one long question, one short remark

you know how sometimes you're walking to the library
and the sun is shining so brightly
that your face gets all squinty and you bite your lip,
but you're cold and shivering so you suck in a bit of air,
and because you're biting your lip while you're sucking in air,
you accidentally make a half-whistly sound
somewhat like a feeble human birdsong,
and just as that tweet escapes your lips
you trip over a discrepancy in sidewalk uniformity
(partly because your boots are too big
but mostly because you aren't very good at walking),
and then you notice that two people walking out of the library
are looking at you as if you had just--
well, as if you had just done everything i've just written?

i enjoy that moment of silly pathos.

i remember with 5 senses

the days when i was 5
taste like bubbles
(non-toxic, wand inside)

the days when i was 8
look like tempera paint on the back steps
(each brick a different color)

the days when i was 11
smell like mod podge
(satin finish on magazine clippings)

the days when i was 15
feel like grainy cement under the lifeguard stand
(spf 35)

the days when i am 19
sound like pages
(a crush on e.b. white)

about football

i'm an american but i don't know very much about football.

chalice and i spent the last few days of winter freedom being pummeled to and fro by a great deal of football-related entertainment, namely many episodes of friday night lights on netflix (oh dear) and a trip to see the blind side. so much football. so much violence. so much yelling. so much team spirit. so many confusing rules.

"what does it all MEAN?" we asked ourselves.

we tugged our snuggies tighter and pondered the significance of the sport. (i distinctly recall the first time i saw a snuggie commercial on TV. i laughed heartily at the family sitting on bleachers at an autumn sporting event with their brightly-colored sleeve-blankets protruding from the crowd as i imagine a large pikachu or charlie brown parade balloon might do in the middle of a monday evening traffic jam. no more i laugh at the snuggie. no more.)

after a while we figured, "hey, we've been seeing a lot of this nonsense on the screen. maybe we'll pick it up just by watching. after all, we have a patriotic duty to know the facts about this game." but with all the crazy lingo and fast-paced television editing, we couldn't tell left from right.

we made a list of everything we knew about football:
-touchdowns are great
-tackle the fella with the ball

it was a very short list.

"how to play football," we asked everyone's favorite search engine awkwardly in a sort of non-question. it was a slice of a sentence that was entirely unsure of itself, grammatically confused, answerless, yet holding so much promise. those four words were the confident blue plastic lid on the giant footballian tupperware containing all the answers of the great american pastime. all the black and white stripes of the referees' shirts. all the whistles and shoulder pads. all the baseball caps being plucked on and off coaches' heads in muffled frustration. all the yard lines and yellow flags and mouthpieces and coin tosses. it was all there, a melange of sweaty, bruised, helmeted glory, there for us to pop into the google-microwave and dig into thirty seconds later, mulling slowly over each crunchy bite of football knowledge.

i still don't know very much about football. but i know more than i used to know, and things are looking up. someday i will know it all. someday i'll make it to the NFL. hey, i dream big.

you know, i feel a lil' bit more american.

here is autumn

walking beneath bright trees

leaves that are too beautiful

friends that are too beautiful

funny faces

little forest elfs


knitting parties in cozy homes

how to save money at walmart

only buy things that are purple.

p.s. this does not actually save much money, because granola bars and various adhesives are rarely purple and you'll probably need to buy some of those, and you'll probably accidentally end up buying ladybug-shaped pushpins and a nice tin of colored pencils, but purple-themed shopping IS pretty fun.

here i am up on a mountaintop

oh golly. it sure is great.

important fact: my roommate is made out of gold.

here is a silly picture of us with some carter hall room #360 flora:

(the humble green plant, clusia, is apparently capable of reaching a stately stature of over thirty feet. i did not know this when i purchased it for $1.99, but the prospect excites me, however impractical and improbable it may sound when considered in the confines of a room the size of a small canoe.)

my job is to clean things. i have acquired many useful skills that i previously struggled to perform gracefully. you should see with what adeptness i can coil a vacuum cleaner cord these days. you should see how smartly i scrub toilets. i don't mind so much. in the chapel at seven a.m., birds come and sing on the windowsill while i spray and wipe the glass. i can't hear them chirp because the glass is so thick, but i can see their little mouths move sharply. piano and violin strangle each other in a lovely muffled mess, played in side-by-side practice rooms. there is genteel and amusing tension there. i spy on the practice for west side story while i tidy the auditorium. i held a small grudge against a certain group of people who ate powdered donuts in the same spot every day until i realized it was just the ceiling crumbling a little bit and snowing down onto the chairs and carpet.

i have a little collection of apples that i take from meals and forget to eat. they punctuate our room nicely but soon they will get mushy. for now i'll admire their shape and color and continue to forget that they are food. how pleasant and wasteful! oh dear.

pancakes

chalice is home from new york!

to celebrate we made pancakes for breakfast,

but they did not turn out very well.

they looked like this:

but three-dimensional and more arresting to one's sense of smell.

but they really DID look like two-sided feet

because,

for lack of more appropriate cookware,

we fixed 'em on a pan with ridges,

which i suppose was meant for meat.

they also did not taste very great,

but we are blaming that on the 1975 church cookbook recipe,

and not the baking powder mix-up.

the main point is that i am glad that my friend chalice is home for this week so that i could make pancakes with her, however unpancakelike those pancakes might be.