Bonus (Jonas?)

I just found this on my computer:

Yes, my dog is very talented, thank you very much.

Back in!

Ok. I was doing really well here. But then real life interfered. I’m jumping back in.

Read this article. It is quite possibly my favorite thing I’ve read in weeks.

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. So I went with laugh. It prompted Rachel and me to have this exchange.

Me: If that was my kid, I’d shoot myself.

Rachel: If that was my kid, I’d shoot him.

Touche, Rachel. Touche.

Anyway. It was a nice way to wind down after an insane day in which I taught high schoolers for 5 hours. Fact: teaching is hard. And made harder by the fact that high school kids (or at least, girls) are so focused on looking cool, so they’re way less likely to participate. And yet, all the girls I worked with were so much more mature and… just… better than I was in high school. Let me paint you a word portrait of Anna as a high schooler:

1. Incredibly insecure.

2. Awkward as all hell

3. Sarcastic as all hell

4. Pretty sure that I was smarter than all my teachers

5. And thus, completely full of attitude and eye rolls.

Essentially, I was a dream in the classroom. Aren’t you glad y’all didn’t have to deal with me until college, when I’d grown out of probably 4/5 of those traits? I like to think that the one that remains is “awkward as all hell.” Maybe you think, “Sarcastic as all hell.” But considering how I once was–jeez. I have gotten better, ok? Promise!

And now, all I want to do is sleep (another thing I was capable of in high school: functioning before 9 am). But instead, I will be going to an a capella concert. Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, Anna, you’re a good friend!” But I’m thinking, “Yesss! Another way to procrastinate!”

Hm.

Does this seem potentially disastrous to anyone else (the bottom part–obviously, the whole thing is inherently potentially disastrous)?

Combining the racially charged affirmative action debate with a costume contest? Right, because even under normal circumstances costumes never verge on the absurd or the offensive…

Fact:

All those rumors about guys eating a lot are true.
Proof: I went to dinner last night and got a personal pizza, except that it wasn’t so personal–it was probably 8 to 10 inches in diameter. So it’s split into quarters, and I eat two of the four slices, and I am stuffed.
My companions–both dudes, bro-hams, what have you (no, not bro-hams. I take that back)–also got personal pizzas. Only they ate their whole pizzas. And out of courtesy, and assuming they would say no, I offered up my pizza leftovers. No, no they did not say no. Instead, we had this exchange:
Them: ARE YOU KIDDING?
Me: I never joke about something as serious as pizza.
Them: (Silence, because they are already scarfing down the pizza).
In conclusion, I had two slices of pizza. And they each had five. And I am known for being a big eater. But–I guess not?

Fact 2: My new scheme for this blog involves telling little anecdotes like this, because then, I don’t get overwhelmed. Downside: it might be really boring for y’all.

Overheard:

A Columbia tour guide to a gaggle of enthusiastic parents and high school kids trying to look cool and disinterested:
“So, yeah. It’s city and suburb… the best of both worlds!”

(The urban studies major in me screamed).

Of Planes and Soap

Plane crashes make me never want to fly again. Regardless of if it’s a happy ending–landing in the Hudson, miraculous, etc.–or crashing into a house and killing everyone on board, it freaks me the eff out. Especially this latest crash, which happened 5 minutes before landing, which is the part where everyone has kind of sighed, like, “We’ve made it! All we have to do is land!” I’m not going to say my prayers are with the families, but my thoughts sure are.

In other, lighter news, I have a new snack which is very college studenty and very addictive: Saltines with honey on them. Cheap AND delicious. Salty AND sweet. I sit down thinking I’ll eat like 4 saltines and then I eat half a sleeve. Whoops. (This was a really boring story–but I had to change the subject somehow).

A more better story about putting things in your mouth (easiest “that’s what she said” ever!): my friend stores his toothbrush and his soap in the same section of his shower caddy. So he brushed his teeth the other day, not realizing that he had soap all over his toothbrush and then he threw up after. Aaaah! So that got my thinking about that whole thing of washing kids’ mouths out with soap when they curse. It really seems like torture. Or at least abuse. I have this very vivid memory of being about 4 or 5, and Abby and I had this babysitter who was a friend of our parents’ (a friend of Bill, if you know what that means). So the babysitter was there with her daughter, who was a little older than me. And the daughter said, “Butthead.” No, really–that was what she said. So her mom yanked her into the bathroom and sat her down on the toilet, and shoved a bar of soap into her mouth. Abby and I watched completely fascinated and horrified. Apparently, it made quite an impact–considering that 15 years later, I still remember it so well.

And so, for all the ways my parents may have messed up, at least I can thank God that they never made me eat soap.

Fin.

(Wow. This was a downer).

A special gift:

As a special bonus gift: 3 pictures are worth (way more than) 3,000 words, right?

And to make it sadder–look at the cuteness that was hiding behind all that metal!

25 Things

It’s been way too long, so I’m jumping back in with this mega-entry in the form of the 25 things meme from Facebook. I got tagged yesterday, but I guess you’ll have to read through to find out why the eff I’m posting it here.

1. Every time I’ve read another person’s “25 things” list, I’ve tried to figure out the perfect mix of funny and serious. I don’t think I’ll get it, but I’ll try. This whole trend reminds me of junior high, when I would spend hours obsessing over each of those forwarded email surveys. Rereading my responses to those surveys now, all I can think is, “I’m so glad that I’m not 12.”

2. I think my parents’ divorce is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I respect my parents so much for being civil, and for splitting custody of me and my sister 50-50.

3. But I always wonder what my life would be like if they hadn’t gotten divorced—if I hadn’t met my step-family, if I hadn’t gone to school in Woodland, if I’d never gone to Texas, etc.

4. Every time I cook or bake anything, and it tastes good (or edible), I feel a huge sense of accomplishment, and I take it as a sign that I’ll actually be able to survive after I graduate.

5. I wish college would last for more than four years—not because I love it so much, but because I hate uncertainty, not knowing what comes next, and change, and within the next year and a half, with senior year, I’m going to have to face all those things.

6. I feel like I’m just figuring out college now—who my friends are, when to go out and when to stay in, how to balance everything. The same thing happened in high school, where I didn’t really enjoy it until senior year. At least now, I’m a year ahead of schedule.

7. Usually, I think I’ll move to Austin after I graduate. But I’m afraid that if I do that, I’ll stay there for law school, and then for being a lawyer, and then for the rest of my life. It’s scary to think that a decision I make when I’m 21 might determine where I spend the next 60 +/- years.

8. Whenever I see a dog on the street, I get sad, especially if the dog is wearing a sweater. It makes me miss my dogs, even though none of them wear sweaters. The post-graduation thing I most look forward to is getting a dog.

9. A bunch of events that happened when I was three still impact my daily life now. That year, a sea gull at the zoo stole my hot dog and bit my finger—so now I’m afraid of birds, especially sea gulls and pigeons. I dodge them, instead of letting them dodge me. (Also, Jesus Christ, I just google-imaged “seagull pigeon” and did you know that SEAGULLS EAT PIGEONS?)

10. That same year, I jammed my entire hand into a toaster when it was on, because I was so excited to get my own bread out. I remember that only my dad was home, and he had to bandage all of my fingers together. Now, I always use a utensil to get anything out of a toaster.

11. I consider myself Jew-ish, despite the facts that I’ve never been to services and I’m not “officially” Jewish. I think that all those Jewish jokes in high school cemented my identity—everyone else thought of me as Jewish (expressed through a bunch of jokes that were really offensive, in hindsight), so I thought of myself as Jewish. I also think that being in the minority, politically, strengthened my (super-super) liberal convictions.

12. I still get nostalgic when I think about working at Sonic—that was the first place where I felt like I wasn’t being defined or judged in relation to how smart I was.

13. On the day I was born, the Oakland A’s lost a game in the World Series. Even though they went on to win that year, I think that this was kind of foreshadowing of the kind of sports-fan luck I’d have in life. Example: one year and one day later, the teams that would become my favorite–the A’s and the Giants–were playing each other in the World Series, and then the San Francisco earthquake hit. I do still think that the A’s have the best logo in baseball.

14. I’ve known since I was 7 that I wanted to go to New York City for school. At the time, I thought Cornell was “New York.” I was going to go to Cornell because they have a vet school, and I was positive that I was going to be a veterinarian.

15. Sometimes, I look around on the subway or on a halfway busy street, and I think, “How could I ever live anywhere else?”

16. But every now and then, I wish I could see a rice paddy during that part of the year where they’re bright green and beautiful, or an almond orchard in bloom.

17. It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized how much growing up in Winters and Woodland affected me. Freshman year, when we had to pick one word to describe ourselves, I said “Rural.” It was right around then that I decided to major in urban studies.

18. My sisters are my role models, and I’ve made a lot of (kind of major) life decisions based around their opinions. Claire and Catherine are why I went to school in Woodland; Abby’s why I cannot speak with grammatically correct English.

19. In high school, I was the most sarcastic person ever. Once, Claire challenged me to say 10 unsarcastic things in a row, and I literally could not do it. Since then, I’ve been trying to find a balance between funny and real.

20. I think that being funny and being a girl is hard. A lot of the time, it feels like performing, and that makes it hard to form real relationships. (I guess that goes for funny guys too). Adding in the layer of “girl”—guys seem to like it better when they’re making girls laugh, as opposed to laughing at a girl. Being funny, I think, makes it easier to make guy friends, but harder to have, um, romantic relationships with guys.

21. I kept a journal obsessively from ninth grade to twelfth grade. I wrote in it every night. When I was home for break, I started reading my journals, hoping that I would find them funny in how overblown they are. I did find them overblown, but I’m not quite at the point where I can laugh.

22. I’m a little worried that the only reason I want to go to law school is because I can’t think of anything else to do with my life.

23. I’m afraid that I won’t get married. I mean, I assume I will, but then I think about how many women don’t get married, and I think, “What’s stopping me from being one of them?”

24. This is particularly a problem because I really want to have kids. Not like I’m desperate and going out and trying to get pregnant right now—but I want to have kids before I’m too old (figuratively “too old,” not literally, although that, too). I’m reminded of this every time I babysit, or spend time with my nephew, who just might be my favorite person in the world. When I have a crush on a guy, I think about what kind of dad he would be.

25. I was just reading Entertainment Weekly and it said, “No one wants to read ’25 Things’ about you.” This reveals two things about me: 1) I read EW, as one of my many ways to keep up with celebrity gossip and 2) Despite that warning, I was narcissistic enough to make this list, with the concession that I’m not putting it on Facebook because the thought of tagging 25 people is intimidating.

Edited to add: and then I was reading the Times, and it had this blog post. So funny and so true. No, this does not count as 26. This is an extention of #25.

A quick (ha!) update

I keep thinking of hilarious stories I want to put here… but then I totally forget.

So I’ll just give you a rundown of all the important things I’ve done in Austin instead of updating this thing.

1. Got an eye exam. You know that test where they make you look at a light and then they flash little image things around and you have to press a button and it’s to test your peripheral vision? Every time I take that, I feel like I’m playing a video game and I have to get a high score–only the consequence for me not getting a high score is that the optometrist will think that I’m going blind. It’s a lot of pressure, obviously. Speaking of videogames…

2. Playing games on my dad’s Wii. (That sounds weird). One of my sisters gave him New Blood for Christmas. Basically, it’s a surgery game. And I cannot effing get past the level where you have to save a nun who had a church fall on her. Obviously, this is stressing me the eff out. I’m not a successful Wii surgeon? How can I live with myself?

3. Got a haircut. See, here’s the thing. I am crazy about my hair. Not crazy about it as in “I love it so bad I can’t contain myself!” but crazy as in “Really really neurotic.” So I only feel comfortable getting my hair cut at one place. Which is Bird’s, here in Austin. Not even any Bird’s–only the Lamar location. Even though the same stylists work at both shops. But like I said: neurotic. As a result, I only get my hair cut every 6 months or so, when I’m here. But here’s why I continue to be so neurotic: because I’m so happy with the results every time. So I like my new haircut, even though there were 2 weird things about the experience. First, the hair stylist did not try to talk to me AT ALL. No small talk. She didn’t even tell me her naaaame. Now I will have to go on a mission to find her, like Lance Bass (before he was gay) looking for that girl in On the Line. Shut up, I saw that movie. Second werid thing, which wasn’t weird so much as annoying: I had to wait for 45 minutes despite my appointment. Boo. On the plus side, the receptionist (who’s one of my brother-in-law’s good friends) felt bad for me and gave me a discount. On the minus side, I was late for my next activity, which was (drumroll):

4. Going to the movies. On haircut day, I saw The Wrestler. It was so amazingly good and the audience was a hilarious mix of wrestling fans and what my sisters and I call “oscar nodders.” Watch it and then we can discuss it, yeah? I’m really working my way through the Oscar contenders. I also saw Slumdog Millionaire which I liked because of its use of M.I.A. and also its compellingness but disliked for less easily articulatable reasons.

(4.5. Listening to my dogs bark nonstop and wanting to kill them. Currently).

I’ve also watched The Dark Knight (only 6 months behind everyone else) and Iron Man (yes, again, only 6 months behind) and my parents watch 3 hours of MSNBC each night, so there’s been that, too. Watch out–when I come back, I’ll be so well-informed that I’ll blow your minds.

5. Jesus, this list is getting long.

6. I’ve done a bunch of things with my nephew, enough to merit a separate list. I won’t subject you to that, though. Instead, here’s the cliffnotes. Read the complete works of Dav Pilkey (who is SO AWESOME). Who’s Dav Pilkey? I’ll give you one clue:We’ve also played lots of war-related games, which Otto alternately refers to as Guns or Star Wars. When playing Star Wars, I have to protest pretty heavily to get to be anyone other than Leia. Once again, it’s the patriarchy, man. My nephew has also recently been corrupted by McDonald’s (Old McDonald’s, if you will), but that is a massively long story, and my typing fingers are already tired.

See, I’m out of shape for school. I better start up my finger workouts pretty soon. Because: 6 days until classes start. Aaah!

There’s an Anna on a hilltop…

The other day (by which I mean two weeks ago, because I was already to post this, and then I was like, “Yeaaaah! Dial-up!” so it’s just been on my computer since then), I went for a walk with my mom on our property. And I know I’ve mentioned that I live in the boonies, but I’m not sure you get what I mean. Urban studies factoid: only 17 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas. So in that way, I am a minority! I really live in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, so we walked up to the top of one of our hills, where Abby and our friend and I would play all the time when we were little.
And first, let me set the stage: so it was always a hike-like undertaking to go up this hill, because it’s like a five or ten-minute walk, but when you’re under ten, a walk that long (and on a hill!) is an adventure. So we’d get our canteens and put on our walking shoes and whine about the star thistle (see how it’s star-shaped?) and follow the deer trails up the hill.

The way the hill is positioned, we’d feel like we were totally alone, so far from home. You can hardly see my house (or our friend’s house) from the hilltop, which made the whole thing more fun and adventuresome.

So we’d get to the top of the hill, and then, that was when the real fun kicked in. We went up there enough that we had established a little settlement. We each had created floor plans for little forts, using two-by-fours (from an old water tank, which was standing when we started going up there… when it was still standing, I always wanted to go inside the tank, but I knew that was kind of out there, even for the hill, so I never mentioned it to my fellow pioneers. My dreams fell with the water tank). So we each had a little fort, spread out across the hill top, and we had some communal goods like golf balls that mysteriously showed up (I still can’t figure out from where people drive golf balls to the hill) and disintegrating beer cans and an old coffee tin and some wire, also from the water tank, I think.

But then there were some other things—an old sink or this weird concrete disk—that were highly sought after, but not communal. We constantly fought over them… no peace, even for the pioneers. I can’t quite remember whose fort was whose, but I decided this one must have been Abby’s, considering that it had both the sink and the disk, and also an awesome rock. She was, um, kind of in charge.

My fort, though, was more secluded. It was by this cool grove of trees that I always thought looked like a cave. And even better, it was by a giant pine tree, which was way better for climbing than the stupid almond trees.

I had more fun climbing that tree and getting pitch all over my hands than I did crawling in these old irrigation pipes that used to by lying flat. I’d go in there when I wanted some alone time, when I was sulky—which, I’m not going to lie, was pretty often. As a sidenote, I think I was probably malnourished to be able to fit because those pipes are pretty small.

Anyway. The hill. My walk. So I went up there the other day, and it was so weird to see all these remnants of my childhood game, just abandoned and kind of grown over by grass and star thistle and poison oak. We just left everything up there, not knowing that our last time up there was our last time up there, if you know what I mean. I think the fun must’ve stopped when I was 9 or 10, when Abby and our friend were 11 or 12. I remember going up there afterward, with friends my age, trying to recapture the magic since my original co-pioneers had outgrown the fun. But it was never the same—the magic was gone.

P.S. Guys, this was way more interesting/applicable/poignant when I wrote it, forever ago.