Funny Farewells

MML #32: Having a roommate who loves you so much that she willingly admits to missing your clothing.

Last night I was packing up my winter clothes and Emily exclaimed “goodbye!” to my sweatshirt.

Apparently it was just instinctive, but when I got her to explain she basically just said she realized she wouldn’t see it for several months and was sad.

Adorable? Yes

Creepy? Yeah, that too.

Lol. Good times.

Birthday Fun

MML #31: Going out with friends for birthday celebrating!

It's Wednesday, known as being a crappy day of the week, and I've been feeling slightly ill all day. But I don't care, because tonight I'm going out with the girls to belatedly celebrate my birthday! (Which was two days ago.) We're going out to Olive Garden and I'm SUPER excited about having some delicious food and some chocolate dessert.

Yay for birthdays and friends!

Silliness

MML #30: Receiving emails from my future self.

This is totally legit. Really. My future self is awesome. (Though coincidentally sounds a lot like my roommate.)

"Dear past Vicki,

This is future you, sending you a message from, you guessed it, the future! Things are very different here in the future. You survived sophomore year, and went on to have lots of fun in Scotland with your bfff (best friend forever in the future) Emily. It was there that you met your soulmate, got married and had four kids, all before returning for Christmas break! It was quite the whirlwind romance, and our parents were quite surprised (as was Emily. She would have felt left out except the same thing happened to her after she found Hogwarts). Anyways, the reason I'm writing this is to give you a dire warning!!!! Prepare yourself, because I'm risking everything to break the space time continuum and bring you this very important message:

Log out of your email when you print something off in the computer lab!!!! I'm warning you now, because in the future someone sends you a very silly email pretending to be you from the future. Yeah, it could be bad. So please be more careful in the future, for both our sakes!

Lots of love,

Future Vicki

P.S. Try and make sure you don't murder Emily, even if it looks like she might leave you. It was really messy cleaning up her body and I don't want you having to go through the same thing.

P.P.S. The stupid chapel printer is broken, just for future reference. so if, say, Emily were to be printing stuff off, she'd have to go somewhere else."

Emily Dickinson

MML #29: Rediscovering how much I love Emily Dickinson poems.

Seriously. She was the original emo, and I love her for it. One of my friends is a music composition major, and this semester is working on a chorus piece based on literature. I passively mentioned Emily Dickinson in a conversation a month or two ago, and then over spring break I found out that he unknowingly picked my favorite poem for inspiration. Read it - it's awesome.

I should not dare to leave my friend,

Because—because if he should die

While I was gone, and I—too late—

Should reach the heart that wanted me;

If I should disappoint the eyes

That hunted, hunted so, to see,

And could not bear to shut until

They “noticed” me—they noticed me;

If I should stab the patient faith

So sure I ’d come—so sure I ’d come,

It listening, listening, went to sleep

Telling my tardy name,—

My heart would wish it broke before,

Since breaking then, since breaking then,

Were useless as next morning’s sun,

Where midnight frosts had lain!

Junior Week

MML #28: When people dress up in silly costumes.

My school has a lot of awesome, occasionally silly traditions. One of my favorites is called "Junior Week," when each of the seniors picks a junior (secretly, without revealing their identity) and for one week assigns that junior a different costume to wear each day. At the end of the week, there's Junior Banquet, when the juniors put on their class rings for the first time and their secret senior is revealed. We have senior robes here, which are passed down to each class, and that's what the juniors work all week to receive. That's a whole other tradition that makes me smile.

Anyway, here are a few of today's favorite costumes:

Katelyn as the Queen of Hearts

Annie as Eeyore and Elizabeth as Jose Cuervo

Everyone from Up!

Old Fashioned

MML #27: Gender Roles

(Note: This has been running through my head since a discussion I had with Annie last week. You can see more of that at #25.)

Alright, before any feminists start throwing things at me, let me give a little disclaimer: I am not the type of girl to constantly have a boyfriend or always need a man in her life. I attend a women's college, and I completely support any woman's right to have her own career and make more money than her husband, if she wishes. I also support any gay person's right to marry the person of their choosing.

Have I covered it all? No one will hate me now? Yay!

Okay, so that said, I kind of adore gender roles when it comes to marriage. Not to say that I think that a wife exists to do her husband's bidding, or that I think something as complicated and difficult about the ultimate commitment that is marriage can be simplified down to gender roles.

But I'm a stereotypical wife in the making. I've pretty much been that way since I was born.

Examples:

I enjoy cooking and baking, and setting out a nice dining table with food. I like hosting parties. I don't like cleaning, but when it needs to be done I'm really good at it, as well as organizing. I know how to do basic knitting, crocheting, and sewing; and I've known how to tie a man's tie for him since I was about seven years old. I'm crafty, and I love tutoring kids and helping them with their homework. I'm good at keeping up with birthday cards and I can write an awesome thank you note. I also love decorating my house for the holidays. As far as stereotypical wifely duties go, I've kind of got it covered.

So is it completely terrible that I find myself having stereotypical expectations of men? Or at least ones that I'm interested in? For instance, I know my basic way around a car (checking oil, air conditioning fluid, changing a battery, etc.) but if something ever went wrong I could definitely get taken advantage of by a mechanic. I've never mowed a lawn in my entire life, unless you count the one or two times my grandfather let me use his ride-along mower, which I will admit was completely fun. I can change a lightbulb, but I don't know anything about plumbing and I can't (/won't) snake a drain. Cooking food on the grill terrifies me, and though I know I to start a fire, I shy away from that one two. And I cannot for the life of me kill a bug, let alone any other kind of house pest.

My point? I support women's rights. I'm glad I get to vote. And I'm slightly envious of any mechanically skilled, lawn-mowing, bug-killing woman. So I'm tired of feminist women telling me that I'm ridiculous just because I'm a little more traditional than they might be. I mean, traditions exist for a reason.

Shared Suffering

MML #26: "How to Become a Writer Or, Have You Earned This Cliche?" by Lorrie Moore

This is from a collection of Lorrie Moore's short stories entitled "Self Help" and rather than bog you down with precisely why I thought this short story was awesome, I'm just going to type up every single quote that made me happy. (Annie already heard most of these because I kept reading them aloud to her while we were at the White Hart Café yesterday.)

"First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age - say 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire."

"Apply to college as a child psychology major."

"Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life."

"Decide that perhaps you should stick to comedies. Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a 'really great sense of humor' and what your creative writing class calls 'self-contempt giving rise to comic form.'"

"You spend too much time slouched and demoralized. Your boyfriend suggests bicycling. Your roommate suggests a new boyfriend. You are said to be self-mutilating and losing weight, but you continue writing. The only happiness you have is writing something new, in the middle of the night, armpits damp, heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief, fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know: you are a genius."

"Insist that you are not very interested in any one subject at all, that you are interested in he music of language, that you are interested in - in - syllables, because they are the atoms of poetry, the cells of the mind, the breath of the soul. Begin to feel woozy. Stare into your plastic wine cup."

"Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than 10 minutes a day, like sit-ups, they can make you thin."

"You will read somewhere that all writing has to do with one's genitals. Don't dwell on this. It will make you nervous."