Asides

A Thought on Mailbox Disappointments

Aside Grace1 Comment

I like getting mail – real mail, the kind with my name lovingly written in a familiar hand with a sticker on the back holding the flap down even though it has that special glue.  One of my favorite little moments of the day is checking our mailbox, jiggling the key back and forth until it relents and lets me open our tiny metal door.  The possibility of getting mail, even a postcard, is exciting.

But more often than not, all that tumbles out are circulars with fruits and vegetables printed on newspaper, proclaiming the grocery store’s LOW, LOW PRICES.  They don’t even have coupons to clip, just advertisements listing the products for sale.

Two things bother me about these fliers:

  1. They waste paper.  Each one uses at least two sheets of newspaper, and I see the other tenants’ copies tossed carelessly in the laundry room trash (because who wants to carry it all the way across the parking lot or back to one’s apartment to recycle it?).  No one is even opening them, much less reading or using them, so why waste the materials?
  2. There is no way to stop them coming.  On unwanted email advertisements, I can hit “unsubscribe.”  On magazines, I can cancel my account or simply wait until it runs out.  But these aren’t even addressed to me – they’re sent in bulk to “Resident” at each apartment number, and probably in every other apartment complex in town.  I don’t know how to stop them, except to write some strongly worded letter to the Grocery Store Powers That Be to explain that all they’re doing is wasting paper and no one (or at least no one at this address) wants their unsolicited circulars anymore.  But what good would that do?  They’d probably forget to take us off the list, and they wouldn’t stop printing them.  At best I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for only recycling my own copy anymore.

Something I ponder frequently on my way from the laundry room to the recycling bin.

Public Snark Announcements

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Occasionally, as I walk through campus on my way to class, work, or a meeting, I notice people.  People whose life choices I can’t help but question.  So I have a few PSAs, collected here in force and therefore probably sounding a bit snarkier than they would individually:

To the guy sauntering along a few feet in front of me with his earbuds in, staring at his phone:

If I can hear the backup harmonies of the heavy metal song you’re blasting from your iPhone, you’re probably going to have serious hearing problems by the time you’re 30.  Also, this song I don’t even know is now going to repeat a single line in my head for the rest of the afternoon.  So thanks for that.

Moral: Turn down your music.  Unless you’re already suffering from hearing loss.  In which case I might have some ideas about why that is.

To the girl wearing a backpack over a short skirt:

You’re going to flash someone.  It’s just going to happen.  Backpacks pull skirts up as you walk.  That’s what they do.  At least you’re not wearing a two-layered skirt, where the opaque underskirt might get bunched up under the backpack and you walk along, oblivious, because you feel the transparent overlayer against your legs so you think you’re still decently clothed.

Moral: Proceed with caution when mixing and matching skirts and backpacks.  For everyone’s sake.

To the people staring at their phones as they walk down the mall:

There’s a lamppost ri- never mind, you hit it.  Good job.  Now avoid the bench.  And please don’t clip me with your shoulder and then throw me an irritated look because I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.  Just because I’m the only one of us paying attention, I do not have the responsibility to clear a path for Your Royal Highnesses so you can continue watching your friends’ drunk Snapchats uninterrupted.

Moral: Eyes on the road, buddy.

To the people walking at a snail’s pace, four abreast, along the main campus thoroughfare:

You’re in everyone’s way.  So don’t look shocked when a bicyclist cuts between you and your friends, or when I push through as politely as possible to avoid being late to class.  There is no need for you to leave nearly two feet of space between you so you’re strung out across the whole path.

Moral: You’re clearly friends.  Get friendlier, walk closer together, and let the rest of us get to class on time.

And finally, to the guys still insisting on wearing their pants well below their buttocks:

Stop.  Just…stop.  You do not look cool.  You do not have swagger.  You look like a small child waddling around with his pants around his ankles in the process of being potty-trained.  I would say you look like a penguin, but penguins are at least spiffily dressed.

Moral: I don’t want to know what color underwear you’re wearing today.  Keep it to yourself.

Seniority

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2012-11-09 13.45.17
The Senior Bench upon which I may now sit with impunity by virtue of completing 3/4 of my undergraduate education.

I had this weird thought as I walked past the Senior Bench the other day that I am now a senior and therefore may sit on the Senior Bench without fear of breaking some Long-Dead-But-Potentially-Resurrectable Tradition about not graduating on time or incurring the wrath of Actual Seniors.

It’s not like I was ever afraid to sit on the Senior Bench before – actually, Bird and I have a tradition of getting a picture together on the bench every time she visits me at school, and she doesn’t even go to college yet, much less this college.  There were never any passing Actual Seniors who snarled at me or threatened to drum me out of the student body.  I’m pretty sure half the people sitting on that bench at any given time are freshmen and sophomores, just because upperclassmen are too busy.

But it’s odd to think that that’s who I am now.  An Actual Senior myself.  I find myself with a case of nostalgia for the experience I am still in the middle of.  Mourning the coffee shops I still have months to visit.  Hugging my friends just a little too tight.  Grasping at the familiar walkways with curled toes inside my shoes as though I’m trying to make them stand still when I’m the one moving.

College is coming to a close.  Slowly, yes, and not unexpectedly, but still.

Night Owl

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I think I stay up late because it feels as though I’m stealing time, sneaking in a little more living, even quiet living, while the rest of the world is asleep.  Never mind that the sun is shining on the other side of the planet, that thousands of other people lie awake staring at screens or at pages or just off into space.  The important thing is that I feel hidden, secret, and therefore powerful.

An Announcement

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For a while now, I’ve been toying with the idea of incorporating my stories and creative nonfiction pieces into this blog, but thought that it might disrupt the tone and the types of posts I normally write.  So I decided to create a separate-but-linked site called Changeling Scribbles where I could publish my narratives in serial form (not serial killer form, mind you – that’s a different blog entirely – but in installments).  I think working like this will help me a) force myself to actually keep writing every day, b) finish some of the ideas that have been floating around my laptop forever, c) stick to a schedule, since hopefully people will be anticipating the next chapter, and d) start getting used to the idea of people actually reading my writing, since I’m typically very private about my works in progress.

The beauty of this arrangement is that if you’re interested in reading my stories, you can follow this other blog, but if that sounds like one of the most boring/terrible/torturous propositions in the world, you don’t have to!

My first post on the new blog, changelingscribbles.wordpress.com, will go up on Monday.

I’m kinda nervous.

But I think this will be a fun experiment, even if no one ends up reading it.

Water Water Everywhere

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So I’m on an island.

Not a tropical island, the kind that shows up in clip art with palm trees and sand and maybe a coconut or two even though I’m not even sure coconuts grow on palm trees and those are the only vegetation visible in these stereotypical island illustrations.

I am on an island between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Puget Sound, one of those bumpy places on the map whose outline looks like the leftover dough after the cookies have been cut out.  I have a bed in a trailer in the driveway of the Engineer’s grandparents.  I have a one-cup coffee maker, and yogurt for breakfast, and my GRE prep book, and my laptop, and most of my dresses hanging from a tension rod in the shower because it’s summer, and I like to wear dresses, perhaps too many, though I sent some home with my mom because she said there was no way they would all fit.

I am on this island for the latest Big Exciting Thing: my internship with a company that actually does what I hope to end up doing (editing and publishing).  I haven’t actually gone to work yet, but I’m quite excited.  At the moment, I’m in an armchair in the public library, gazing out at the water (that’s the nice thing about an island – drive long enough and you find a spectacular ocean view!).  Now I think I’ll wander down to the wharf to try out one of the coffee shops, since I anticipate wanting to find a hang-out where I can caffeinate and read comfortably for what may be hours on end.

Yesterday I saw the most charming little bookshop.

I can smell the saltwater when I open the windows in my cozy little trailer.

I think I will be happy here.

Stuff To Do This Summer

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Pray.

Bible study with Bird.

Study for the GRE.

Enjoy and learn from my new internship.

Do DuoLingo or something to keep up my extremely rusty Spanish.

Maybe learn some basic Italian while I’m at it.

Keep up an exercise routine.

Keep up this blog.

Work on some of my own stories.

Get back in touch with old friends.

Go to a friend’s wedding.

Start research for my thesis.

Speaking of which, should probably get that proposal revised and turned in.

Visit the Engineer.

Visit the Southern Belle.

Learn my way around my new town, including finding a bookshop and coffee place to frequent in my down time.

Start journaling again.

Put on sunscreen.

Drink a lot of coffee.

Be happy.

Attempts at a Schedule

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As you may have noticed, my new semester resolution to make this blog a semi-regular thing has not gone quite as well as I might have hoped.

However, I do have a vague idea of topics tied to specific days that will probably make it easier for me to keep it up. On Tuesdays, I’ll be doing One Word posts, focusing on my new category that delves into the connotations of a single word that’s been bouncing around in my head at the time. On Thursdays, I will do the anecdotal sort of posts that make up most of this blog. And on weekends, I’ll just have…weekend thoughts.

Or something. It’s a work in progress, much like me.

Anyway, my hope is that by sharing my ideas for a schedule, I’ll actually feel accountable and maybe kinda sorta try to stick to it!

On Ordering Books for Next Semester

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I despise ordering books.

I have requested that my password for my campus bookstore account be reset no less than five times, but has the email shown up yet? Nope. So here I sit, with a cart full of books that will probably be gone by the time I can finally sign in to pay for them.

Now, I realize that compared to my engineering and accounting friends, I, the English major, have it pretty easy (read, cheap). My textbooks, which tend to run along the lines of writing handbooks, are more like guidelines than actual requirements, not to mention most of the novels I read for class can be found at Half Price Books even cheaper than renting from the campus bookstore.

However.

It never seems to fail that I forget to order books until only a few days before the new semester, and that means that the rental and used book options are more limited, increasing the price and causing me extra stress when something inevitably goes wrong with the website. The whole process is just annoying, and I would so much rather spend money on the books I truly want to read.

How do you cope with ordering required materials, whether for school or work?

It’s Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas

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I sat in Starbucks yesterday working on an essay and found myself grinning like an idiot when John Denver and the Muppets came on singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Singing along under my breath to Miss Piggy’s “BA DUM BUM BUM” earned some alarmed looks from the students around me, but I didn’t really care. Christmas music makes me so happy. Even when I’m stuck at school until only a week before Christmas (yay finals!) and it feels like I’m missing out on all the anticipation at home that makes the season so wonderful, I can dance around in my kitchen to Dan Fogelburg and sing along to Idina Menzel in my room and it feels something like the magical season I remember from being a kid. We only haul out these CDs once a year, but I never fail to remember every single word. They’re carved deep into my memory, an accessible form of time travel as this thing called growing up slowly seems to steal some of the magic left over from childhood.