Very Bad Things

Crisco, and how I came to hate it

I've had a nearly lifelong disdain for Crisco, and I can pinpoint for you the exact moment it started. Like most weird little kids, I had my own weird little obsessions. Chief among them, for a few years at least, was butter. I couldn't get enough of the stuff; I'd sneak bites of it when my mom was cooking, I'd eat butter flavored Crisco by the spoonful. It was a problem. A problem that became a full blown domestic and intestinal disaster when I was a little less than two-years-old.
My dad has always been a bit of a handyman, (this will be relevant, just wait) and back when Mike and I shared a room he decided to craft us a set of bunkbeds. Brother and I would spend hours in the garage fetching tools for him and trying to decipher the magics of carpentry. I had a pretty intense case of toddler narcolepsy back then, and I tended to run around like a maniac for a few hours and then BAM pass out wherever I'd wandered to. So it was no wonder that Dad assumed I was unconscious on the dog bed when the garage became eerily quiet. It was, after all, one of my favorite slumber stations.
But I wasn't asleep. I was plotting. And stacking. And climbing. Mom had just been to the grocery store a few days earlier and had bought a brand new tub of butter-flavored Crisco in preparation for a baking frenzy. She'd intentionally put it on a high shelf in the pantry because she knew me for the butter fiend I was. Unfortunately for her (and me, and Dad, and the carpet) I knew right. where. it was. And damned if I hadn't inherited enough engineering genes to figure out how to get to it. Oh, and get to it I did. Using a cunning technique of stacking cereal boxes and jars of peanut butter I managed to ascend the 6 or so feet between myself and the Holy Grail. A completely untainted tub of Crisco, and it was all mine.
The exact thought processes leading up to "The Crisco Incident," as Walker family history will forever know it, still remain a bit fuzzy in my memory, but goddamn did I exploit those precious few unsupervised minutes for all they were worth. By the time Dad realized I wasn't peacefully asleep in the garage and Mike had admitted he was too interested in a socket wrench to keep an eye on me, the damage was done. When they found me I had not only covered my entire self in Crisco, but I'd also managed to pack an impressive amount into my diaper and grind even more into every bit of carpet my tiny arms could reach. After some serious calculations, estimations, and tracking my intestinal misery for the next few days, it was determined that I'd also eaten between 1 and 1 1/2 cups of the stuff.
It took less than 10 minutes, but I swear to you the implications of those 10 minutes still haunt me.

This is literally all she wrote.

“So dying was weird. Good thing we only have to do it once, am I right...? Too soon? Too soon for postmortem humor?”
Blank, quizzical stares. Man, this hearings committee really does not find one damn thing I say amusing. It’s my 6th time sitting in front of them, and not once have I seen a single one of them crack a smile.
“Mr. Rawlings, how can you expect us to take your application seriously when you continually make a mockery of the process? This isn’t a job interview at McDonald’s. This is your afterlife we’re talking about, and the sooner you can move onto it the better off we’ll all be.”
That’s Lester. Mr. Gypsum, if you don’t mind. I’ve become something of a conundrum for him lately;

Dear Eddie

Dear Eddie,
I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Not for any particular reason, other than that life’s decided to kick me in the ass a little bit lately. It sucks, because you were always the one who always had a profound knack for throwing me out of these funks, but you’re dead now and that’s one of the major factors contributing to this particular funk. That’s a paradox that I’m sure you’re just loving in your own twisted way.
Remember how I had it right after you died? I’m sure you do, you were there with me every step I took for those first few months; you tricked everything I saw and did into reminding me of you. Ass. Before you moved I was one of the cool kids because I was friends with you. Everyone was clamoring to get close to you and that goddamn infectious, maniacal smile. I was one of the lucky ones, the chosen few, who had you as a friend by default; with the childhood you and I had together there was no way we couldn’t be friends. But then you moved, and I realized that you had been my entire social circle. No one looked my way anymore because you were no longer there by my side, scheming our next escapade.
Then you died. Suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend again. To be your friend again. I bet you had a good laugh at seeing how many “friends” you had when you were dead. I was instantly cool again because I was “friends with the dead kid.” Not only that, but I was super special - I was friends with the kid who offed himself. It was sweet, I’d never had so much attention thrust my way before. Everyone scrambling to ask me “Why?” and “How’d he do it?” and “Were you in love with him?” I know you saw that, because I could hear your answers: “None of your damn business.” and “Leave her alone, you ass.” and “Yeah, were you?”
Isn’t it funny how death works? You know more about the specifics than I do, but I fancy myself a bit of an expert on the aftermath these days. You’re like a big ol’ yacht that’s cruised out of port trailing a massive wake in your path. Those of us who were part of your inner sanctum were close enough to get caught up in the turbulence churned up by your immediate departure. But as the social ties got looser and more distant people only felt your wake as a wee ripple, none too jarring to float over and easily forgettable as they were caught up in their own turbulence.
Sorry to get all metaphorical with you. I know you always hated it when I did that, when I played writer and tried to be fancy with my words. But you know what? You’re dead. You HAVE to listen to me now. You brought this on yourself, so my ranting and metaphor-weaving is something you’re going to have to put up with until I’m good and ready to let you rest in peace. I’ll let you know when that moment comes, but for the time being I still need you too much so I’m going to keep you around for a while.

Yours Always,
Andie

Cockroaches are worse than Mike McCloskey

I thought that my days in pest control were over. I really did. But then I drove to Houston, where it seems freakouts aren't that out of the question.
I was lying on my brother's bed after a night of drinking when I saw something large and dark moving between his ceiling and the trim, which is oddly placed about an inch below. At first, most likely due to intoxication, it didn't seem all that odd to see a mouse-sized creature scurrying across the ceiling.
Then I realized it was a cockroach.
Then I freaked out.
Then I screamed for Michael to "Kill it kill it! Make it stop make it die! Make it better!"
He DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH COCKROACHES.
So... For a few drunken moments we were amused by watching the DEVIL crawl across the ceiling as the cat meowed at it. Then. Then it started preening itself and making itself at home on the ceiling. And the cat wasn't doing ANYTHING. Stupid cat. At this point we decided that it was time to take some action. This fucker needed to be flushed down the toilet. Right. Now.
Michael had grabbed a chair and a tupperware container and started to "pretend" like he was going to capture the thing, when I asked if I should step in and he agreed.
I thought I could handle it.
I couldn't.
I started hyperventilating and continued to do so until... now, I suppose.
I stood on the chair and maniacally thrust the tupperware at the ceiling, luckily capturing the "diabolical invertebrate" for a few moments. Mike handed me an REI catalog to put between the opening and the ceiling, thus trapping it indefinitely.
At this point we decided to rush it to the toilet to get the final killing taken care of.
That's when it got out. When there WASN'T A GAP FOR IT TO GET OUT. The devil cockraoch had magicked itself through a gap that didn't exist and started crawling on the OUTSIDE of the tupperware. Towards my hands.
I made a desperation/panic throw for the toilet, but obviously missed. The cockroach disappeared, and I slipped further into my nervous breakdown. My voice raised about 18 octaves, which my brother obviously enjoyed endlessly.
At this point I started yelling almost unintelligibly for Michael to get SOMETHING to fix things. He gave me a rubber broom, with which I whacked nonsensically around the bathroom with for about 2 minutes until Evil scurried out of the trash can behind the toilet. At this point I had no choice but to communicate in an alto voice, yelling for Mike to give me back the tupperware. As soon as it was in my hand I shoved it at the wall, effectively pinning the insect at about mid-torso.
Fun fact: cockroaches neither die nor slow down when their torsos are crushed. That's why Mike smashed it's head with the mop handle as it was trying desperately to escape through a grout line it had conveniently wormed it's way to. We cut its head off for good measure, with what God only knows.
We were finally able to flush the (still flailing) torso and leggy bits down the toilet as the head stayed plastered to the wall. Mike made me clean the head off of the wall and the guts off of the broom handle with rubbing alcohol, but I think that's just because he's an asshole.

I think my dad is Superman.

It's a scary moment when you realize that a parent isn't invincible. Growing up, (assuming you have kick-ass parents like I did) it's easy to come to believe that your parents will be around forever, that they'll always be there to put a bandaid on a scraped knee and tell you it's ridiculous to put one on a bruise. At some point, though, you get old enough and reality kicks you in the face, and you realize that's all just a childhood fantasy.

My family was camping on Lake Okanagan in Canada when I figured this out. Dad and I were taking a walk and we decided to stop at some swings that were in the campground. We started having a pretty serious conversation about life and death and what it meant to him to be my dad. My reality face-kick came in the form of Dad telling me what he wanted his legacy to be; how he wanted me to remember him when he was gone. He was telling me that he was afraid of the legacy he was leaving behind because he was afraid of the kind of father that he was to my brother and I.

I'd never even considered the idea that he might be gone one day. Until that conversation I'd always taken for granted that he'd be there indefinitely.

I've always thought that I have one of the best dads in the world. He doesn't know it and would refuse to believe it if someone told him, but he's pretty badass.

April says...

She doesn't dance unless her inhibitions are null.
He knows that.

She doesn't give in to his persistence unless her inhibitions are lowered.
He knows that.

She wouldn't have said yes without the tequila.
He KNEW that.

She wouldn't resent him if it weren't for the tequila.
He's clueless.
Heartless.
Worthless.

Knowledge is scary

I had an interesting conversation with my brother while waiting for a delayed flight in the Minneapolis airport. I was on my way home from my parents' house after Christmas break and I called Mike to help pass the time during an extended layover.

We were talking about various aspects of Blu-ray players (cables, adapters, etc.) when I casually mentioned that he should add something to the list of things he doesn't know. In true Walker sibling fashion, we somehow (it took us 30 minutes to figure out how) segued that into a conversation about human knowledge and and the quest thereof (not sure that's the right way to end that sentence).

We started out talking about whether the number of things possible to know is constantly in flux, or is a finite number. Taking into account names of individuals on the planet and those of newly developed species, we decided that the number is most likely increasing, albeit slowly. Considering that there are people dying and species going extinct every day, the steady population growth is somewhat off-set. I'll spare you the tedious details of how we came to this conclusion, but I assure you that it took us about 45 minutes of philosophical out-loud pondering to get to this point.

Somewhere along the line we discussed whether the information stored in our own heads is growing or decreasing in relation to the knowledge of humanity as a whole. It didn't take us long to decide that compared to the knowledge of the 6 billion+ people on the planet and all of our/their ancestors, the knowledge of one person is minuscule. There in an exceedingly small number of people in the history of people who have made significant enough contributions to the human know-how to earn a place in history. We don't know anything that someone before us hasn't figured out already; we're just intellectual leaches.

As we were getting closer and closer to our final thesis, I started noticing that people in the gate-area had started to take notice of my conversation. Some were rolling their eyes and moving away in an attempt to get away from my side of the conversation, and others were attempting to inconspicuously move closer and listen in. After all, it's not too often that one gets to overhear a 20-something who looks barely of the legal driving age having such an intense and intellectually charged conversation.

It's official, I'm quitting OC in the near future to begin an illustrious stint as a Lia Sophia jewelry rep. I don't belong in a job so feminine, but I'm doing it regardless. So hush, you.

Also, I made a t-shirt. You should buy one.
http://www.zazzle.com/have_you_hugged_an_alaskan_today_tshirt-235810602775982946

edit: here's one for the dudes-
http://www.zazzle.com/have_you_hugged_an_alaskan_today_tshirt-235065819251748071

I've decided to start documenting my life. Preferably in a manner that would make it seem more engaging and eventful than it really is. (This leads me to wonder whether my life really is as boring as I think it is, or if it's actually pretty interesting, and I've just become desensitized to it. But that's a big ol' existential train of thought for later documentation...)
Who knows, maybe I'll actually be able to finagle something readable and marginally better than The Dive from Clausen's Pier onto paper. Terrible book. Don't read it. The only redeeming characters were on the periphery, and they were quickly written out in favor of selfish, predictable characters.
It's just been decided. I'm turning this into a rant against the only piece of "literature" ("" because I don't fully believe it deserves to be called literature) that I have ever actively destroyed. I don't remember who wrote it, and frankly I don't care enough to look her up.
Here's a quick summary:
-Girl falls out of love with fiance.
-Fiance becomes paralyzed after jumping off of Clausen's Pier.
-Girl can't handle paralyzed fiance.
-Girl runs away to New York without warning.
-Girl moves into nook of stranger's house.
-Girl meets inappropriately-aged new boyfriend.
-Girl falls in love with new guy.
-New guy isn't what girl expected.
-Girl goes home for an emergency visit.
-Girl decides to stay home in order to take care of paralyzed ex-fiance, thus bailing on New Guy and the few New York friends (including the aforementioned quality characters) she's made.
Sorry if you like it, but I thought it was painfully contrived and had zero variation in sentence structure. This was the first book I finished purely out of spite; I couldn't let it beat me.
I burned it in the fireplace on Christmas.

"Hmm, interesting..." muses Freud

I’ve always considered myself to have the soul of a writer. Now, before we get off on the wrong foot, I need you to know that I’m not delusional in the slightest regarding my actual ability to write. Simply having the soul of a writer does not necessarily translate to having the know-how to relay thoughts, glimpses of one’s own reality, into the written word. What I think is beautifully poignant with just the right dash of wit may be clunky and dull to someone else. What I think is an impossibly nebulous paragraph of drivel may flow seamlessly and with perfect relevancy for another reader. My point: in the world of words, it’s all about perspective. It’s a constant battle, with everyone climbing to the top of an imaginary peak (with no less casualties than the very tangible Everest, mind you) to be the first to reach the flag. It’s the most impossible game of capture the flag ever (that’s where I was going with the mountain reference; stick around, I have more convoluted metaphors where that came from); no one is on the same team, no one is looking out for anyone else’s back. Everyone seems to have a strategy, while I’m still in the corner of the field trying to figure out how to lace up my sneakers. Safe in my own little bubble I can judge others’ works, without having to deal with the sting of any reciprocated judgment. If I never put my stuff out there, I can go on believing my words are worth something because no one can tell me they’re not.

Facebook has the flu.

There's an epidemic sweeping the Facebook world. It's called "25 Random Things" and has caused 98.7% of users (don't question my statistics) to reveal 25 things about themselves in the form of a note. I was lucky enough to receive the vaccine in time, and have launched a counter-offensive. Enjoy, and for the love of God, protect yourselves!

"So... I'm bored with reading the "25 Things about Me" lists, and have decided instead to tell you 25 (or however many I get to before becoming irreparably distracted) things that are not true about me. Here we go:

1) I'm graceful. My balance is impeccable and not once have I fallen up the stairs. My brother does it all the time, and I'm able to laugh at him because I know that due to my superior coordination, he will never be able to laugh at me about the same thing.

2) I get over things quickly. I don't wallow or dissect every minute thing that I could have done differently in order to make something turn out better like some people do. I don't understand why people can't let things go. What's happened has happened, get over it.

3) I'm a math whiz. No seriously, I kick arithmetic's ass.

4) I am an amazing singer, and am not tone deaf in the least. When I was in band in high school, I could tell, without fail, whether my horn was playing sharp or flat. Now I love singing in front of people, especially at work.

5) I don't have a personal bubble. I know most people don't like other people to get too close, but I'm totally cool with it and being in close proximity to other people doesn't make me uncomfortable. For this reason, I love huge house parties. They're such great ways to meet new people!

6) I got a tattoo because I thought it would be a good conversation starter. It doesn't really mean anything, I just made something up after I got it so that I could legitimize it in conversations.

7) I don't like animals. They're gross and just get in the way. I don't understand how people can have pets because they cost so much money and require so much time to take care of. I think it's especially annoying when people whose pets die get upset about it. I mean, it's just an animal. Buy a new one.

8) My lack of self confidence is a complete charade. I pretend to be self-conscious so that people will feel sorry for me. It's a way of trolling for compliments, really.

9) I have the most boring dreams. I hear people talking about their exciting dreams all the time and I get so jealous! My dreams are always so mundane; nothing that couldn't happen in real life ever happens in them. I never have cool, fantastical dreams where a unicorn suddenly turns into my cousin and gives me an epic mission to travel across Bubble Land to save Princess Gaseous. I wish I would. Just once.

10) I love it when people read and critique my writing. Written words are really impersonal, and having people tell me how to change my writing to make it better is great. When I got a B- on a paper in my English class, I read over the professor's every comment, making sure I committed every correction to memory.

11) I hate road trips. Spending that much time in a car is horribly boring. I'd rather just fly to wherever I'm going and avoid all the hassle of having to find rest stops because the co-pilot downed 3 gallons of 7up slushy. People rant and rave about how great the scenery is, and that it's amazing to be able to see so much of the country up close and personal, but I love flying and airports, and would take a plane over a car any day.

12) I cut my hair off short because I want to stand out and have everybody look at me. I love being the center of attention, and I think that having short hair really helps with that. I'm not surprised or taken-aback when people compliment me, in fact I get kind of offended when people don't notice my awesome hair.

13) I'm really girlie. Growing up, most of my friends were girls and they were all jealous of my doll collection. My brother had a lot of cars and LEGOS, but I would never play Car City with him or help him with his Technics. I used to hate it when Mike's friends came over because they were all guys, and I've always felt more awkward around guys than girls. It's a lot easier for me to be friends with girls than it is guys, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that while my brother was always playing outside, I would be inside with my dolls and tea set.

14) My brother and I don't get along very well. I'm really jealous of the relationships my friends have with their siblings, because Mike and I just can't seem to connect. We never played together when we were little, and now I think that as we're turning into adults, that's taken a huge toll on our relationship. I don't feel like I can tell him anything, and he doesn't trust me with any of his secrets. I just wish we could find some common ground.

15) I tell people that I love to read books, but really that's just a line I use to make people think that I'm more cultured. I think reading's boring, and I'd much rather watch a movie based on a book that read the book itself. I have the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe on my shelf because I think it would impress someone who saw it, but I've never actually read any of the works in it and I don't intend to.

16) I hate camping and not being able to shower for days on end; give me a hotel and heated pool any day. I'm so glad that my parents finally bought an RV, because it makes camping bearable! When I was little we did a lot of backpacking and camping, but I always hated it. I just don't understand the appeal of wandering out into the middle of nowhere to live campfire-style without running water.

17) I don't care what people think about me.

18) That guy? The one I helped pack up for college the day he left? I don't think about him every day.

19) I make a point of telling people where I'm from because I think they'll think I'm cooler if they hear where I was born. If someone asks where I'm from, I tell them I'm from Alaska, not Anchorage, because if I tell them I'm from Anchorage they might not get right away what state I'm from. I want people to know that, and I try to work it into all my conversations with new people I meet; I don't give my friends an opportunity to say it for me.



I'm done. 19 is all I can come up with."

It was almost poetic, the way it ended.
I was walking home from my last class of the day, a backpack's worth of knowledge bearing down on my shoulders. The sun was out, the temperature was perfect for a sweatshirt. I was plugged into my iPod, tuned out from the rest of the world. By the luck of the draw, I was getting nothing but quality tracks popping up in my earbuds. I walked down the hill, past the underage-drinker-magnet bar, past the pumpkin frozen mid-rot since October, past the beerman unloading his wares into the other underage-drinker-magnet bar. Engrossed in my own thoughts and world, I turned the corner onto my street. Mid-chorus, I hit the bricks. My world went silent, but the song lived on.




How it really happened:
I leaped out of the way of the car just in time to see the driver mutedly shrieking at me as she skidded through the crosswalk and on to Jazzercise.
I hope she spilled her latte.

Follow my rules.

Why the befuddlement over grammar? I concede that the rules shy away from being steadfast and have exceptions, but that does not warrant the blunders that abound in written English. For this fact, here are my (candid) thoughts on the most common missteps:

Apostrophes:
1) Signifying plurals: DO NOT USE AN APOSTROPHE TO SIGNIFY A PLURAL. Example: never say "These pickle's are really tasty." This just makes me want to ask you what the pickles own that are so tasty. The one exception to this rule I will accept is using an apostrophe to separate the digital portion of a decade from the "s" at the end. Example: "Excuse me sir, but were you alive during the 70's?" This prevents (though is not necessary due to contextual clues) one from assuming that the pronunciation is "seven zero ess," as in the specific part number for some gadget. I accept this exception only because English is an absurd language.
2) Signifying possessives: Pronouns (her, it, his, etc.) do not use apostrophes. You would never say "That book is her's." Nouns (dog, cat, asparagus) use apostrophes; "This is Michael's mounted deer head," or "That is the dog's bone." Those are appropriate uses of apostrophes to signify ownership. "It's" means it is, while "Its" means that "it" owns the object of the sentence.
3) Plural Possessives: This one is pretty simple, once you know the rule. With the exception of pronouns, which we've already been over, there is only one way (that I know of) to signify plural possessives. Instead of the apostrophe being between the subject and the "s," simply put it at the end of the whole word. Example: a bowl belonging to one dog is "The dog's bowl," whereas a bowl belonging to multiple dogs is "The dogs' bowl." You don't say "theirs'" however, because apostrophes aren't used to signify ownership with pronouns.

Their, There, They're/Your, You're:
1) They're not interchangeable. Deal with it.

I, Me, Him, He:
1) Mine vs. My in conjunction with a second-person pronoun: this is a rule that there is almost universal confusion over. How do I say that the book belongs to both my brother and me? Or is it my brother and I? The answer is extremely simple once we break down the sentence and put it back together piece by piece. First off, would you say that it is "My book" or "Mine book"? Obviously the first of these options is correct, so now we move on to the second-person pronoun. The only logical choice is that it is "His book", thus the second part of the sentence practically writes itself. Putting the two sections together, we get "It is his and my book." It may not sound perfect and pretty-smooth, but it's right. Alternately, if we want to put the book in the first part of the sentence, we would say "The book is mine and his" because if the first-person was the only object in the sentence, we would say "The book is mine." It's all about treating each pronoun as though it's in the sentence alone, then putting the two together to form one cohesive sentence.
2) I vs. Me: The same process from the possessive sentences we just went over applies to this idea. Most people I've encountered have been poorly taught to believe that whenever you are talking about yourself and another using pronouns, the personal pronoun must always be "I." If we break down a few sentences using the same process for the possessives, however, we see that this is not necessarily a hard and fast rule. For example, if I want to say that I went to Subway, and so did my roommate, I would say "She and I went to Subway" because separately the two sentences would be "She went to Subway" and "I went to Subway." But if I want to say my mother gave a gift to both my brother and me, I would say "My mother gave a gift to him and me" because separately the two sentences would be "My mother gave a gift to him" and "My mother gave a gift to me."

Hence:
Oh my Lord few things irritate me more that the misuse of the word "hence." Hence takes the place of "consequentially..." not "that is." Don't ever let me hear you saying "I ran out of milk, hence why I went to Wal Mart." I will hate you. "I ran out of milk, hence I went to Wal Mart," or "I ran out of milk, hence my trip to Wal Mart" are appropriate. It's a vaguely ruled word that is nearly impossible to explain to someone who doesn't understand it. If you don't get it, don't use it. It's easier to respect a person who knows their vocabulary and doesn't try to over step its bounds than it is to respect a person who picks up on words from another's vocabulary without fully grasping the meaning and proper usage.

Can anyone explain the "who" vs. "whom" rule to me? I knew for about 3 months my senior year of high school, but it completely escapes me now.

Also, I couldn't decide where to put the period after a single word in quotation marks, so I just put it within. It looks better to have the period outside the quotations in these instances, but I either never learned the corresponding rule or have forgotten it.

More to come later; I'm all grammared out. (a rant on semicolons, perhaps?)

Wine in hand

Sitting in the living room, nothing but the Christmas tree and wood stove for light. Sharing a glass of wine with my mother and brother, watching the dog try in vain to eat the firewood.
It's sub-zero outside; we're losing snow, sublimation. Moose are out there somewhere, crunching their way through the frozen forests.
Dinner is starting to smell like food - herbs and frozen meat turning into a meal in the oven.
This is home; a brief respite from the vigors of reality. Our own little cocoon in the blistery world.

"It's got wings! It's got wings!"

Around 11:30 last night I was lying in bed reading Water for Elephants (fan-frickin'-tastic), when my roommate Kori knocked timidly on my door.
"Katelin? Are you awake?"
"Yeah, I'm just reading, what's up?"
She opens the door and comes in my room, on the verge of tears.
"There's something really big in my room. Inca's playing with it."
"How big is big?" I ask, assuming it's the oft-present cricket or spider.
She wordlessly holds up her hands, indicating it's about the size of a tennis ball. I immediately start to freak out a little as I imagine the behemoth of a spider I'm about to lay waste to. As I walk towards Kori's room, I hear the jingle of Inca's bell as she bounces about, and an off-putting chirping noise I can't quite place. I open the door while Kori waits in the kitchen, and with the lights off see what looks like a frog repeatedly jumping into the mirrored closet door.
"It's just a frog Kori, calm down!"
I switch on the light and take one step into the room before I realize "It's got wings! It's got wings!"
Before I've finished with even two syllables, I've scurried to the kitchen and am huddling bravely with Kori in the kitchen. Kori jumps on the phone while I call on every bit of manliness in my body and go back into the room to pull Inca away from the bat.
We quarantine Inca in the bathroom (rabies, you know) and 30 minutes later Jim arrives, bat-catching towel in hand. He goes into the room, and in the process of his search for the bat we hear all sorts of unsettling banging going on in the room. After about 10 minutes, Jim comes out of the room and declares that he can't find the bat, so he asks that we come in and double check the places he's looked so we can be confident it's not there. At this point we're utterly flabbergasted; we both saw the bat, and there are no holes in the walls/ceiling through which it could have escaped.
Since I was the one brave enough to aid in the search, I go into Kori's room and together Jim and I shake out every piece of clothing in the closet while Kori slowly musters the courage to enter the room. After about 45 seconds in the room, Kori bolts out screaming "It's in the red bucket, it's in the red bucket!" There is, of course, no red bucket in Kori's room. It takes us a few confused seconds to realize that she was referring instead to the red bag filled with CDs, which Jim promptly throws the bat towel on and takes outside. With the help of a few of the CD cases he launches the bat into the back yard. After a few minutes of frantic thrashing about in the grass, the bat flies off into the black oblivion that is our scary-as-hell alley (though Kori didn't believe me that it was gone).

And thus concludes my first bat encounter.

Real quick:

1) I spent the better part of the day about 4 seconds behind the rest of the world. Reason? I took some Dayquil this morning and found out that it makes me more than a little loopy. While I was in Spanish, my professor asked me what I used to do when I was little, and it took me at least 30 seconds to comprehend what she was asking me, come up with an answer in English, and translate it to Spanish. The best I could come up with was that I played outside with my brother and that there weren't any parks nearby. Awesome. So conversational. Things got even more interesting when I was walking home from class and had to cross Kentucky and Tennessee. I never wait for the walking man (because really, why?). But this morning by the time the thought process telling me it was safe to cross the street had come to fruition, it was in fact no longer safe to be in the middle of the road. Too cool.
2) The other day (November 11th, if you must know) I was dancing around the kitchen with a pint of ice cream (like I do) singing along to Kori's Shit List (all the best [worst] music from middle school and beyond) when I realized that it was the 4 year anniversary of Cody dying. So naturally, I admonished myself for being happy and went into the living room to denature my brain with mindless television (thank you, cable!). And now, looking back on it, that was stupid. No better word for it than that. Just because she's gone doesn't mean I get to hold myself back from experiencing what she never gets to.
3) I just got off the phone with Craig, one of the only non-family members I've known my whole life. Just when I thought we'd grown apart to the point of never being able to reconnect, we go and have an hour-long conversation with almost no awkward pauses. It was really great talking to him, especially now that we're both at points in our lives where we're pursuing our dreams and turning into real people. Let's all give friendship one big hurrah, shall we?
4) I got a tattoo. I've kind of been letting people discover it naturally, but the only people I know who read this already know about it (sorry, Mom). It's a musical symbol, a fermata. Fermatas are placed over notes when the length of the note is up to the conductor's discretion (usually at the end of pieces). Basically, it means that things only have to last as long as I want them to. I'm not living by anyone else's agenda. Lame, but whatever.

I went on a domestic rampage today.

It all started with my bedroom (which, let's be honest, was a disaster 2 weeks ago - by the time I got to it today it was down right post-apocalyptic). After cleaning to the point where I could cross it without stepping on anything and I could almost make out the pattern on my rug, I finally started nesting. My closet doors are two massive mirrors on rollers, so I set about covering those up first off (what girl wants to wake up to a wall of mirrors every morning?). One side was already half blocked by a bookshelf, which stands as a bleak tribute to my poor reading habits of late, i.e. I haven't been doing enough of it. Thanks to the handy, though depressing, bookshelf I had just one door-sized mirror to cover. For this task I called on my Shit Box, which contains sundry treasures and pictures spanning the last 10 or so years of my life. I put in everything from a picture of my dad and I in front of Graceland to my ticket to The Star Trek Experience in Vegas. I have to mention, for obvious reasons, that there are also a number of clippings from the basketball team's road to the National Championship tacked up there for good measure. After all that and despite the pile of clothes on my bed approximating the size of a small sedan, I called my room clean enough for the day.
My next target was the kitchen. I dirtied it up real good. I've been wanting to make a big ol' batch of pozole for months, and when I found hominy in the grocery store I knew it was destiny. So I snatched up 5 cans, called my dad (the family's pozole connoisseur), gathered the rest of the ingredients (or so I thought) and headed home. Of course as soon as I got home I realized I'd forgotten the chicken broth, one of the three main components of the soup. I sped back to the grocery store and walked past the broths 3 times before I finally broke down and asked an employee to point me in the right direction. A few minutes later I arrived home, broth in hand, and began assembling my foodstuffs. The rest of the pozole incident was fairly uneventful, since all it involved was some chopping, trimming, grating, browning, and boiling. The highlight of the whole process was Kori telling me "It's not horrible." Point - Katelin!

Another goal of mine was baking a pie. It's been on my list for months, but I always found a way of putting it off. I eventually decided that if I was going to play house for a day I may as well go all out 50's style (sans sun dress and apron). After 3 attempts and a counter full of dishes, I finally mastered the crust, lattice and all. Eight peeled, cored, and sliced apples later my pie was assembled and baking while was falling asleep in the living room. Since I was afraid I would fall asleep and set fire to the house, I took the pie out ten minutes early and passed out. So the apples were still a bit under-cooked... no big deal.

I'm done.

I don't want to be in school anymore. I know it makes me a more well-rounded individual and that I can't get a decent job in this economy without an education. Yadda yadda yadda. I just don't have the passion; I see people all around me who genuinely love what they're doing. They're on a well-defined path to a future career sure to yield contentedness (and a sweet paycheck, for the lucky ones). I've been a go-with-the-flow type gal all my life, but I've hit a brick wall. Forward doesn't seem like an option anymore. I want to go off and find my own little nook in the world where I can curl up with a cup of tea and a book. I want to do my learning (and earning) on my own terms. But most of all, I want my sentence here to be over; I'm done being judged by such subjective, meaningless standards. So I can't adjust a supply or demand curve to make up for inflation as well as I can whip up a creme brulee. So what?
I want to tell people's stories. I want to introduce the world to real, flawed people. I want them to see themselves in my words, and I want them to be better for reading them.

Straight A's, perfect attendance, a flawless transcript -- If that's what it means to be successful, then I can't be successful according to your terms.

Matt Versus

Premise: in an attempt to save lil' kids from their own stupidity, a children's television show pitting Matt against the various hazards in the world was developed. The following are plot ideas for said show:
Matt versus Geese
Matt versus Crack-Addicted 13-Year-Olds
Matt versus Gravity
Matt versus Inertia
Matt versus Spy Vs. Spy
Matt versus The Elements (as in weather, not those in the periodic table)
Matt versus Traffic
Matt versus Fish
Matt versus Grizzly (on land)
Matt versus Grizzly (salmon-style)
Matt versus Dumpster Divers
Matt versus Trans-gendered Vegas Hookers
Matt versus The Mob
Matt versus Irony