Wacky Wednesday

Let's face it: we all say funny stuff.  Sometimes it made sense in our heads and didn't come out correctly, sometimes it didn't make sense inside and still came out, and sometimes it's only funny when plucked from context. 
<>< Katie

Chris: If you're going to call 9-1-1, you should take a picture first.
Katie: I'm not going to use that as a rule of thumb, but if it involves Big Foot, then I definitely agree.

Mom: Your parents are in a tornado warning, by the way.
Dad: My parents?  Do they know that?

Elizabeth: I wonder if I can do that (she ran her hand along the hairdo on a magazine model)
Katie: You should try it.
Elizabeth: I might need to borrow your head.

Laura: My elbow hurts.  No it doesn't.  I just felt like saying that.

Jay: Abs of steel!  Grunt!  Oh, don't do it.

Gwen: Where was I?  Why was I here eating cake?

I was sitting in my room reading a book, as I had been for the last several hours. Laura burst in (without knocking) to tell me about a conversation she thinks she overheard.
Christina: Katie smells like sesame chicken.
Mom: Katie is sesame chicken.
Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Mom: Get your toe-jams out of my armpit!

[Dad has Katie in a headlock]
Dad: You're getting too old for this.
Katie: No, you're getting too old for this.

Christina: Mom, when's my ortho appointment?
Mom: Ortho?  You mean dentist appointment.
Christina: Whichever one is to get rid of my big jumble of guts.
Mom: Most people call them wisdom teeth.

Dad: Brett, look at the back of your dad's head, Ryan's dad's head, and my head.  How do you think that happened?
Brett [age 13]: Too many noogies.
Dad: Who is the noogie loser?

I had just done a Margarita with a Twist (a flip) into our pool, and it messed up my contacts.
Katie: Woah, y'all are blurry.
Christina: Do you want my noodle?  Here!
Katie: Funny thing, I don't need to be able to see to tread water, but thanks.

Bryce [age 15, practically my cousin]: Katie, come to the park with us!  We'll find cute boys.
(a few hours later)
Bryce:  I got this for you.  It's a friendship for life bracelet.  (He put a glow stick around my wrist)
Katie: Thanks!  I didn't need to go to the park to find cute boys.

Mom: Fireflies are good bugs.
Grandma: They're even better rings!
(She killed a lightning bug and stuck it's butt on her ring finger... she then said it was even prettier than the diamond Grandpa bought for her).

Home Sweet Home

It's times like this I love being home.

(before dinner)
Dad: Ok, Mom, we've got steaks and hot dogs for dinner.
Katie: I'm eating the steaks.  They're eating the hot dogs.

That was followed by a shockingly normal steak dinner.  We all like our steaks at varying cooking stages from still mooing (that's me) to shoe leather (that's Mom), and Dad never manages to get them onto the right plate.  Chunks of meat the size of the plate fly through our kitchen on steak night.

Dad's in the kitchen putting the uncooked steak in the freezer bag and vacuuming it shut.
Dad: Katie, you want to pump this?
Katie: No, thanks, I only like to pump the wine because it makes a great popping noise when you uncork it. 
(I feel like such a little kid but it seriously entertains me for ten minutes).
Christina: Ooh!  I should learn to say that in Dutch. 
(No one in our house speaks Dutch... nor are we Dutch)
Christina: Yeah!  Mom!  Let's learn Dutch together because that way we can speak in code and no one will understand.
Mom: Since everyone is going away to college and it's just the two of us, we could just speak in English.
Dad: Tina, how's Jake?
Christina: I GOTTA LETTER!
Dad: Laura, how's your Jake?
Laura: He's good.  He says it's hot.
Dad: Katie, how's your Jake?
Katie: I'm the only one in the family who DOESN'T have a Jake.
Dad: You do have a Jake but his name is Chris.
Mom: It's still a four-letter name.
Katie: Last time I counted "Chris" was five letters.

Oh, and there was another conversation that I can't re-type here, but it was inspired by the story I told on Tuesday...

<>< Katie

Finals Week

I'm kind of on a roll spilling secrets this week, so we're going to go with one more: I love exam week.

1. Boing, Boing, Boing
There is this unwritten rule against throwing bouncy balls inside the apartment.  I grew up in a house with a strictly-enforced "no throwing balls in the house" rule, but apparently Andy didn't.  It's not unusual to find bouncy balls whipped at you from across the room.  Well, over the last semester these bouncy balls have disappeared into dark crevices of life.  Since we're actively moving out, they've been reappearing and flipped into full action.  Boing, boing, boing.

2. Out to Dinner
I rode an hour with my adoptive family to have dinner with my parents.  It was weird to arrive with someone else, eat with those people and my parents, and leave with someone else.  Just to paint the picture for you: my dad is shy, naive, and quiet.  So is Ruth.  Dr. Z is a strange bird, and Mom is Sarah Palin.  Yes, I think we were the waitress's favorite table that day.  Well, we were her only table for awhile because we scared away the rest of the guests... Oops.  By the end of dinner she'd challenged my dad to go trout fishing in the lake and offered to play frisbee with Malachi in the parking lot.  On the ride back, we tried to use the words "indefatigable" and "perspicacity" in normal conversation.  Bonus points if you could get them both into a single sentence.

3. How did this happen?
Allyson and I use two separate bathrooms, so how we met outside one to do this I'm still not sure.  I had my "gooked" electric toothbrush in my right hand held high above my head.  In my left I held Allyson's left wrist.  In her right hand she had an open bottle of listerine.  Realizing how silly we looked we burst out laughing and couldn't figure out what we were doing.  Something about Allyson wanting to turn on my toothbrush and spray toothpaste all over the apartment...

4. Breakfast of Champions
The incentive to walk to the caf to eat breakfast before an exam is virtually non-existent.  Luckily, we also have to use up our points and eat all of the bizarre food we've accumulated throughout the semester.  Nikki ate a re-heated hot dog, chips, and old cheese dip.  Allyson ate some chocolate cake with her whipped cream.  Chris, an hour away and unaware of our creativity, had a peanut butter sandwich.  I feel lame for eating an apple and peanut butter (by clutching the jar of peanut butter between my knees); I really don't like apples.

5. EXPECTO PATRONUM!
Allyson's taking a conducting class right now, so her baton is waving as she prepares.  Carrie borrowed said baton and turned it into a Harry Potter wand.  My favorite part is when she speaks into the end of the wand so that it can hear her better.  :-)

6. (in the middle of a class discussion exam)
Dr. T: Alex Haley and Malcolm X co-write the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and they both have "X" in their name.  Isn't that weird?
Katie: What do you have against people that have "X"es in their names?
Dr. T: Nothing... it's just... Saxon has an "X," too, and you're sitting next to each other.
Katie: It was the "X" factor that drew us together on this side of the room.
Dr. T: My middle name is "X."
Katie: Are you lying to me?
Dr. T: It's Xavier.
Katie: You are lying to me.
The rest of the class kind of stared at us.

7. Redecorating?
Nikki: Remember that one time our phones used the same charger?
Katie: Remember that one time you asked to borrow my phone charger and I said no because you licked me?
I do remember that one time when Nikki stole my phone charger and replaced all of the photos on my bulletin board with Kleenexes... Thanks.

8. Why is Cornhole in our apartment?  (aka Bean Bag Toss)
I really don't know, but we played.  Who says Cornhole's an outdoor game?  We played in the living room with one person standing on the Platonic Love Seat and the other standing one of the arm chairs.  I'm better inside than out.

9. Four Hour Exams
It started innocently enough at 6pm.  By 6:30 our class of eight was seated around Dr. Paul's dining room table eating summer chili, chocolate-covered pretzels, and (get this!) fresh strawberries.  By 7:15 we were having a living room discussion of the Christology of William Paul Young as found in his book, The Shack.  By 8, we'd looked up the Wii Fit.  For the next two hours we pondered how "Grandaddy" was born in 1975, is 5'7", and weighs 107 pounds... Either way, he looks great while juggling, hula hooping, and flying in a chicken suit!

10. Moving
This is my least favorite part of spring exam week: studying and packing at the same time.  Some of my stuff goes to storage; some of my stuff goes home.  Friday means 14 hours of driving, three cars and two drivers.  Wait.  Switch that.  I guess I'm not indefatigable.  By the time you're reading this, we've probably gotten a little giggly in the car.  After retelling our favorite stories we'll start playing word games.  Dad's a "numbers guy" so he loves writing sentences like "Tiny Tim tinkled in the timbers" or "Blue birch-bark burn on Bob's bum."  Mom's a little bit better.  :-)

Bon voyage and bueno suerte,

<>< Katie

Reading Day

Little secret: I am not athletic.  Sometimes if I'm by myself I walk so fast that I'm winded by the time I get where I'm going, but that's the closest I ever get to running.  Sports are not my strength.  I played basketball in 5th grade and I got really good at catching the ball...with my nose.  I spent enough nights at the eye doctor getting my glasses fixed that I realized the WMBA was not in my future.  Fathers are supposed to teach their daughters how to throw and catch; somehow I missed that lesson.  In seventh grade I took up tennis because I had a weapon against the ball.  It wasn't long before I figured out my strongest spot on the tennis court was at the net because there's minimal running involved in a volley.  I played for six years but then I graduated high school and now the most exercise I get is ten minutes on the Wii Fit.  Knowing this about myself, I don't know why I ever thought this was a good idea.

Classes were cancelled on Friday, so we hosted our biannual kickball game.  Last year the English department started a new tradition where we play kickball once a semester.  For a year we played teams that basically boiled down to English Education vs. English Writing.  Well, then the science department got jealous and in a cowardly way challenged us to kickball, calling themselves the superior department.  If they were so superior I don't know why they needed to bring the math department with them in order to beat us but whatever.  They won this past fall, and Friday was our opportunity to earn our ball back.

We had more players than they did, so some of our players didn't get to play in the field.  Elizabeth and I took ones for the team and just kicked and cheered.  My first two kicks I was out before making it to first base.  My third kick I made it all the way to second but we already had two outs and the play at the first made three.  My fourth kick I managed to eventually get all the way home scoring a point for the good guys.  English won 16-12!

Sometime in the two minutes between when I got back to my apartment and when I was planning on getting in the shower, Chris called. 
"Come play ultimate frisbee!"
Little known fact, it was one of my secret goals before graduating to play ultimate frisbee.  It's kind of our school's favorite game, so I didn't think it would be right for me to graduate without playing.  Even though I have one more year I figured now was as good a time as ever; plus, I was already sweaty.  Oh, and still fighting this cold, minor detail.

"I'm not very good at frisbee," I told Chris.
"That's ok; I am," he said.  Between the two of us we could be two average players.
I held my own and even touched the frisbee a few times.  I didn't score, but Hannah (the girl I was guarding) didn't score either... except the first one which didn't count because it was part of warm ups.  I really did enjoy myself and the "Oh, my gosh, I'm so out of shape and thirsty" feeling that I had for an hour.  But I lived.

After getting cleaned up and eating Japanese for dinner, a few of us went to see a movie.  It was 8:00 and I could have gone to be (mind you, I hadn't yet been awake for 12 hours that day).  I almost made it all the way through the movie, too, but in the last ten minutes I made a mad-dash from the theater.  Since I'm pretty prone to bloody noses, no one really thought anything of it.  Nope, it's going to be a long time before I eat Japanese food again.  :-(  Other than for those few minutes, I feel fine; it's weird.  Whatever.  Although, more than that I'm more upset my no-puking streak has to start over at just shy of three years.  Before that random stomach bug in the middle of July (who the heck gets sick in July?  The kids I babysat...) it had been six and a half years.  That's still my record.  Oh, well.  One day I will break it!

Happy Reading Day, Katie... next year you should stick to reading on Reading Day.

<>< Katie

The Spin Cycle

I have two plastic bracelets on my right wrist as reminders of my busy, fantastic weekend. One glows in the dark. It was my admission ticket to a school dance and it now represents how badly Chris and I* stunk up the dance floor on Saturday. We concluded school dances were invented just to make people uncomfortable. I thought maybe it was just me but, no, it's not, it's the whole thing. If you don’t have a date: what do you do? If you do have a date: where to you put your hands, where do you look? Either way: why are those people making babies in public?

"Something wet just hit me in the face."
"It was either sweat or spit, take your pick. Ohh! Or urine. Can you see what color it was? Maybe it was blood."
Yuck!

My other plastic bracelet is hot pink, a much better dancing experience. Matthew, Hillary, Chris, and I went to a music festival on Sunday and spent a couple hours in the afternoon contra dancing, square dancing, and waltzing. Let me just put out there that I have never been so sticky and sweaty in my life, and I didn't know it could get this hot, much less in May.

I was very nervous about this since I'd never been contra dancing before. A lot of my friends talk about wearing flowing skirts and taking Dramamine before they go. Well, I was in jeans and there was no Dramamine in my personal pharmacy. I also had no idea what I was doing but I knew my hand was going to have to go onto the shoulders of sweaty strangers. Yuck!

Lucky for me, the first couple we were partnered with knew what they were doing. In contra dancing, there are two people important to you: your partner (Chris) and your neighbor (changes). My first neighbor showed me how to swing correctly. His last instruction was, "and look me in the eye." Excuse me, sir, but you are forty years my elder and six inches from my face. Looking you in the eye is not very high on my priority list today, sorry. I did it and it was awkward.

When I started writing this blog, I was going to muse aloud about the awkwardness of eye contact, when it's socially acceptable, when it's done poorly, etc. I was also going to ponder why it's acceptable to make eye contact while contra dancing but not ok while slow dancing.

Well, I figured out that one. On the plywood make-shift dance floor I quickly learned why I must face the awkwardness and look my neighbor in the eye: if you don't, you are going to get dizzy, but when your eyes are locked with the other person the world around you is spinning but you are focused on one place. I began to loathe the people who refused to make eye contact with me. Staring at his ear is not quite as effective.

The hardest part is coming out of the swing because, well, the room's still spinning and you are not. In one the dances we did you swing your neighbor then swing your partner. Finding my partner and swinging again without falling over was quite a challenge sometimes. That cannot be healthy, and, boy, am I out of shape.

On the last swing of the day, an elderly gentleman swung me, we locked eyes, and I felt like I was flying. Somehow, we even found the breath to exchange hellos. Like all good things that, too, came to an end and it was time to find Chris. Lucky for me, his arm was around my waist and I was flying again before I felt drunk. When the song was over, I stood there with my arms out trying to regain balance but I'd do it again. Every sweaty man I had to touch was worth those two swings.

When we locked eyes and began to move, nothing else mattered. The barn spun behind us but our eyes remained stable (no pun intended). The music continued but we were stopped in a single moment of time.
That's how God wants to dance with you: lock eyes and push out the spinning world. Maybe that's not possible in a literal fashion but can't you focus on Him amidst the brouhaha of everyday life? Let Him lead and never take your eyes off of Him.

Oh, and please don't contra dance on a cruise ship. You really might fall.

<>< Katie

*Nope, still not facebook official so shhh or I’m not blogging about him again.

Significant First

It came today. The first of many, I’m sure. I might even accumulate enough to write an obscenity on the wall. Except while this was a surprise to me, it was not a surprise to God. He saw it coming. He let it come and during this hard week. He was sitting next to me when my first rejection letter made its way into my inbox. I realize I’m a writer. I realize I’m going to face a lot of these in my life. There’s no way to avoid them except by not sharing. That’s what hurts the most. I was confident with this one. Yes, apparently over confident. The people that rejected these pieces are the same people that keep urging me to share. Here I have and it’s shot down. Reject my work. That’s fine. I can’t win them all. However, please tell me why. What makes my pieces different from the other pieces that made it? I’m not saying my piece was perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect piece; I want to know where I can improve. I won’t take it personally. I won’t give them evil stares across the classroom tomorrow, but that doesn’t stop the waterfall that’s running down my face.

Rejection letter = upset = tears = runny nose = blow nose = (fear of) bloody nose

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken math but Chris tells me that means I could just say:

rejection letter = bloody nose.

Translation? Rejection letters punch me in the face.

The next step is my decision. Am I going to punch someone else in the face or am I going to move on? Am I going to let the pen dry out, pick a new major, and find a new career goal or am I going to accept this and realize it’ll happen again but some day it’ll change? Am I going to stay here hiding in my bedroom, ignoring text messages or am I going to go out in the living room and laugh at the formerly-constipated, now-possessed plastic mooing love cow? The choice is mine.

I did venture out.  I opted against going to my writers' group where I could wallow in pity with other rejects, if there were any.  Instead, I went to sign choir and kicked tables.  A classroom magically turns into a practice studio on Wednesday nights and that means all of the tables and chairs need to be collapsed and disposed of into the closet.    It's incredibly theraputic to kick in the hinges of class tables.

I tried to laugh and brush off the sasses but they hurt more than they do on an average day.  Especially the, "Katie, are you even literate?" when I misread the Wii directions.  It was a joke on my direction-following ability not my writing.

I remembered it's not Lent anymore, so I took my own cliche advice and wrote about it.  I guess the events of Wednesday weren't better than Tuesday.  In fact, the tears flowed instead of just threatening to do so, but my mood over all was better.  Even just a little.  I really appreciate your prayers today, and I could use a double dose tomorrow, please.

What really helped was Andy willingly playing "For the Moments I Feel Faint" by Relient K.  If you don't want to take a second to listen to the song, at least read the lyrics and sing them back to me when I forget them.

Am I at the point of no improvement?
What of the death I still dwell in?
I try to excel, but I feel no movement.
Can I be free of this unreleasable sin?

[Chorus:]
Never underestimate my Jesus.
You're telling me that there's no hope.
I'm telling you you're wrong.
Never underestimate my Jesus
When the world around you crumbles
He will be strong, He will be strong

I throw up my hands
"Oh, the impossibilities"
Frustrated and tired
Where do I go from here?
Now I'm searching for the confidence I've lost so willingly
Overcoming these obstacles is overcoming my fear

[Chorus]

I think I can't, I think I can't
But I think You can, I think You can
I think I can't, I think I can't
But I think You can, I think You can

Gather my insufficiencies and
place them in Your hands, place them in Your hands, place them in Your hands

Much love,
<>< Katie

Baptist Easter

I was nervous about my first Easter in Baptist Country.  Come to find out, it was just me being a pessimist.  Big surprise.  I was wrong.  My Easter was very good!  Even if no one responded when I called, "He is risen!"

Sometimes when you live in a dorm room you forget what it's like to live in a house.  You forget what it's like to not be able to swipe your card and get a (maybe) hot meal but instead have a fully stocked pantry.
Lunch on Friday was a challenge.  I can't really call it "lunch."  A more accurate term may be: the massive amounts of bizarre food consumed around mid-day.  It was Good Friday, so I couldn't eat meat and I don't eat Ramen (so many college students live on Ramen noodles that it's my goal to graduate without eating them), Elizabeth can't cook anything except mac & cheese and there wasn't any, Jennifer only wanted cereal, and Emily only likes food that begins with the letter "c" and won't eat food that begins with "p."  Thus our lunch dilemma.  We ate: Ramen (not me), rice and cinnamon, cereal, cantaloupe, applesauce, pudding, and string cheese.  Don't tell Mrs. Mary.  :-)

When you live in a house you have to remember that the blurry red lights across the bedroom aren't just there to be annoying but to someone they reveal the time in the middle of the night...
Something you may not know about me: I am a bad bed partner.  I talk, I kick, I really hate sleeping on the top bunk without a safety bar because, well, I use the whole bed and sometimes more.  When I learned Elizabeth and I were going to be sharing a double bed for five nights I was scared... for her sake.  Even if I only kicked her once every night that would still leave five painful bruises on her legs.  As it turns out, I never kicked her but instead I took an elbow to the face in the middle of the night.  Thanks, friend.  She said it's because I stole the covers.  I told her if she would have asked nicely I would have given them back but nooooo she had to get violent on me.  :-)

In a home, everything has a place and the only thing out of place is Bananagrams, the most frequently played game in the house.
When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night, I see Bananagrams letters.  I'm kind of experiencing withdrawals being back on campus.  It's a word game kind of like Scrabble but better; we played for hours every day.  This is marvelous for word-lovers like me.  Not so great for the weird math-lovers like my future roommate Jennifer or friend Chris.  No one is still quite sure how Andy was able to play Bananagrams with one hand and look up spellings in the dictionary with the other.  Either way his "n comes after m" got really annoying... If you can't use a word in a sentence, define it, or spell it then you can't use it!

When you live on campus sometimes you forget driving can actually be faster than walking...
Since I wasn't home for Easter, some traditions had to be broken... like sitting in a dark closet for three hours on Friday afternoon to commemorate Jesus' time on the cross.  One tradition I refused to sacrifice was the Good Friday Service of Darkness.  It's an incredibly powerful service for Jesus reflecting on the seven things He said from the cross.  I forced Chris, Andy, and Elizabeth into funeral clothes and to the Lutheran church down the road (not to be confused with the funeral home).  We were teasing about the five cars outside and all of us leaving wearing black; people were going to start calling asking who died.  Jesus did.  Well, we walked into church and the first person we saw was wearing bright green scrubs.  Another person was wearing an Easter bonnet.  And there we were all dressed in black... So maybe this Lutheran church is a bit different than mine.  My three Baptist friends were good sports about it, though.

When you live in a house you forget that in some places of the world there are commitments before 8am.
Including Elizabeth and her two sisters, Andy, and me there were five of us fighting for one bathroom.  We were really expecting this to be a huge problem Easter morning, but it actually wasn't too bad!  For the first time in years we made it to the Sonrise service on time!  I'd never been to a Sonrise service, so it was a cool experience to stand in the parking lot and put flowers on the cross.  It a beautiful tradition and it works in Baptist Country, but it wouldn't work in place where a white Easter is feasible.

When you live in a house you have real dishes and nice china, too.
This Easter was the first holiday without my family.  I handled it a lot better than I anticipated... until Mrs. Mary asked me to set the table and handed me a set of plates.  The china pattern was the exact same as my mom's.  Our also rarely-used good china was being placed around a rarely used dining room table 900 miles away where, according to an earlier text from my sister, a place had been set for me.  I think I'm going to be late...

All in all, my Easter was great!

Care for some quotes for good measure?
Emily: What's the lowest note you can sing?
Andy: Um... I think a seven.
Emily: Will you do it?

Andy walks in carrying a heap of blankets
Elizabeth: What's that?
Andy: My gardening utensils.

Jennifer: Will you hold my Nerds? And don't tell me I am what I eat!

Elizabeth: I feel like a limp noodle!

Andy: Emily, can I put this pig in your speed bump?

<>< Katie