I Majored in Writing and All I Got Was This Blog

There is absolutely no way, short of black magic, that I should be graduating in four years.

Presto! Graduate.

But it’s happening, and I feel guilty about it. I know people who have been on track since kindergarten, pursuing an education degree since age nineteen, with eight years ahead of them. And then there’s me. Let me briefly catalog my four years of college:

• I knew Interior Design was my calling. My school had a “great program” (which I had no way of knowing, since I actually had no idea what would constitute a great I.D. program). The classes were incredibly tough, but it was my absolute calling so I would stick it out until the end. Besides, AutoCAD can’t be that hard.

• As a second semester sophomore, I now had the knowledge to know that – silly me – it had Journalism that was softly calling by name. AutCAD is, in fact, that hard, and is so not worth the hours of sobbing into sustainability notes and millions of dollars of Prismacolor markers. Besides, I was a writer at heart.

• You know, I’m a smooth talker, so P.R. should really be something I get a degree in! Forget Journalism – who cares if you abbreviate Michigan as MI or Mich.? Plus, I’ll minor in business because my folks will love that! Speaking on behalf of companies is really my ACTUAL true calling.

• You know, I was wrong. I really don’t care that I cannot be creative in journalistic writing, and it actually doesn’t break my soul every time I go to class. Journalism IS my calling, it IS, it IS, it IS!

• Why minor in business to please my parents when I could just major in it and devote my entire life to pleasing other people?? I’ll take a butt load of summer classes at the community college and just go headfirst into my true calling. I’ve always wanted to know exactly how managerial accounting works and how Colgate markets their product.

• No, Boyfriend, I’m fine, I LOVE BUSINESS. I’m only crying into my Taco Bell wrapper because I AM SO OVERWHELMED WITH JOY FOR THE ART OF FIFO AND LIFO ACCOUNTING PROCESSES. I’M JUST SO HAPPY, BOYFRIEND. SO HAPPY AND TIRED AND I HATE BUSINESS AND I ACTUALLY WANT TO DROP OUT.

Unintelligible sobbing and chewed up food

When you have a total melt down sitting in your mini van in the parking lot of a Taco Bell, knuckle deep in a bag of crispy potato tacos, screaming at your boyfriend about how much you love accounting, you have hit your actual rock bottom. At this point in my college career,  I had half a degree in three majors and didn’t enjoy any of them (hence, the spicy tear taco).

When Boyfriend told me I should major in writing, I felt really, really stupid. The major is literally the same as the word for my favorite past-time, and I didn’t know our school offered it. How on Earth did I go to P.R. before Writing? Upon checking the required classes for the degree, I found that if I took fifteen writing intensive credit hours each semester until I either graduated or died, I would manage to make it out in four years. And here we are, only mostly dead.

When I started the writing program, I was super stoked because I wrote baller essays in high school and was, like, super creative. This major was going to be an absolute cake walk. Hell, it would be a cheesecake walk. And cheesecake is soft, so it’s easier to walk in.

Oh.

Oh no.

I was mistaken.

I was mistaken on two fronts.

1. My writing was actually garbage. I tried to set my laptop on fire after re-reading the work on my DeviantART page.
2. These classes would be the hardest classes I would ever take, eventually turning me to all-nighters and obscene amounts of coffee.

The program is heavily poetry centered. My poetry until this point had been horrible. So, so horrible. Poetry written from the core of a dark soul-ed middle school-er with so many deep thoughts and problems. At this point, this was better poetry than I was producing:

Thankfully, my first professor gently tossed my paperwork into a shredder and asked me to try again, emphasizing his confidence in my revisions. This man absolutely saved my writing career, and is the reason I am a halfway decent (oh fine, baller) author today.

And this pattern of “shredder, confidence, revision” went on for my last two years of college. I spent roughly seven hour a day, five days a week, doing this:

1. Read really ambiguous and unclear text
2. Come to class and sound like a didgeridoo for approx. one hour
3. Try to write response essay or inspired poem
4. Cry as it is work-shopped, feeling the sting of a thousand great paper cuts to the ego
5. Find empty space in the hallway
6. Beat head against concrete wall until bleeding
7. Smear blood on paper while chanting backwards Latin and moon-walking
8. Poetry

And now, as of Sunday, I will have a very expensive piece of non-laminated paper saying I no longer sound like a didgeridoo most of the time, and that I good words. The degree has already begun to serve me in many, many ways.

For instance, I now have had multiple quarter-life crises about wage labor and the commodification of human beings, thanks to Karl Marx’s essays and the work of Charles Baudelaire. It’s super fun to meditate on the fact that we are all just cogs in a machine until we die. I especially feel the texts are useful to my personal life when I begin a shift at my TGIChillibee’s, where I am especially commodified! In fact, I am valued at $3.10 per hour of work, how neat is that? Who knew writing degrees could make serving burgers so deep?

I also have used my super duper vocabulary skills to write a parody of the song “Handlebars” by Flobots, instead titled “Tray Service”, entirely penned on receipt paper and inspired by a slow shift. I have also practiced rapping it so many times that I have it memorized.

me irl

So my degree is already paying for itself, basically.

But fo-realsies, I actually did write a small book for my Capstone class, a project I have been working on for years now. This is what it looks like:

It’s a short collection of poetry and short essays in the form of journal entries from a bulimic. The whole thing deals with eating disorders and suicide and a bunch of sad things of that sort, and I could not be prouder. You know your text is powerful when someone approaches you after the fact and tells you how “brave” you were for presenting that.

It’s technically getting published, too, by a classmate who operates a small, independent publishing company in his spare time. I could actually make money from this book; realistically, ten dollars, but even five dollars makes me want to cry tears of joy. This bad-boy has my blood, sweat, tears, and vomit (haha!) in it. When I put the final staples in the binding at FedEx, I actually started crying. I tried to play it off like I was just super passionate about laminating supplies.

Now, the only things standing between me and a degree are two finals and a four hour long graduation. Wish me the best.

Volleyball is stupid because I’m bad at it.

So I’ve never really been a “sporty” kind of person. I own some cute sports bras and I’ll wear yoga pants whenever is socially acceptable, but generally, the treadmill is where my team spirit ends. My sport in high school was English.

I enjoy exercising and being active. For instance, Zumba is great. Put on some high speed salsa music and just go crazy, it’s basically made for me. I remember when that Just Dance video game first came out when the Kinect got big, how everyone was so giggly when they played because the dances moves were atrocious. I also got giggly, but only as a ruse to blend in, since the silly moves masked my own truly terrible moves.

When it comes to dance, I can do swing dance, ballroom, that kind of stuff. And, by virtue of being a woman, I can at least shake what my momma gave me at a club if Ke$ha comes on. Shake it like a Polaroid – is that still proper terminology?

Because I can do that. I also just learned the Cupid Shuffle (after calling it the Cuban Shuffle for about a year and wondering what made it so Cuban). I cannot, however, freestyle dance even remotely well. I resort to the three generic white-girl-club-moves:

1. I run my hand through my hair and turn slightly sideways.

2. I drop it low and hope I can lift it back up seductively without having to step forward to balance myself.

3. I sway and kind of do a bopping motion from side to side, usually in a “left one, left two, right one, right two” rhythm.

If I have a drink in my hand, a fourth option is opened up, in which I raise my drink above my head when the song gets inspirational or tells me to “raise my glass”. It usually gets me by.

Back to sports.

I enjoy kickboxing, but only if it is done for cardio. I am an utter failure in sparring. I’m not really sure what happens to me, but I think that the combined efforts of coordinating hits while avoiding hits from someone else ALL while trying to not actually injure the person and look technically flawless makes my arms turn into noodles.

Billy Blanks and I, however, get along fine. An early 90’s VHS is all I need between myself and my competition to ensure I succeed.

I was on the field hockey team in my sophomore year if high school for one day before I realized I was far too fat and asthmatic of a child to preform even remotely well on the field. I came to practice in jeans and a Gir t-shirt and wanted to die for the better part of an hour before my inhaler and I gave up and went home.

I find that I am good at running, biking, power walking, swimming…single person sports. If I do it by myself, I’m great at it (don’t get dirty).

Team sports are my kryptonite. In soccer, I get scared when another teammate runs for the ball. In kickball, I kept my eye everywhere except on the ball. In ultimate frisbee, I lose the ability to throw a plastic disc horizontally and instead throw it directly into the ground with all of my might. We have a Quidditch team at my college and dear god, I don’t want to know what happens when I involve a broom and play magic into sportsing.

This brings us to volleyball – the one team sport I thought I was decent at. I played volleyball largely when drinking outside at picnics with coworkers, which may have skewed my perception of my skills. I could never serve past my own half of the court, but I could smack the ball with great force and I have a booty made for spandex shorts. When the first semester of my senior year began, I thought “What the heck, take volleyball. You wont totally suck. Promise.”

Schififty-five shades of WRONG.

Apparently, everyone who was on the varsity high school volleyball team decided to come to Intro Volleyball and make me look like an idiot. It turns out that the point is not to hit the ball over the net and score points, but to hit the ball three times and then score points. And then certain people have to be certain places all the time, but they hold hands and switch sometimes…

I could go into detail, but I think this picture basically sums up the entire class:

Not actually me, but might as well be.

…which I have since dropped.

Excuses and How I was Homeless for a Month.

So I haven’t been on in a while. I was:
-busy
-working
-moving
-trying to find my laptop charger
-eating fast food
-playing video games
-working out (ok, maybe not)
-mostly sleeping
-not writing things for you

But for real, I do have a good excuse. I was kind of a little homeless from August 1 through the 22, surfing couches like David Hasselhoff and sleeping in my car. There was a gap in the closing of my old lease and the opening of my new lease, and the whole ordeal was much harder than I expected.

In July, when we finally figured out an apartment for the fall, Boyfriend and I made a plan. Since the new place didn’t open up until the end of August, we would just stay with friends for the twenty-two day homeless period – simple!

Looking back, this decision was made from the comforts of our bed and SmartTV in between the commercial breaks of Cutthroat Kitchen, so the scope of temporary homelessness was not exactly understandable at the time.

There were a few major problems with our little plan:

1. We have very few friends who are able to put up anyone, let alone two people, for three weeks.

2. Parking in the city is a bitch if you don’t have a pass, which we don’t.

3. Both Boyfriend and I are little sissypants-crybabies when it comes to not having a shower or nice-smelly shampoo.

In our defense, we are two broke-ass college kids, so staying in a hotel for three weeks was not exactly financially viable. So we went along with the couch-surfing plan and spent day one of The Great Homelessness with our friends Nick and Tate.

Now, Nick and Tate live in the hood. I live in the hood, but not the hood. Like, if the hood was a sullen teenager that wore a hoodie, Nick and Tate would live in that hoodie. Directions to their apartment include the phrases “turn right at the Planned Parenthood” and “if you hit the pawn shop, make a U-turn and drive until you see the Coney Island/Gold 4 Kash combo store”.

Boyfriend and I needed a place to stay, though, so we put on our best Kevlar and moved into their living room, which is approximately this big:

But whatever, we were gonna make it work.

We stayed there for about a week before Boyfriend was threatened by a random dude who wanted his sunglasses. As gunshots LITERALLY rang out in the distance that evening (as they did every evening), we packed our suitcases into the car hurriedly. We had planned on going back inside to say goodbye to our friends, but a car had been sitting with its engine on in the shadows about twenty feet away with all the lights turned off and a dude inside staring at us. When we stared back, he drove away, but parked in another shadow and did the same thing, like we wouldn’t notice. I wish I was making this up.

Boyfriend went to stay with his friend, and I went to stay at my co-worker’s house. He gave me a couch to sleep on and I snuggled up to my bath towel for the evening. The next morning, I got up and ran a couple errands, like a normal not homeless wreck of a student would do. The problem here is that my co-worker, Alex, was also in the process of moving, and around noon, they moved my couch-bed while I was out.

I worked at four. I desperately needed a nap before I spend the next ten hours singing Happy Happy and asking if customers want fries with that. In the spur of the moment, I decided to go to work early and nap in my car in the parking lot.

As I lay in the drivers seat with a leg propped up on the dash and a pair of yoga pants for a blanket, I realized that the hotel was probably worth the money. I mean, free soap and Continental breakfast was probably a better idea than washing my hair with baby powder in between having use of a shower and living off Taco Bell and work food. But it was too late at this point, because if I checked into a hotel, I lost. I don’t know what I lost, but I don’t like losing so I refused to waver. I still think I lost when my manager knocked on the window and asked if I needed to sleep in the office and was I okay because I looked like I was having a really hard time.

Unlike me, my coworker had the sense to pick a lease that ended the same day as his new lease began. I followed my beloved couch to their new house, which was, ironically, my old house. Do you know how weird it is to see plates in the cupboard where I kept my flour and spices? THAT’S NOT WHERE PLATES GO, ALEX. PLATES GO WHERE YOU HAVE YOUR GODDAMN TUPPERWARE.

Luckily, I had developed increasingly thick skin throughout this ordeal and was able to tough it through a backwards kitchen for a couch. One of his roommates was even out of town for a weekend, giving me a BED to sleep in. I could have cried.

I was so excited for move in day that I almost forgot about the whole moving furniture part. I was so excited about having my own toilet that I almost forgot I had to move furniture up to the third floor in a cramped corridor. I was so excited about being able to buy groceries and have someplace to put them that I almost forgot that I would be moving my furniture in ninety degree muggy heat.

And then moving day happened. It took nine hours of blood sweat and tears, but everything was eventually moved into a large pile of generalized “stuff” in the living room. I declared I would unpack everything that weekend, but as I type this, I am staring at a pile of mirrors and paintings that have yet to be hung on the walls, propped up against a box of what I believe to be my office supplies. It will happen eventually, I’m sure.

And that explains August. I have no explanation for September really, other than

-busy
-working
-moving
-trying to find my laptop charger
-eating fast food
-playing video games
-working out (ok, maybe not)
-mostly sleeping
-not writing things for you

But that will change, I promise.

Birds are assholes.

Loving birds is like being stuck in an abusive relationship most of the time. It’s not fair to make sweeping generalizations – I’m sure one of you is sitting there with the world’s sweetest parakeet perched on your shoulder, preparing a sassy retort. For the sake of this post, lets agree that lots of birds are jerks.

Don’t get me wrong, I love birds. Macaws are gorgeous and have a spunky personality, cassowaries are colored like royalty, and I have an owl-decorated version of nearly every household item and/or jewelry accent you could imagine. No joke, I have even had an owl toothbrush at one point in time.

Birds do not love me back.

My mother and I used to pet-sit for two gentlemen who owned two parrots. Being a young animal-obsessed child, I was beyond ecstatic to be looking after something more exciting than a domestic short-hair tabby. I love me some felines, but cats don’t talk. I was determined to make these parrots speak.

The first parrot was Scarlet – a sweet little gray and red feathered bird. She would whistle and tweet, but never formed any real words despite my incessant “hello pretty bird!”s. In addition to that disappointing fact, she was largely indifferent to my presence. My mom was the lady with the birdseed, and I was just her short little companion with the pooper scooper.

Scarlet’s “brother”, on the other hand, fascinated me. His name was Taco. And he was an asshole.

Taco was a luxuriously feathered traditional parrot – green, red, yellow, even a few blue feathers thrown in on his ruffled neck. His SQUAKS echoed around the glass bird-room, and he was very interested in both my mother and I (for solely nefarious reasons).

Like this beautiful bastard.

Best of all, he was a total attention whore. The system worked like this.

Step 1: Ask Taco to sing.

Step 2: Be promptly ignored by Taco.

Step 3: Tell Taco “bye bye” and leave the room.

Step 4: Let Taco believe for a few minutes that you don’t actually want to hear him sing.

Step 5:…

“I left….MYYYYYY HEEEEAAAARRRRRTTTTTTT…..in San FranCISSSCCCCCOOOOOOOO”

And it was beautiful.

I loved him with every fiber of my being. I loved him like Tumblr loves Firefly. I loved him like college students love events that serve free pizza. I loved him like I love Mischa Collins – and you can’t beat that.

Taco did not love me. Taco did not love anyone. His “love” portion of the brain was instead filled with white hot rage. Where the heart should be, there was a dark cave with hairy spiders. He was interested in my mother and I for one single reason – not food, not companionship, not good old-fashioned curiosity – he was interested in blood.

After my mother opened the cage to give the birds free time, he would stalk around the floor and wait for the opportunity to remove limbs. When he disappeared behind things, it was like a scene from Jaws. Close-toed shoes were a must if you wanted a perfect ten, and you constantly had to watch your feet for the little menace. To top it off, if you caught him coming towards you, he would turn his head away and whistle, like ‘nothing to see here, I’m just a pretty bird’. Its like he was raised on Acme cartoons and evil cartoon villains. If we were to approach Taco, it was usually with a garbage can lid as a shield.

His one weakness was the stick. It was like a broom handle that had the broom part removed, and was a couple feet long. When the stick came out, Taco’s power was vanquished and he knew it was all over. He would begin pacing in circles quickly and repeat, ‘oh no, not that, oh no oh no not THAAAAAATTT‘. After a bit of whining, he would be incapacitated by the invisible forces and hop onto the stick to be put peacefully into his cage, wearing a malicious glare the whole time.

Birds in the wild are mean to me, too. I’m the only vegetarian in our household, yet they shit exclusively on my car. Every day, no matter where I park – under a tree, under no trees, across the street, in the driveway, anywhere. The poops seem to grow in size each time, too. The first time I found one, it was a tactfully placed single poo, in the top right corner of my windshield just out of windshield-wiper reach. Frustrating, but not sickening. Fastforward two weeks and I’m finding birds that must be scavenging the Taco Bell parking lot and unloading the bowels of a thousand demons onto my door handles, rear-window, windshield, and mirrors. It’s absolutely ludicrous how much these birds can poop.

http://whatshouldbetchescallme.tumblr.com/

 I’ve even had a bird shit on me before, which is a whole new level of aggression that I think is just absolutely unnecessary. Sixth grade, Bodega Bay, class field trip paused for a lunch break and scavenger hunt. My sandwich was inches from my face, when the most terribly perfect bird poop lands squarely between my thumb and forefinger. The boys laughed and I never finished my sandwich.

Geese are my most recent problem. In Southeast Michigan, geese seem to be everywhere. Out here, they’re like Starbucks and McDonald’s. A family of geese recently roosted on our restaurant’s roof and delayed the opening of the patio after chasing several guests and employees across the parking lot for sneezing within three yards of the nest.

My college campus is famously infested with the adorable beasts. I remember my first encounter with the feathered-kind during my first week of freshman year; I was walking around with a camera and my ID lanyard around my neck like a properly labeled dork. My eyes found a chubby little goose a few feet from me. I raised my camera to capture the priceless moment by film, and then the goose hissed at me. Like a cat.

Most of the year, I am able to steer clear of the jerks. However, in the fertile spring season, the herds of evil geese are all running around campus with the cutest fluffy baby geese. They bop their heads around and let out little meeps and are generally adorable. I just have to remind myself that the apple does not fall far from the goose, and they will soon be assholes like their fathers before them.

I’d quit, but I’m poor.

So I think I hate my job. But I’m a waitress, so I also think I’m supposed to.

There’s a timer set on day one when you start any job. It ticks away harmlessly in the background until one day when it decides to blare the fateful alarm of disdain and you suddenly hate your working life with a passion. For some people, the timer goes off on day one. For some lucky jerks, it never goes off. For me, it took two years.

I loved my job for the longest time. I’m good at it, I get to take home cash at the end of every shift, and my co-workers are generally good people. Waitresses spend hours on their feet wading through bullshit and ranch dressing most days, but the positives always outweighed the negatives for me.

Ok, maybe not as enthusiastic as Ed. But you get it.

Tick, tick, tick.

My alarm went off when I visited home for two weeks (remember? I drank beer and drove a boat and did sweet flips?).

I spent the month preceding my trip talking about my trip. I’m so excited to go home, I can’t wait to be in California, blah blah blah blah blah. I did this partly because I really did want to talk about it, but mostly because I know management is notorious for failing to schedule according to the request off book. I was determined not to have an issue.

I came into work on my last day before the break, already having one of those rampaging-crying-dinosaur days, where everything already sucked and I did not need anything else to go wrong. I came in to find a newly posted schedule. I saw that I had been scheduled a full work week.

Tick, tick, tick.

I decided that, instead of burning down the restaurant, I would assume an accident on management’s end and calmly find people to cover my shifts. I did make a point to talk to management before I left.

“I noticed that I was scheduled against my request-off this week. I believe I will be able to give away all of the shifts, but please make a note that I will still be gone next week so we will not have this problem again. Thank you good kind sir.” [okay maybe not sooooo cordial, but nearly, I swear.]

Thinking everything is fixed and swell, I hopped on over to California, drank beer, did parkour, yadda yadda, all while keeping a skeptical eye on the work Facebook page for the new schedule. I have little faith in the scheduling capabilities of our managers, but I was hoping beyond all hope that a written, verbal, and more verbal reminder would solve the problem.

Nope. Full schedule. Again.

Tick.

Tick.

Boom.

Between four managers, official request off notes, a verbal reminder, and a post-it note, no one could seem to remember than I was across the country. No one respected me enough to listen and just give someone else the shifts. It was as simple as putting shifts in a different box on an Excel spreadsheet. And other people got days off, so I know they were looking at the request-off book. Just not my notes.

I’m not saying that their job is easy. I give all the nasty folk who give me too much trouble over to my managers. They deal with the ass-end of screaming, unhappy, lying, scheming customers trying to score free alcohol. I could never do that.

The feeling of sheer disrespect that overcame me when I saw the second week of scheduling put me over the top, though. I’ve put in hundreds of hours, covered tons of missed shifts, agreed to come in last minute at 8 AM to teach a new-team-member orientation class after a closing shift the night before. You could say I feel entitled to a teeny bit of respect at this joint.

I considered just not even worrying about the shifts and not showing up. Unfortunately, that would leave my fellow servers, not responsible for this mess, short one server per shift, and that wasn’t fair of me. So instead, I spent several days at home begging people to cover the shifts, worrying about it over family dinners and such. My beautiful coworkers came through for me in the end, but the alarm already sounded.

Suddenly, I didn’t care that I was getting bartender trained finally. I realized they had been dangling the privilege like a carrot in front my my hungry eyes for two years and decided not to care anymore. Margaritas are stupid anyways, especially that smoky chipotle one that no one should ever think of trying. It’s hard to make and the nastiest thing you can do to alcohol except add Budweiser.

I used to be the queen of shift pick-ups. I’d push 40 hours a week no problem if I could snag the extra shifts from anyone. Now, with thirty seven dollars in my bank account, I’m not interested in picking up another single hour. Hell, I gave away a shift so I could go to Ohio with my boyfriend this weekend.

I’m sure that last one will change, because I literally have thirty seven dollars in my bank account. My poverty is the sole thing keeping me employed at this hell hole of a burger joint.

On that note, have you ever taken time off from work, only to come back and realize you have no idea how to complete menial tasks, much less function as a capable employee? Someone asked me if it was Happy Hour, during Happy Hour, and I had to stop and think if we even had a Happy Hour. Checked. Out.

I also tend to jumble my words and become temporarily verbally dyslexic when I take time off of work. A week off is the equivalent of coming in with one hour of sleep and three doses of extra strength NyQuil. I cheerfully told a man that his receipt came with a receipt, instead of a survey. I did not correct myself.

 

Boats, beer, and pick up lines.

My dad and I have this tradition where we go to San Francisco for a day at least once whenever I come home from school. It’s one of my favorite cities in the world and we’ve been going since I was old enough to see grown men in pink spandex without having nightmares – which was pretty early because I was an open minded kid.

When we go, we don’t really have a plan because we never have a plan for anything. We kind of shrug and walk around until we find something cool looking or someone interesting to talk to – which, in a big city, can be equal parts awesome and terrible. We do, however, have landmarks that we aim for every time and a sort of unwritten “schedule” that we’ve grown to like.

For instance, we usually start the day early to get down to the city around noon so that we can walk around the farmer’s market at the ferry building. A farmer’s market may not really seem like a jolly good time to many people, but you have to understand how big of a thing produce is in our family.

My dad has worked in a produce company for twice the time I’ve been alive or more, and it’s his wheelhouse. Is this tomato a hothouse or a roma? Ask dad. When is dragonfruit in season? Ask dad. Which type of lettuce is most or least prone to premature rusting? Ask dad.

I grew up in the business with him, running around vegetable warehouses in pink tutus. My first job was even at the same company, building displays for festivals and writing their weekly newsletter. Pretty neat, right?

Doesn’t sound integrated enough? Let me tell you about Bananimals. Bananimals were a line of stuffed animals that Dole created that consisted of animals fused with – you guessed it – bananas. If Cabbage Patch could make kids like veggies, Dole figured they’d corner the market on fruit-based-amusement.

I grew up with these as my stuffed animals, playing with beloved BananaPup alongside traditional Beanie Babies and Barbies, wondering why they could all be bananas. This was my life.

So a farmer’s market is pretty much some of the best fun my dad and I can have, and the extensive San Francisco farmer’s market is a definite must. We typically spend an hour or two comparing the quality of different vendors’ cherry colors or radicchio freshness.

After that, we usually walk down towards the Fisherman’s Wharf down at Pier 39 and catch the Powell-Mason trolley to China Town. Eddie Izzard was completely right when he said that everyone instantly turns into a rhesus monkey when they get on to a cable car – age 21 and I will wait out three cable cars to get a space hanging on the outside if I have to.

We’ll browse markets in China Town for a couple of hours – he buys Bao and I buy an obscene amount of rice candy and we snag the cable car back down to the Embarcadero to get dinner.This trip was especially sweet because I got to have my first legal beer with my pops over nachos – even if a 14 oz Corona Light is obscenely expensive on Pier 39 because it’s next to the ocean. 

After dinner, we’ll usually just wander around until it gets dark enough to leave. This weekend, however, Captain Dave caught our attention.

Sunset cruise, fifteen dollars, Golden Gate, Alcatraz, we got beer, fifteen bucks!!!

People who own boats down by the pier frequently use the boats to host cruises or fishing trips to help make some extra cash – by day, Captain Dave hosted fishing trips. However, this fifteen dollar cruise was enticing, because most cruises are closer to thirty bucks and only hit one landmark. Plus, this guy was hilarious and a bit crazy, so we liked him immediately.

Once aboard, we meet his co-boaters, Junior and another guy whose name I never did catch (sorry man). We also met Charlie, the most chill dog I’ve ever met in my life. Charlie patrolled the sides of the boat, even while we were moving, despite being small enough to fly off the side with a large swell. When he got tired, he walked into the steering area and sat in a cat bed on the dashboard of the boat (boat enthusiasts are probably cringing here as I know zero appropriate boat terminology).

Anyways, this ended up being the best boat ride ever, as well as one of my best trips to SF because of these dudes. They were absolutely hilarious and not scripted, just trying to have fun and make some money. We got to talking with the Cap’n Dave, and he found out I was visiting from college in Michigan. He assumed the appropriate response was to tell me to drive the boat.

I immediately panic because I drive a Mazda (adequately) and I saw zero people sign waivers, but he insists so I put on my captain pants and drive the damn boat, assuming the wheel wouldn’t actually do anything and it was all a ruse.

I turned the wheel and the boat turned. I was actually steering, which is empowering and frightening at the same time. He gave me a few pointers, and after a moment said “I got shit to do, don’t crash” before running out to take pictures of people.

I was the captain.

When he came back, I assumed he would take the wheel from me and steer us under the Golden Gate Bridge, as planned. Instead, be brought me a beer, cheers’d me, and told me to speed up.

That’s right, folks, I drove a freakin’ speed boat through the Pacific ocean under the Golden Gate Brigde while drinking a craft beer. I’m cooler than you – or I was, for at least an hour.

Proof of my irresponsible boating

He took the wheel back after we made it under and told me to go enjoy the view; under the Golden Gate at night-time, when it’s all lit up, the view is pretty spectacular. Cap’ns co-boater, Junior, ends up hanging out with my Dad and I taking pictures and chatting and generally being a nice dude. During the conversation, he made a remark about Instagram and found out that I don’t use it, which led to much teasing on both ends.

Junior took a picture of the bridge as we were driving/boating/moving away, and I sarcastically ask if it’s going on Instagram. And then, he produces the smoothest pickup line I have ever heard:

“Actually, I was going to send it to your phone, but I don’t have your number.”

Honey, if I didn’t already have a man and live in Michigan, you may have gotten them digits because that was the best pick up line I’ve heard in a while.

Thank you guys, because my dad and I had the most fun ever on your boat cruise.

Bonus blurry photo of my Casanova.

Parkour.

So my incredibly fit sister took me to a parkour gym on Friday, which is absolutely hilarious for two reasons.

First, I am completely out of shape. I can run at a slow jog for a while and do about thirty terrible squats on an average day, and I like walking places (like Taco Bell, for instance). If that was the definition of in shape, I’d be a-O-K.

When we move into the realm of push-ups, pull-ups, and jumping vertically by any distance, I begin crying in a corner and start shoveling Cheez-Its into my mouth to ease the pain.

Second, I have the hand-eye-coordination of a goldfish. They have no hands and their eyes are on opposite sides of their heads; get it? Yeah. I grew up as the typical “bubble child”: allergic to everything and liable to hurt myself with a marshmallow if left alone for too long.

It can’t be so bad, you may be thinking to yourself. Everyone says that they’re clumsy, but it’s just an over-used word. I assure you, my friend, it is no joke. Let us count the ways:

• When I was two, I leaned against our window to look outside, only to bust through the screen. I proceeded to ride the mesh like a magic carpet down to the concrete below.
• I found a corroded battery when I was old enough to walk, but young enough to still put everything in my mouth. You can see where this is going, I’m sure.
• I have stuck a staple through each of my fingers multiple times, and once in between my front teeth.
• I broke my nose by diving into our swimming pool too horizontally and smashing into the opposing concrete wall.
• I broke my nose by dropping a large trash can lid on it.
• I broke my nose while playing catch with a dryer scent ball.
• I broke my nose a lot.

My claim to horribly pathetic fame was the broken arm. It was a day like any other – myself, lounging in a recliner after a long day of playing in sandboxes or spelling adjectives or whatever we used to do in fifth grade; the Fairly Odd Parents, playing shenanigans on afternoon television. Then I decided I would get up and out of the recliner.

Bad move.

I to this day am unable to adequately describe what transpired in the following few seconds, but the short story is that I somehow fell forward and shut the reclining foot-rest on top of my arm. Yes, it really did break. Yes, I did get a cast. Yes, the nurse was skeptical and asked me if I was sure my parents didn’t beat me.

With complete and utter disregard for my better senses, I decided to go along with my sister. Because it would be kind of cool to learn how to run up walls and do mad flips and sweet rolls and be Spiderman without the webs or radioactive bite or spiders because really, I’m absolutely terrified of spiders. I was fully aware that I would most likely look like Michael Scott my first day and not Spiderman – a risk I was willing to take.

              

The class was absolutely amazing. There were only three of us, including my sister and I, so my audience shrank along with my stage fright. I decided I would go into the exercises with all my might, prepared to at least smack into walls with the greatest enthusiasm I could muster.

After I got over the fact that it took me ten minutes to do ten terrible push-ups, I discovered that parkour may actually be my niche sport. Falling from things seems to be my specialty, so learning to do it with style is probably the best thing I’ve decided to do in my adult life.

Our group ended up staying past class time and taking advantage of free gym time, where I finally got the hang of jumping over a tall block that had been giving me extra trouble. I still can’t do a push-up properly, but I can sure as hell flip deftly and discreetly over the side of a six foot tall pipe wall. And isn’t that what we all really want out of life?

I fully intend to go to class with her all next week while I am visiting, assuming I am able to move my limbs again.

*Michael Scott parkour gif credit to http://rebloggy.com/blog/sirmichaelscott and sammanttha.tumblr.com

Don’t be stingy and let me watch your Netflix.

If you sneeze on an airplane, everyone immediately hates you. I promise guys, I only have allergies. No Ebola here today. I’ve sneezed four times on this flight home to California and I’m sure that the gentleman next to me wants nothing more than to move.

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I can sense the fear. Plus, he took an Emergen-C pill right after I sneezed the second time and crossed himself.

I love travel, I truly do. I’ve been to twelve countries, driven across the United States, and willingly gone to Detroit several times (just kidding, love you guys). When you travel, you get to meet all sorts of amazing people: there’s the shop-owner in Athens who taught us dirty words in Greek, the French students who beat my asthmatic ass up and down the beach playing soccer in Nice, and the German couple who hitched a ride with my boyfriend and I across the Golden Gate Bridge because it was a much longer walk than they intended, to name the first few that pop into my head. People are great.

I do not, however, enjoy taking long flights alone. I can only do so much Sudoku and eat so many Delta Biscoff cookies before I end up getting creepy and watching Netflix on the laptop of the guy next to me. From what I can infer from no sound and stolen glances at the screen, he is watching either a drama about a murder or a romantic foreign film.

When I get desperate for something to do, usually two to three hours into a flight, I find myself periodically looking out the window attempting to figure out how far I am from my destination by identifying geographical points I know absolutely nothing about. In my head, I’m the next Christopher Columbus.

“Those look like Adirondacks. We must be in Arizona already.”

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Netflix guy is on to me, I think. Or the last sneeze really bothered him. I’ll never figure out who the killer/kisser was now.

I also wrote this entire post first on a decrepit iTouch before transferring it to a laptop. I won this sucker in a raffle years ago, when iPods were still hot stuff and you wanted them to match your neat-o flip phone.  I’m too embarrassingly weak to retrieve my laptop from my carry-on, and the iPod said it knew what WiFi was, so I figured I would be able to upload something from the notepad app.

Turns out that the iPod saying it knows what WiFi is is comparable to me saying I know what Adirondacks are.

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Do it for the food.

Are you ever eating a sub and trying to figure out if you’re chewing on a piece of the paper wrapper or lettuce? And then you convince yourself it’s lettuce because it tastes good and you’re not going to grab it out of your mouth because it’s already there?

Just me?

Good.

When I moved from California to the Midwest, plenty of things were different. People had an accent and appalling white stuff fell from the sky and everyone asked me if I was from Canada for some reason.

Some differences were terrible, like the centipedes. Or silverfish, I hate them both equally and choose not to differentiate between them. These guys just don’t exist in Northern California, outside of the Exploratorium exhibit where you can hold one if you’re crazy. In Michigan, they are everywhere. Fuzzy little demon bugs that come out at night from inside the fireplace or the cracks in the walls. One even came out from underneath the bathtub one night.

You can’t just squish a silverfish either because – get this, you’ll love it – they might be full of eggs. Mother Nature knew these bad boys would be killed at all costs, so in a moment of pity, gave them a way to protect the species by allowing them to explode babies if smashed. Therefore, the only way to kill them is to drown them in Raid and hope they don’t get back under the bathtub before they die.

Some differences were good, like Jimmy John’s. Oh, Jimmy John’s.

Maybe you like Subway. Maybe you like Quizno’s. Is Togo’s still a thing? Maybe you like them. If you are a born and bred West coasterner like myself, you just haven’t had some good old JJ’s yet.

It is everything you want from fast food as a college student. Our Jimmy John’s is on the corner of campus in front of the nasty tattoo parlor that grows pot in the back. Open till 2 am, they deliver, and dear Barbara is it tasty. This place is a godsend for a vegetarian college kid who just can’t do another night of Taco Bell with beans instead of beef.

Drunk at 1 A.M. and no one can drive to get late night food? Call Jimmy John’s. Want a sandwich that can be assembled and in your mouth in under five minutes? Jimmy John’s. Desiring cheap sourdough bread and you don’t care if it’s a day old? Jimmy John’s.

I remember when the apartment above Jimmy John’s caught fire after a meth lab (yep) literally exploded. Smoke and fire damage shut them down for a semester and the campus population almost died. Students lost weight, flowers were laid at the store entrance, memorials were hosted. Those of us lucky enough to have vehicles were forced to drive all the way to the other Jimmy John’s ten minutes away that wouldn’t deliver to us. I…I have a hard time talking about it.

And then the signs went up, the black plastic came off the windows, and the spray-painted word “BONER” was officially cleaned off of the storefront in preparation for the grand re-opening. We were more excited about this than graduation, to be honest.

http://thehunternamedwinchester.tumblr.com/post/30343380419

 

So if you haven’t had Jimmy John’s, come to the Midwest. Bring Raid.

I hope this makes me famous.

I’m terrible at introductory posts, but luckily, I have about two people who know who I am right now. So the audience should be relatively easy to please.

I figure if I’m going to be throwing a few thousand dollars at a writing degree, I should probably start writing before – ho hum um – I graduate. I have a Tumblr, but so far the consensus is that Tumblr is no way to create a long standing blog, and since I don’t quite know what I’m doing, I’ll take all the advice I can get. I thought re-blogs made me popular, shucks. I’ll probably keep it going because it’s safe and everyone loves Supernatural there as much as I do…but we’ll stay focused on this blog here mainly.

It’s going to take a bit for my novel to land me a memorable spot on the NY Best Sellers list in between J.K. Rowling and Mr. Stephen King, and poets don’t make money until they’re dead (we’re similar to painters, really). But all the cool cats are blogging – well, all the really cool cats are “vlogging”, but I can’t afford a video camera yet and I’d like to figure out how to perfect my camera voice before I touch that corner of the internet.

The internet is a great and terrible being for someone like me. If I’m lacking motivation, I can hop on Google and type “help me get motivated” and there will be a lovely website waiting for me to come along so it can tell me I’m useless and I need to go save the planet TODAY. And it will work. I’ll get my mojo flowin’ and lift a car off a baby…until I see a picture of a kitten.

A really, really fluffy kitten.

With tiny paws.

And big eyes.

And then my mojo is gone. Because I know where there is one picture of a cute fluffy kitten with tiny paws and big eyes, there at at least thirty more.

And they deserve my undivided attention.