughing. I breathe a little easier. So yay for herbs and spices.
Reminds me of the microbio lab last year where we tested food products to see if any of it actually killed germs. I think I took some--either chives or mint flakes--from the dining hall, and it actually did have a slight effect on one of the bacteria involved, cutting a small liquidy circle through the bacteria we swabbed onto the agar. The downside is, for a 120-level lab, we couldn't test on anything that would really sicken us...but the potential, however slight, is there.
Let me live in my world on that one, anyway. :-D
Okay, so I've spent my post talking about APO and food again. This New Year's thing, it's not working as well as I'd hoped. But school will be a better opportunity to focus.
Ha, except if I get VPS. Then I'll think of nearly nothing else. ::blows slightly self-derisive raspberry::
-Laurel
I'm apparently a Life Member of Alpha Phi Omega now, something most people don't apply for until they're college seniors. APO's been trying to get people earlier while their tie to the organization is still strong, so they sent home applications a couple of months ago, apparently. Now, usually my parents are really good about asking me about these things, but they kept forgetting this time, and then, when the deadline drew near, finally went ahead and sent the stuff in.
So I feel like a humongous nerd, because it's one thing to breathe APO, but it's quite another to get Lifer status two years early. But Kristin assures me that it's not really that bad, and at least I got some rental-car discounts, not that I'll be allowed to rent one for another two years ('sokay, I'll let my parents have the code; my dad gets sent to other states occasionally for part of his work--just two or three days at a time, but enough to need to get around, I imagine).
Went to 'Nanda's tonight for her birthday party. Megs was there, and Daf and Erik and me. It was great fun, but this cold, having given me a general reprieve while I was at Tim and Tom's, has come back worse than ever, and tonight I hacked myself half to breathlessness. So I got home and made myself some chicken-flavored ramen soup, for want of any real stuff. Added my own spices to what was already there, though--some spinach-and-herb-mix flakes, some "Italian seasoning," and a dash of ginger to go along with the salt and garlic and onion and MSG that the Top Ramen people already provided in the little packet. Strong eats, requiring quite a lot of Tropicana Twister to balance out the salt, but such broth always makes me feel at least more serene, and it actually has, for whatever reason, taken the edge off my coughing. I breathe a little easier. So yay for herbs and spices.
Reminds me of the microbio lab last year where we tested food products to see if any of it actually killed germs. I think I took some--either chives or mint flakes--from the dining hall, and it actually did have a slight effect on one of the bacteria involved, cutting a small liquidy circle through the bacteria we swabbed onto the agar. The downside is, for a 120-level lab, we couldn't test on anything that would really sicken us...but the potential, however slight, is there.
Let me live in my world on that one, anyway. :-D
Okay, so I've spent my post talking about APO and food again. This New Year's thing, it's not working as well as I'd hoped. But school will be a better opportunity to focus.
Ha, except if I get VPS. Then I'll think of nearly nothing else. ::blows slightly self-derisive raspberry::
-Laurel
1.05.2005
Gracious...
[note: I don't think I've ever used an alien-head icon for my i-mood before. It's...different. Mostly strange. But hey, variety being the spice of life...]
It was a relatively normal night until about fifteen minutes ago, when news came that Tim's roommate is going to be out of all non-academic activities next semester, or at least out of holding office. Which means that APO needs a replacement Vice President of Service about three months sooner than expected, and Swing needs a new president. There were two likely candidates, but one will be in France, and the other he just broke up with.
I feel so bad for Meryl; she's had a rough break. Her two dogs just died of the same virus, within a couple of days of each other. In better news, Chris recovers quite easily and well from his wisdom-teeth extraction.
Plus, I meant to sniffle over this on Monday night; Dave Barry's going on extended hiatus and may never be back to column-writing at all.
Speaking of hiati (okay, it's not, it's really hiatuses), I'm laying off the Newbery Project for most of the next twelve days while I attempt to get as far as possible through the Dark is Rising and His Dark Materials series. The latter I've been intending since London; the former I've been talked into by Tim. ::grins:: I'm going to be reading like a maniac until school starts again.
'Nanda's on Friday, hurrah!
-Laurel
It was a relatively normal night until about fifteen minutes ago, when news came that Tim's roommate is going to be out of all non-academic activities next semester, or at least out of holding office. Which means that APO needs a replacement Vice President of Service about three months sooner than expected, and Swing needs a new president. There were two likely candidates, but one will be in France, and the other he just broke up with.
I feel so bad for Meryl; she's had a rough break. Her two dogs just died of the same virus, within a couple of days of each other. In better news, Chris recovers quite easily and well from his wisdom-teeth extraction.
Plus, I meant to sniffle over this on Monday night; Dave Barry's going on extended hiatus and may never be back to column-writing at all.
Speaking of hiati (okay, it's not, it's really hiatuses), I'm laying off the Newbery Project for most of the next twelve days while I attempt to get as far as possible through the Dark is Rising and His Dark Materials series. The latter I've been intending since London; the former I've been talked into by Tim. ::grins:: I'm going to be reading like a maniac until school starts again.
'Nanda's on Friday, hurrah!
-Laurel
1.04.2005
::sounding crazed:: "I don't want your girlfriend, I just want the chips!" -Tom
Made dinner tonight: Samosas a la Amateur Chef.
You may recognize that food as the one that nearly deep-fried me alive in London; I made sure that the cumin and most of the cayenne got left out. In the end, they were sort of like Italian pierogi: a lot of potato, onion, garlic, peas, corn, and way more Italian seasoning than I had originally intended (which's okay, 'cause they were too bland before), plus a small amount of chili powder. The dough didn't turn out quite right, and there wasn't enough of it, and I should've brushed butter over them rather than the suggested vegetable oil.
I did not tell my brother that it was a Moosewood Restaurant recipe; he was scandalized enough as it was that I only made enough for two each--hearing on top of that that they were from a vegetarian cookbook would have been far too much for him to bear. But I noticed he ate Dad's unattended second samosa. So I can't have fared too badly on the whole.
But next time I'm trying something a little less complex, if I can figure out what to do with the incomprehensible largish frozen meat slabs in plastic Ziplocs in our freezer, marked only, in my dad's clear but nonspecific uppercase labeling, as PORK. (How much? What cut? I asked him these questions. He had no idea. ...That complicates my projected recipes just a little.)
Also, if Cami from next door isn't the one who dropped the unlabeled container of chocolate-covered peanut patties on our doorstep tonight, we're probably all going to be poisoned, but it will have been a rather tasty way to go.
I have no good reason to say all this. It gave me a good excuse to throw out Tom's taco-dip quote, though, which was very funny as long as you were there at the time.
Time to do other things.
-Laurel
You may recognize that food as the one that nearly deep-fried me alive in London; I made sure that the cumin and most of the cayenne got left out. In the end, they were sort of like Italian pierogi: a lot of potato, onion, garlic, peas, corn, and way more Italian seasoning than I had originally intended (which's okay, 'cause they were too bland before), plus a small amount of chili powder. The dough didn't turn out quite right, and there wasn't enough of it, and I should've brushed butter over them rather than the suggested vegetable oil.
I did not tell my brother that it was a Moosewood Restaurant recipe; he was scandalized enough as it was that I only made enough for two each--hearing on top of that that they were from a vegetarian cookbook would have been far too much for him to bear. But I noticed he ate Dad's unattended second samosa. So I can't have fared too badly on the whole.
But next time I'm trying something a little less complex, if I can figure out what to do with the incomprehensible largish frozen meat slabs in plastic Ziplocs in our freezer, marked only, in my dad's clear but nonspecific uppercase labeling, as PORK. (How much? What cut? I asked him these questions. He had no idea. ...That complicates my projected recipes just a little.)
Also, if Cami from next door isn't the one who dropped the unlabeled container of chocolate-covered peanut patties on our doorstep tonight, we're probably all going to be poisoned, but it will have been a rather tasty way to go.
I have no good reason to say all this. It gave me a good excuse to throw out Tom's taco-dip quote, though, which was very funny as long as you were there at the time.
Time to do other things.
-Laurel
::warm and fuzzy in her fatigue::
Being with Tim and Tom was wonderful. The time flew, and I loved every hour of it. Most of it was simple: movie-watching, DDR, and about one "main event" per day--the New Year's party on Friday, the ice-skating (free, actually) on Saturday, and meeting the high school friends on Sunday. I guess Monday's was the photo-gazing, since that was the shortest "day"; I left at one-thirty. A rainy but flawless drive home, though I've temporarily misplaced my U2 CD, and hope it's just under my seat.
Heather and I are planning APO's next service project, and we're making it as huge as we possibly can. It's a labor auction--APO and hopefully the Noteables and anyone else we can get, auctioning themselves off, essentially, to do laundry, cleaning, organizing, babysitting for faculty children, anything the University will let us do, and all the money to a cause. Heather, being diabetic from childhood, wants it to benefit juvenile diabetes; I'd like to see us go a little more local, but it's hard to argue with her cause. But we want it big. We're getting as many groups as possible to take part; we want the community in on it if possible. The Fiat, the Sun, posters on campus, posters in Kinfolk, campus TV, maybe even local TV...whyever not? The Noteables are seven guys who sing without any instruments, and they managed to pack a medium-sized room full to bursting for their concert. Auction them off, and us, and maybe Pirate Theater (I'll ask Lily) and/or Rescue Squad (am already asking Chris), and we'll need the auditorium. I'm starting to get the feeling that, given the time, we can make it as big as we want. ...I love the feeling. And we want it big.
Heather has been perhaps the most enthusiastic member of APO these days, always coming up with a new way to surprise me with her creativity. It's hard not to take over her project, because I can picture just how I think it should go...but it's hers. Her idea, her effort. The PR and secretarial aspects are the only ones I should really be touching. I'll do my best.
Heather is restoring my faith in APO's ability to--my perpetual phrase, twelfth grade on--"do something that means something." I am starting to understand in my head, if not my heart, that our small helps also mean something. But I think what I appreciate is finding somebody else that's willing to throw herself totally into this. We talked about how many people need help. It's good to hear someone else not try to qualify it with how we can't, so we should enjoy what we have.
'Cause, okay, okay. But that still doesn't help them.
So I am hugely excited about this event, as frightened as I am that we, in typical fashion of every service project I have ever proposed or helped design, will find a way to underachieve so badly that we look good at it (see also: faculty/staff pie throw, Literacy Volunteers Breakfast with Santa, Nature Center Christmas Wreath Project, the one blood drive where we ticked off like the most powerful professor and student in the entire biology department, etc., etc., etc.).
I don't care. Heather's putting it all out on this one, and I'm following. It starts here. Whatever it is.
-Laurel
Heather and I are planning APO's next service project, and we're making it as huge as we possibly can. It's a labor auction--APO and hopefully the Noteables and anyone else we can get, auctioning themselves off, essentially, to do laundry, cleaning, organizing, babysitting for faculty children, anything the University will let us do, and all the money to a cause. Heather, being diabetic from childhood, wants it to benefit juvenile diabetes; I'd like to see us go a little more local, but it's hard to argue with her cause. But we want it big. We're getting as many groups as possible to take part; we want the community in on it if possible. The Fiat, the Sun, posters on campus, posters in Kinfolk, campus TV, maybe even local TV...whyever not? The Noteables are seven guys who sing without any instruments, and they managed to pack a medium-sized room full to bursting for their concert. Auction them off, and us, and maybe Pirate Theater (I'll ask Lily) and/or Rescue Squad (am already asking Chris), and we'll need the auditorium. I'm starting to get the feeling that, given the time, we can make it as big as we want. ...I love the feeling. And we want it big.
Heather has been perhaps the most enthusiastic member of APO these days, always coming up with a new way to surprise me with her creativity. It's hard not to take over her project, because I can picture just how I think it should go...but it's hers. Her idea, her effort. The PR and secretarial aspects are the only ones I should really be touching. I'll do my best.
Heather is restoring my faith in APO's ability to--my perpetual phrase, twelfth grade on--"do something that means something." I am starting to understand in my head, if not my heart, that our small helps also mean something. But I think what I appreciate is finding somebody else that's willing to throw herself totally into this. We talked about how many people need help. It's good to hear someone else not try to qualify it with how we can't, so we should enjoy what we have.
'Cause, okay, okay. But that still doesn't help them.
So I am hugely excited about this event, as frightened as I am that we, in typical fashion of every service project I have ever proposed or helped design, will find a way to underachieve so badly that we look good at it (see also: faculty/staff pie throw, Literacy Volunteers Breakfast with Santa, Nature Center Christmas Wreath Project, the one blood drive where we ticked off like the most powerful professor and student in the entire biology department, etc., etc., etc.).
I don't care. Heather's putting it all out on this one, and I'm following. It starts here. Whatever it is.
-Laurel