The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool.

Today I crossed a weird bridge between the past and the present.  I spent the morning doing the same errands I've done my whole life and taking advantage of everything my little town has to offer.  I went to the bank, the post office, and Grandma's house.  The afternoon I spent wrestling with the Herculean task of cleaning out my closet.

I'm a pack rat by nature, and when I'm bored or stressed, I ignore all of the rules of logic when it comes to storing my stuff.  As a result, my closet was an explosion.  I gathered three boxes-one for a garage sale, one for the attic, and one to throw away-and set to work. 

The problem is that I quickly realized that I'm a grownup now.  Every time I pulled out a stuffed animal that used to be one of my favorites and had to stuff it in a plastic attic-bound storage tote a little piece of my inner child died.  College was that golden time when you could still be completely immature while pretending that you were an adult.  Now that that's over, the real adulthood begins.  Sometimes that means you have to sell your old prom dresses.  Sometimes that means reading through your old book reports, having a good laugh, and tossing them in the trash.  Sometimes you realize that your real childhood is in your memories, and not in a lot of sentimental rubble clogging up your closet.  I will never get rid of my Super Nintendo though!

Kevin Arnold in the Wonder Years said it best (as usual).  "When you're a little kid you're a bit of everything; Scientist, Philosopher, Artist. Sometimes it seems like growing up is giving these things up one at a time."

We rejoin our young heroine as she's returned to the rolling hills of Appalachia, to her family home.  To fill the hole left by leaving a big part of herself at college, and to feed the unquenchable need for money, she's taken a job at a camping and fishing store.  Can you really go home again?  Tune in to find out.

Do I like my job?  It's hard for me to say for certain.  Every day is the same, in a way that is both comforting and mind-numbing.  I clock in, mumble some expletives about the weather and the customers to the ever-present break room lingerers (they feed on the negativity-I suspect they hang around simply to have every passerby confirm that customers are still rude and it is still going to rain on their day off), and stumble to the registers, trying to paste a smile on my face.  I find my assigned register for the day, and time becomes a blur. The beep beep beep of the scanner melds with the canned music over the loudspeaker (too much country, the break room crowd complains) and the inane pleasantries of the customers (The largemouth are hitting at the lake? Glad to hear it.  Yes, I know where you can get a good steak around here.  Sorry to tell you sir, but it's not free just because the price is missing).  My fifteen minute break mid-morning turns into lunch hour, another fifteen minute break, and before I know it, I'm shuffling through the lingerers to the time clock again.

My co workers are what differentiates one day from another, and then only slightly.  Each person is not truly a person to me yet, but only a snapshot.  There's Bobbi, the career cashier, counting the months until she can move to the city to be with her grandbaby.  There's Lisa, the loudmouth.  She's overcompensating for something, her bullhorn voice cutting through the white noise with some observation or another.  Thankfully, she's very funny.  There's Ed, widely recognized as creepy and given a wide berth.  And then there's me.  The college girl, the bookworm.  My accent is a little too faint, my grammar a little too good (even though with my English major, I recognize that it's far from perfect in everyday speech).  Still reading that book? they ask at lunch, through a haze of cigarette smoke.  I peek over the pages of Twilight. Yup, it's about vampires, and I can't put it down, I say with a smile.  This satisfies them.  Vampires they understand.  I wonder vaguely how I'll explain the heavier-hitting titles that will eventually fill my summer reading list.  Will "It's by a Russian guy" provide an apt description of Anna Karenin?  Am I patronizing?  Probably.  In the grand scheme of things, a B.A. in English from a mediocre midwestern college means little.  There are people in that store who are far more educated than me-and certainly people who are far more intelligent.  Even those who are lifetime cashiers can be envied for their good qualities-different for each individual-a sense of humor, a deep kindness, a work ethic I will never achieve.  These are things I'm learning to recognize and learning to admire.  And so I punch in, I punch out, I live, I learn, and another day goes by.

The thing about poetry is it never hits me right away.  I often read something and think nothing much about it until little bits of it come racing back to me when I'm shelving books or cooking dinner or watching television.  I rush off to dig through four years of Norton Anthologies, racking my brain trying to remember which poet and which poem perfectly captured whatever nuance of mood I'm in.

The other night, I was walking home after the 6:30 Mass across the deserted campus.  It was cold.  I can't think of a much more poetic way to say it.  It was bone chilling, heart stopping cold.  And all of a sudden, it was beautiful.  The cold was part of me and I was part of the cold.  I felt sorry for anyone who had never had that experience, to be alone with their thoughts in the inky black of a winter night.  At that moment, I gave up longing for spring.  And I thought of this Wallace Stevens gem which made no great impression the first time I read it.

One must have a mind of winter 
To regard the frost and the boughs 
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; 

And have been cold a long time 
To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
 
Of the January sun; and not to think 
Of any misery in the sound of the wind, 
In the sound of a few leaves, 

Which is the sound of the land 
Full of the same wind 
That is blowing in the same bare place
 
For the listener, who listens in the snow, 
And, nothing himself, beholds 
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

So I decided today to get this crazy, eclectic blog going a bit again.  Since I tend to dive into projects headfirst (and later forget about them) I also decided I needed a new header.  I spent the last half an hour or so trying to make one.  Then I discovered:
A. I lack a camera good enough to capture detail for a header.
B. I lack photography skills good enough to capture detail for a header.
C. I lack software...
D. I lack creativity...
Ergo, unless I can bribe my Mac-owner creative pal Jeremy into making me one, my brilliant words *cough* will have to go on a spiffy pre-made header.

I feel bad for the kids who grew up in those fabulous sunshiney states and never had the joy of a snow day.  The great thing about snow days is you never outgrow them.  That feeling of utter freedom and the permission to be lazy just never gets old.  Thanks to a thoroughly Ohio-like mixture of snow, ice, and rain, the whole university was closed today.  I'm still wearing the pajamas I slept in last night.  That's the mark of a great day if you ask me.  Since I didn't have to be productive, in a bit of perverse logic, I was.  I cleaned the hell out of the apartment, which should last all of a day or two. The rest of the day was devoted to television.  I polished off a few episodes from season six of Gilmore Girls for breakfast, had Friends for lunch, Cheers for dinner, and American Idol for dessert.  Delicious!

What is it about Journey that holds such a sway over college students who weren't even born at the height of their popularity?  Now, we could sit here and argue that they're a mediocre band, Don't Stop Believin' is a bad song musically, etc.  Or we could just rock out! JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL LIVIN' IN A LONELY WORLD! SHE TAKES THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHERE!! *rockin' guitar riff* JUST A CITY BOY, BORN AND RAISED IN SOUTH DETROIT HE TOOK THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOIN' ANYWHERE!  Now, isn't that more fun than ripping on Journey? 

What fictional creature do you wish were real?

The house elf.  I'm out of laundry.  'Nuff said.

This weekend brought a leadership retreat for Newman Catholic Student Association (NCSA).  I'm currently secretary, for what it's worth.  I know it's probably horrible, but I love these retreats and trips like crazy.  It is so much easier for me to be myself and meet people I might not usually hang out with when we're kind of forced together for a common purpose.  The retreat was held in Oldenburg, Indiana at the Franciscan Sisters of Mercy convent.  The grounds were very beautiful, or as beautiful as a place so devoid of hills can be.  I'm very, very excited for NCSA this year.  We have some terrific ideas, ranging from impromptu campfires and Notre Dame game parties to going back to our roots and really celebrating what it is that makes us Catholic (as opposed to some of the evangelical groups on campus...if I hear "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? one more time I might scream.)  The pictures below are courtesy of my favorite Indian PhD student and NCSA member, the very hilarious Thomas K.

Retreat 2

I saw two shooting stars!

Stars