For the three months I worked at Market Street, I tried to write about it. I have three unfinished posts waiting in the wings but I could never finish. There was always too much to explain, too much filler I would have had to write to make my point. And I hate filler. So I'm taking a different approach. When I remember something worth telling about, I'll write it down.
I'd like to start with Marlene. Marlene Sanders is an animal communicator. A pet psychic, if you will. I don't know how she does it. I'm not entirely sure she knows how she does it. But for $75 you can call Marlene and ask her to tell you about your pet. All she needs to know is their name, their general location in the world, and if there is anything specific you want her to ask about. She'll pause, and take a deep breath. And then she just talks.
I know. You don't believe me. I don't believe it either, at times. She once said that one of the horses compared the barn where he lives during the winter to a Motel 6. I don't believe that Seven Oaks, in all of his horsey splendor, could understand the concept of a motel, let alone be able to name one and understand that it is second-tier. But maybe it's more complicated than that, and Marlene is just trying to put it into terms we stupid humans would understand. That I can believe.
Erin called once about her dog, Baloo. Baloo is a half-husky and the smartest dog I have ever met, like he's only one life away from being full blown human. Baloo was in pain, and no one could figure out what was wrong. He would wake up suddenly from a nap, yelping in pain, with nothing obviously wrong about him. Erin tried everything, and finally she caved and picked up the phone. This is what she said: "His name is Baloo. He lives in New Jersey, and he's having health issues, and I don't know what's wrong with him." She didn't say anything else, didn't ask any questions, didn't give any other specifics (she's skeptical too, you see).
Marlene paused, and took a deep breath. "Oh he is a handsome dog, isn't he!" she said (It's true. He is.) "Yes he says people tell him all the time how handsome he is." (It's true. They do.) Marlene then told Erin that one morning when Baloo was by his favorite tree (whenever Erin and Baloo walk to the barn in the morning Baloo runs off to the same spot in the woods to do his business) a squirrel suddenly fell from the branches above him. Baloo then either chased the squirrel or ran away in fear. That part, Marlene said, wasn't clear. What was clear was that in his fight or flight he ran smack into a tree, and misaligned one of his ribs. His rib at the L3 vertabrae, to be exact.
Marlene also told Erin that Baloo was worried about the gray cat. He hadn't seen her in a while, and he was concerned. Erin had a gray cat named Puddin in Omaha, that she left behind when she moved to New Jersey, but she never mentioned that to Marlene. Baloo also said he didn't much like the red bed that Erin bought him, but he loved the blue one. In Erin's living room there is a red dog bed next to her blue couch. Three guesses as to which one Baloo prefers to sleep on.
A few weeks later one of the horses' massage therapists came to the barn. She also does dogs, so Erin asked her to look at Baloo, without telling her anything about what Marlene had said.
After a few minutes of working on him, the massage therapist said "Oh! He has a rib misaligned."
"I know this is a weird question," Erin said, "but can you tell which vertabrae?"
"Umm, the L3?"
I know I probably haven't convinced you, and I'm not going to pretend that I haven't called BS on Marlene a number of times. I still don't know if I really believe the part about the squirrel.
One morning Hoffy called Marlene because her horse Ruby Slippers wasn't touching her water. Ruby told Marlene the water was too cold, so we then had to lug hot water to top off all of the water buckets. We cursed Ruby and Marlene for a week after that, and tried to blow it off as craziness.
But Ruby drank almost a full bucket after that.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
East Coast Friend Tour 2009
I don't have a job. Sometime this fall I will be gainfully employed by the likes of Anne Kurskinski, Olympic Equestrian and rumored German diva, but until then I occupy the glorious ranks of the Funemployed. I wake up every day around lunch time. I eat lunch, exercise, eat dinner, go out with friends who tell me about their work day, and repeat. This has been my oh so relaxing routine for almost three months, with the exception of two weeks spent in Kentucky earning enough money to fund my early retirement summer. For those of you writhing in jealousy, try it for one week and I guarantee you will be knocking down the door of your workplace to regain some sort of purpose in this world.
I wanted to go on a trip. A majority of my friends from school found their niche on the eastern seaboard, so I decided to point my little orange car east and see where it took me. My friend Kate who had been living at my house all summer was moving to North Carolina to live with our friend Lexie, which gave me a first destination. I made a plan: NC to DC, DC to CT, CT to MA and VT, VT to NE. It would be a lot of driving, and not that much time visiting each place, but I managed to give myself a few days at each location.
About three hours in to our epic journey, I learned that only fools make plans. Thirty miles outside of Kansas City we drove through some construction; I was in my car in the lead and Kate was driving in her car behind me. They were working on the shoulder, so instead of the smooth expanse with rumble bars to wake up sleepy drivers drifting off the road, the side of the interstate just dropped off a good 4 inches. As Kate listened to "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" and snacked on some beef jerky, her car slipped off the edge of shoulder. I noticed movement in my rear view mirror, and watched in horror as she spun off the interstate at 75 mph. She hit a cable barrier fence with the front of her car, chunks of her Subaru flying everywhere, which spun her around in the opposite direction, tearing off her back bumper and brake light as the back of the car hit the same fence and took out a sign that read, "Caution: Shoulder Drop Off."
Somehow I managed to pull my car off the side of the interstate and started sprinting the half mile it took me to stop safely back to Kate's car, which sat facing West. I must have looked fully capable, because not a single other person stopped to help. Miraculously Kate was entirely unharmed, so I called 911 who connected me to highway patrol, who sent 5 whole vehicles to get us out of our pickle. With the help of a very impatient trooper, who threw all of Kate's worldly possessions onto the side of the interstate, we transferred everything from Kate's car to my car before the tow truck arrived to whisk the mangled vehicle away. Everyone seemed confused when Kate and I didn't know what we were supposed to do next. "Well if you're driving that way you might as well keep going," the tow truck driver told us, without any explanation as to what was going to happen to Kate's car if we just left it in Oak Grove, MO while we trotted off to NC.
Kate started calling her parents, who tried to get in touch with their insurance company. State Farm is indeed like a good neighbor, but if it's Sunday you're going to have to wait until Monday for them to do anything about it, so we became reluctant residents of room 211 at Days Inn. We found one restaurant open on Sundays, a Chinese restaurant where the owner's 8 year old daughter was our waitress and my chicken fried rice had actual fried chicken in it. We drove around the Missouri countryside for a while, trying to calm our nerves, sure that we would be on the road again soon the next day.
On Monday morning it was raining, but I told Kate it could be worse. "We could be dead," I said, but she wasn't too reassured. "I don't like that the only other situation worse than this is death," she said. We checked out at the last minute, deciding that if we had to stay in this dismal town another night we were getting nicer digs. We went to Subway and watched the torrential downpour out the window as Kate went back and forth between the insurance company, her parents, and Steve Skaggs, Procision Auto.
Kate and I, who clearly know nothing about vehicle maintenance, decided at the latest they could have her car all fixed and ready by the next morning. Steve Skaggs told us it would take him a week and a half. Rather than sit around and pay for hotel rooms for a week and a half we decided the best option was for Kate to ride the rest of the way in my car, and then she would fly back when the car was fixed and pick it up to drive the rest of the way to NC. Before this happened, however, we had to spend two and a half hours sitting in Steve Skaggs' office trying to get a hold of Kate's dad, who, it turned out, had gone to the gym.
At 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, three days after Kate and I had left the fine city of Omaha, NE for the Durham/Raleigh/Chapel Hill area of NC, a trip that should have taken us 19 hours, we arrived. As for North Carolina, I'm pretty smitten. It feels kind of like Ohio at times, but different in a way that's hard to place. The trees are different, we decided, or maybe the grass. We found a weird tea/smoothie place that puts tapioca pearls at the bottom of your drink, which don't taste bad but feel like you're chewing on fish eyeballs. Lexie's boyfriend took us to the beach yesterday, where we battled surfers for waves and got horribly sunburned. All in all it's a place I think I could live if things with the German Battleaxe don't work out.
My future trip plans are cloudy and tentative; losing that travel day really set me back. What I know for sure: on Saturday I leave this sunny southern state for our great nation's capital, where I will stay until Monday. Until then, here's to hoping I used up my drama quota for the rest of the week.
I wanted to go on a trip. A majority of my friends from school found their niche on the eastern seaboard, so I decided to point my little orange car east and see where it took me. My friend Kate who had been living at my house all summer was moving to North Carolina to live with our friend Lexie, which gave me a first destination. I made a plan: NC to DC, DC to CT, CT to MA and VT, VT to NE. It would be a lot of driving, and not that much time visiting each place, but I managed to give myself a few days at each location.
About three hours in to our epic journey, I learned that only fools make plans. Thirty miles outside of Kansas City we drove through some construction; I was in my car in the lead and Kate was driving in her car behind me. They were working on the shoulder, so instead of the smooth expanse with rumble bars to wake up sleepy drivers drifting off the road, the side of the interstate just dropped off a good 4 inches. As Kate listened to "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" and snacked on some beef jerky, her car slipped off the edge of shoulder. I noticed movement in my rear view mirror, and watched in horror as she spun off the interstate at 75 mph. She hit a cable barrier fence with the front of her car, chunks of her Subaru flying everywhere, which spun her around in the opposite direction, tearing off her back bumper and brake light as the back of the car hit the same fence and took out a sign that read, "Caution: Shoulder Drop Off."
Somehow I managed to pull my car off the side of the interstate and started sprinting the half mile it took me to stop safely back to Kate's car, which sat facing West. I must have looked fully capable, because not a single other person stopped to help. Miraculously Kate was entirely unharmed, so I called 911 who connected me to highway patrol, who sent 5 whole vehicles to get us out of our pickle. With the help of a very impatient trooper, who threw all of Kate's worldly possessions onto the side of the interstate, we transferred everything from Kate's car to my car before the tow truck arrived to whisk the mangled vehicle away. Everyone seemed confused when Kate and I didn't know what we were supposed to do next. "Well if you're driving that way you might as well keep going," the tow truck driver told us, without any explanation as to what was going to happen to Kate's car if we just left it in Oak Grove, MO while we trotted off to NC.
Kate started calling her parents, who tried to get in touch with their insurance company. State Farm is indeed like a good neighbor, but if it's Sunday you're going to have to wait until Monday for them to do anything about it, so we became reluctant residents of room 211 at Days Inn. We found one restaurant open on Sundays, a Chinese restaurant where the owner's 8 year old daughter was our waitress and my chicken fried rice had actual fried chicken in it. We drove around the Missouri countryside for a while, trying to calm our nerves, sure that we would be on the road again soon the next day.
On Monday morning it was raining, but I told Kate it could be worse. "We could be dead," I said, but she wasn't too reassured. "I don't like that the only other situation worse than this is death," she said. We checked out at the last minute, deciding that if we had to stay in this dismal town another night we were getting nicer digs. We went to Subway and watched the torrential downpour out the window as Kate went back and forth between the insurance company, her parents, and Steve Skaggs, Procision Auto.
Kate and I, who clearly know nothing about vehicle maintenance, decided at the latest they could have her car all fixed and ready by the next morning. Steve Skaggs told us it would take him a week and a half. Rather than sit around and pay for hotel rooms for a week and a half we decided the best option was for Kate to ride the rest of the way in my car, and then she would fly back when the car was fixed and pick it up to drive the rest of the way to NC. Before this happened, however, we had to spend two and a half hours sitting in Steve Skaggs' office trying to get a hold of Kate's dad, who, it turned out, had gone to the gym.
At 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, three days after Kate and I had left the fine city of Omaha, NE for the Durham/Raleigh/Chapel Hill area of NC, a trip that should have taken us 19 hours, we arrived. As for North Carolina, I'm pretty smitten. It feels kind of like Ohio at times, but different in a way that's hard to place. The trees are different, we decided, or maybe the grass. We found a weird tea/smoothie place that puts tapioca pearls at the bottom of your drink, which don't taste bad but feel like you're chewing on fish eyeballs. Lexie's boyfriend took us to the beach yesterday, where we battled surfers for waves and got horribly sunburned. All in all it's a place I think I could live if things with the German Battleaxe don't work out.
My future trip plans are cloudy and tentative; losing that travel day really set me back. What I know for sure: on Saturday I leave this sunny southern state for our great nation's capital, where I will stay until Monday. Until then, here's to hoping I used up my drama quota for the rest of the week.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Impending Doom (the 'G' word)
I am ready to graduate. I have loved Kenyon, and I will miss it, but somewhere, deep down, I am ready for the next adventure.
Now that it is spring in rural Ohio, and the birds chirp every morning and the dogwoods have burst into bloom, it is a bit harder to remember that I don't actually want to come back next year. That if, in August, I once again were enrolling in classes that would lock me in the library for entire days and I would once again be eating tacos every Tuesday and some sort of chicken dish every night for dinner, I would throw myself off a small cliff. But right now? Oh man right now I would stay here forever.
In an effort to write in this ol' weblog more and in an attempt to commemorate my fast fading college days, I am going to try over the next two weeks to pay homage to the things I love about this pretentious place.
1. Allstu. Kenyon provides us with an All-student (happily abbreviated to 'allstu') e-mail forum that is used for everything from sharing procrastination techniques and finding lost possessions to epic debates that inevitably blow up into the most offensive diatribes anyone has ever read. My relationship with allstu is Love/Hate; sophomore year I tried to start a conversation about gun control after Virginia Tech and it disintegrated into a snarky outcry about immigration reform. But still, for better or for worse, the allstu is a virtual town meeting, a place where we can make our opinions known about issues at Kenyon or out in that so-called "real world."
It's also pretty darn convenient - if next year when I'm walking home from a party late at night and almost step on a skunk, and proceed to throw my keys/cellphone/wallet at it to scare it away and then run away myself, who will send a helpful email the next morning that they found it on their way to Peirce for breakfast?
2. The fact that I would be walking home from wherever when I run into the skunk because everywhere I would ever need to go is less than a mile from my doorstep. Also the fact that there are skunks everywhere and they always come charging out of the woods at me when I'm talking on the phone outside of my apartment.
3. Being a college student. There's something magical that comes with being a college student. You're automatically excused from pretty much anything requiring responsibility. It's ok to never have any money and yet still not be looking for a job. It's ok to wear brightly colored leggings as pants with a flannel t-shirt and sunglasses from the 80's, and to intentionally look like you haven't showered in a few days. It's acceptable to stay up all night working on something you've known about all semester, and to stay awake by drinking essentially poison.
And man is it hip to be a college student. Somehow we know about things weeks before they happen, we see TV shows and movies the day before they air, we know that something's out before it was even in.
Soon it will be irresponsible if I don't have a job. Unprofessional to dress like a homeless person. And just plain stupid to stay up all night doing anything. And at Thanksgiving when everyone's talking about some Youtube video that was mentioned at the end of the evening news or that a co-worker forwarded to them I won't be able to roll my eyes and say, "C'mon, guys, that was sooo last week, the parody of it is waay funnier."
I probably won't even have seen it yet.
Now that it is spring in rural Ohio, and the birds chirp every morning and the dogwoods have burst into bloom, it is a bit harder to remember that I don't actually want to come back next year. That if, in August, I once again were enrolling in classes that would lock me in the library for entire days and I would once again be eating tacos every Tuesday and some sort of chicken dish every night for dinner, I would throw myself off a small cliff. But right now? Oh man right now I would stay here forever.
In an effort to write in this ol' weblog more and in an attempt to commemorate my fast fading college days, I am going to try over the next two weeks to pay homage to the things I love about this pretentious place.
1. Allstu. Kenyon provides us with an All-student (happily abbreviated to 'allstu') e-mail forum that is used for everything from sharing procrastination techniques and finding lost possessions to epic debates that inevitably blow up into the most offensive diatribes anyone has ever read. My relationship with allstu is Love/Hate; sophomore year I tried to start a conversation about gun control after Virginia Tech and it disintegrated into a snarky outcry about immigration reform. But still, for better or for worse, the allstu is a virtual town meeting, a place where we can make our opinions known about issues at Kenyon or out in that so-called "real world."
It's also pretty darn convenient - if next year when I'm walking home from a party late at night and almost step on a skunk, and proceed to throw my keys/cellphone/wallet at it to scare it away and then run away myself, who will send a helpful email the next morning that they found it on their way to Peirce for breakfast?
2. The fact that I would be walking home from wherever when I run into the skunk because everywhere I would ever need to go is less than a mile from my doorstep. Also the fact that there are skunks everywhere and they always come charging out of the woods at me when I'm talking on the phone outside of my apartment.
3. Being a college student. There's something magical that comes with being a college student. You're automatically excused from pretty much anything requiring responsibility. It's ok to never have any money and yet still not be looking for a job. It's ok to wear brightly colored leggings as pants with a flannel t-shirt and sunglasses from the 80's, and to intentionally look like you haven't showered in a few days. It's acceptable to stay up all night working on something you've known about all semester, and to stay awake by drinking essentially poison.
And man is it hip to be a college student. Somehow we know about things weeks before they happen, we see TV shows and movies the day before they air, we know that something's out before it was even in.
Soon it will be irresponsible if I don't have a job. Unprofessional to dress like a homeless person. And just plain stupid to stay up all night doing anything. And at Thanksgiving when everyone's talking about some Youtube video that was mentioned at the end of the evening news or that a co-worker forwarded to them I won't be able to roll my eyes and say, "C'mon, guys, that was sooo last week, the parody of it is waay funnier."
I probably won't even have seen it yet.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Instincts
Meet Obie.I've had Obie since he was 4 weeks old, when my friends found him on the side of the road while they were canvassing for Obama. One of his eyes was completely swollen shut, and he could fit in the palm of your hand. Of my hand.
His favorite past times are sleeping on my keyboard while I'm trying to write a paper and watching the toilet flush. He learned how to open our bathroom door and loves to do it at the most inopportune times, like as soon as you get in the shower. He loves water, and has no problem being in the tub while the water's running and then jumping back into my bed, soaking wet.
He has a Beanie Baby elephant named Toot Toot that he carries around with him everywhere, and if you throw Toot Toot down the hallway Obie will come trotting back with the elephant swinging in his mouth, plop it down at your feet and look up at you expectantly. He loves to take the fish magnets off of our fridge and leave them around the apartment. I once found one in the bathroom sink; I'm pretty sure he was trying to return it to the sea.He's had a hard time learning to be a cat. When I brought him home over winter break he met Sadie, our fat orange devil of a feline who hissed every time she saw him. Obie, who I had never heard hiss in his entire short life, started to hiss at everything, at random, and without reason. Even Toot Toot. He eventually grew out of it after a few weeks away from Sadie, but he still never meows, except to let out an awkward squeak when he's really upset.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I woke up this morning to a dead mouse in the middle of my floor. The initial surprise was that there are mice in my apartment, but then I had to wonder, where the heck did this cat who doesn't even know how to hiss and meow properly learn to hunt and kill a mouse? I certainly didn't teach him. Could it really be entirely instinct? It really makes you realize how much more adept our pets are than us. Obie is barely six months old and he can already hunt and kill his own meal. When I was six months old I gummed Melba Toast and had no control over even my bowel movements, let alone being able to feed myself.
At least I know the truth about the red laser pointer dot he chases all over the apartment...that idiot.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
If this desk could speak..
It's been a busy week. My senior exercise, a 30 page paper about fisheries and how we're all doomed (yeah yeah blah blah) is due tomorrow. I finished it, but that doesn't really mean anything because, trick trick, I also have all the work I didn't do while I was working on that to finish.
I've been spending a lot of time (just a few 13 hour days, no big deal) in the library trying to get it all done, and I've seen the inside of a lot of these little "study cubicles." I went to a public high school in downtown Omaha, so I'm used to vandalism, especially of the "Crip," "Blood," and "I will kill you" variety. Kenyon, on the other hand, is prestigious. A "New Ivy." Completely full of themselves. I guess I always thought my days of reading aimless scribblings were behind me, until I sat down in this cubicle.
"Fuck Independents" is written on the wall to my left, but someone scribbled out "Fuck" and wrote "Go" instead. An arrow from that points to "Dead Rabbits Society" written in pencil, and "Against Gocial" added in pen (Gocial is a pretty unpopular Dean here on campus, think Umbridge from Harry Potter). Under all of this someone wrote "We have more fun and better sex," after which someone scribbled "False."
"Oh hello" is written at the top of the wall, with "Johannes Van Eyck Fuit Hic (was here)" written underneath. Near the surface of the desk, in small, neat handwriting, is "Finals hurt my soul."
On the right hand wall, a correspondence between strangers: "ALMOST DONE!!!" written in red, "Not me..." underneath that, followed by "me neither..." In faint, slanted writing further down the wall: "KILL ME!" followed, inexplicably, by a star.
I'm a doodler. I draw all over my notebooks during class. But, no matter how bad it gets, I never feel compelled to write on walls. Don't get me wrong, I love reading them, but what is it that makes people write them? Boredom? Desperation? A cry for attention?
On the shelf above me someone wrote "HEHEHE." Why? What was so funny?
I've been spending a lot of time (just a few 13 hour days, no big deal) in the library trying to get it all done, and I've seen the inside of a lot of these little "study cubicles." I went to a public high school in downtown Omaha, so I'm used to vandalism, especially of the "Crip," "Blood," and "I will kill you" variety. Kenyon, on the other hand, is prestigious. A "New Ivy." Completely full of themselves. I guess I always thought my days of reading aimless scribblings were behind me, until I sat down in this cubicle.
"Fuck Independents" is written on the wall to my left, but someone scribbled out "Fuck" and wrote "Go" instead. An arrow from that points to "Dead Rabbits Society" written in pencil, and "Against Gocial" added in pen (Gocial is a pretty unpopular Dean here on campus, think Umbridge from Harry Potter). Under all of this someone wrote "We have more fun and better sex," after which someone scribbled "False."
"Oh hello" is written at the top of the wall, with "Johannes Van Eyck Fuit Hic (was here)" written underneath. Near the surface of the desk, in small, neat handwriting, is "Finals hurt my soul."
On the right hand wall, a correspondence between strangers: "ALMOST DONE!!!" written in red, "Not me..." underneath that, followed by "me neither..." In faint, slanted writing further down the wall: "KILL ME!" followed, inexplicably, by a star.
I'm a doodler. I draw all over my notebooks during class. But, no matter how bad it gets, I never feel compelled to write on walls. Don't get me wrong, I love reading them, but what is it that makes people write them? Boredom? Desperation? A cry for attention?
On the shelf above me someone wrote "HEHEHE." Why? What was so funny?
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