The Houses

Do you realize when you stand on his front porch, you're standing where Mark Twain once stood? When you step around the table you're taking the same steps he took, animatedly telling stories to his guests. Dragging your hand along the railing up the stairs in the same path his hand once dragged. This bed was the very bed in which he wrote his autobiography. I could see him leaning over his billiards table, cigar in mouth (he smoked 20 a day!), the very billiards table he leaned against up to 8 hours a day. I could see him sitting at his desk in the corner, away from the windows so he wouldn't get distracted as he wrote. To think that I was looking at the very desk where characters like Tom Sawyer came to his mind made me wonder if perhaps some of his imaginative genius was still floating around above his pool table. I wonder if simply by being in the same room where he imagined, some of his genius could leak in through my ears and eyes, so that I would walk away thinking a little more like Mark Twain.

I stood next to the very desk where Louisa May Alcott penned Little Women. I lightly rested my fingertips on the desk, realizing that her fingertips rested on this desk. I looked out the windows on either side, wondering what she saw instead of the paved road and line of parked cars. As people began filing out of the room, I looked over and saw a picture of Louisa at her desk, writing. I realized I was standing in the exact spot where she was sitting, in front of the same bookshelf that was there in 1868. To be standing exactly where she sat in that picture sucked all of the air out of me. The heart that flowed through a pen to create such beautiful words was beating where my heart was beating. Wow, how cheesy does that sound?
Walking through the rest of the house was like dodging ghosts. Between these walls that I now stood echoed the voices of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Standing in the room where Louisa's oldest sister was married, I felt as though I was spying on their happy and solemn ceremony. I could feel the tearful joy they must have felt at such an occasion! I must sound insanely superstitious, or at least a tad too imaginative. Perhaps it's that part of Mark Twain's brain that came in through my ears.

42 more days

I just looked down and noticed there's jelly on my chair. I wonder how long it's been there? (Rhymes! I smell poetry.) The last time I ate jelly was before spring break. I wonder how long it could remain there? Maybe I'll write a story about a blob of jelly that lives on the rocking part of my chair, and all its grand adventures rocking to and fro...back and forth....The excitement.

I put up a list of some DVDs for sale on the bulletin board in CPO a couple of weeks ago. Somebody thought it was pretty funny to cut off my DVDs so that all my sign said was, "FOR SALE, Heather ext. 5107" Oh, college students are so funny. And I still didn't get any takers!

Please try to incorporate "jot and tittle" into your every day vocabulary. Phrases like that can only brighten someone's day.

Yesterday I went to a luncheon in the Dougherty Room of the cafeteria where Jan Watson, a Christian fiction authoress, spoke about her journey to becoming a writer. There were probably 50 women in the room (and somehow a man), a few being college students but the majority being older women with gray hair and skirts with matching suit jackets. The centerpieces were brightly colored daisies in brightly colored watering cans that made me want to water the world with bright colors, and everything was proper and formal with soup spoons and lap napkins and water goblets. I felt out of place, but tried my best to keep from bumping my table neighbor and keep my elbows off the table.

Before our main course was served, I spied a plate of three crackers just for me. Next to those crackers I saw two blocks of cheese. I didn't want the crackers, so I just picked up a block of cheese and bit into it. It was soft and room temperature. Maybe it was bre. It didn't taste very good. I didn't like bre. A fellow classmate at the end of the table glanced at me as I took a bite, then glanced away as if she didn't want me to know she had glanced at me. I put my cheese back on my cracker plate and elegantly swigged some water from my goblet. (I like the word "elegantly" describing the word "swigged.")

Many minutes later, after seeing a woman spreading her "cheese" on her cracker, I realized that it wasn't cheese at all, but butter. I felt ridiculous next to coffee-drinking elders with names like Ruth and Marianne, while I had a block of butter on my plate with teeth-marks in it. I tried to make a joke of it to let the other women at my table know that I wasn't some savage butter-eating beast. When you think about it, why would our cafeteria serve bre?

Spring break would take all together too long to describe in one sitting, so perhaps I'll make little contributions here and there. Not to be mistaken with contribution margin, which is in fact sales minus variable costs. It looks like this:

S-VC=CM

I have an accounting exam tomorrow. It looks like this:

Heather+Accounting=Brain vessels bursting

Please know I'm wearing my Boston sweatshirt as I write this, which I so eagerly, anticipatedly alluded to in previous entries. Stay tuned for more tidbits from Spring Break '08.........

humility and cakes

I am invincible.

Today I worked as a "runner" in the cafeteria, those people who magically appear with refills whenever the mashed potatoes run out. I find cafeteria workers to be very helpful, about 3 seconds too late. There are two "hot boxes" where the food is stored. Upon running out of Philly cheese steak, I opened the first hot box to find some more. I didn't find any, so I closed the door to open the other hot box.
"What are you looking for?" Asked a helpful cafeteria worker, whom we shall name Mrs. White.
"Cheese steak," I said.
"It's in the other hot box," Mrs. White said.
Well, yes, I know that now that I've already looked in the first hot box. Thank you. I'd appreciate it if you could just read my mind and tell me which hot box the food I need is in before I have to open anything.

Once, we ran out of the chicken cacciatore. I looked in the first hot box, and when it wasn't there I went to look in the second one. (Sounding vaguely familiar, eh? So goes my employment.) Suddenly a helpful cafeteria worker whom we shall name Mr. Black approaches me.
"What are you looking for?" He asks.
"Um...I don't know what it's called. Is it jambalaya?"
He looks at me like I've accidentally mistaken his son for a girl. "Noooooo."
Mrs. White comes up from behind. "What's going on?"
What is this, a national emergency?? Just let me look in the second hot box!
"She's looking for something, but she doesn't know what it is," Mr. Black says, like they're going to have to call a meeting of all helpful cafeteria workers to solve this mystery. Oh, come on! You know what I'm referring to. It looks just like jambalaya, it smells just like jambalaya...use your deductive reasoning!
"I know what it looks like," I say, trying to imply that if I could just look in the second hot box I would be able to get it myself.
"What does it look like?" Asks Mr. Black.
"It's got..." I motion with my hands.
"Oh," he says. Yes, "got" is a very descriptive word. He reaches in the second hot box (oh, is THAT where it's kept?) and pulls it out.
"So what's it called?" I ask.
"Chicken cacciatore," says Mr. Black.

Later while I was wiping down one of the lines, two students walked by. "Oh, jambalaya!" One of the students said. "My favorite."

On my first day washing pots and pans last week, the supervisor told me to take the trays to the conveyor belt. I didn't know where that was, so after turning on the water to fill up one of my tubs, I picked up the trays and approached Mr. Black. "Where do I put these?" I asked.
"Once they've been cleaned, you can put them on the cart."
Evidently he didn't know about the conveyor belt. "Yes, but isn't there a place to put them--"
"Once they don't have any junk on 'em anymore, there's usually a cart here to put them on."
Okay. Yes. I know I have to clean the trays. I took the trays back to my station and set them on the counter. "I'm not stupid," I mumbled to myself. Then I turned around and realized I hadn't put the stopper in the sink, so the hot water had been running down the drain for a good 7 minutes. I felt very stupid.

You know you have the Holy Spirit in you not when you speak in tongues or bear good fruit, but when you gain spiritual insight out of a Backstreet Boys song.

I don't care who you are
Where you're from
What you did
As long as you love me

Today while my accounting tutor explained cost pools and cost drivers to me with the analogy of cakes made at a bakery, I decided to drop out of college and go to baking school. Alton Brown graduated from the New England Culinary Institute, and I can graduate with an associates degree in baking and pastry arts.























I think it's sad that Asbury College students need signs to let them know what certain substances are. Just in case you weren't aware, that brown soupy stuff on the ground is, indeed, mud.

March fools!

This growing up thing has got to stop. The world is a bitter, bitter place that I was not exposed to under the protective feathers of my parents' wings. I thought stamps just magically appeared from my mom's purse, I didn't know they cost money. Seven bucks for three pairs of underwear, people. Hanes her way, my eye. And laundry detergent does not replenish itself, nor is it cheap. Who knew life cost so much?

I am now employed at the cafeteria. They call my position "pots and pans." I feel very much like Scarlett O'Hara, hiding her once-white and soft hands from Rhett Butler. My hands are dry and cut, my nails are frail and breaking, and by the end of my 3-hour shift my fingers resemble little sausages swollen and wrinkled with water. I have dreams about elbow-length, squeaky yellow rubber gloves. I just keep telling myself I'll be thankful for these pots and pans when I'm sporting a sweatshirt from Boston and walking through Louisa May Alcott's house. My magnet shaped like Mark Twain's head and the bread bowl of authentic New England clam chowder will make the accidental drop of bleach on my jeans and the way my hair smells like it's been fried in oil every Wednesday and Friday all worth while.

A little pick-me-up:
"Life's tough, then you die." ~ Dr. Anderson's fatalistic bumper sticker

Or if that didn't do it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3LVXjB_VUfk

it's a new day

February is almost over, and I'm glad. There's something about this month that I don't like. It kind of feels like the mud that remains after the snow of Christmas melts, and the flowers of Easter have yet to bloom. Plus, once it's March, spring break is just around the corner, and then it's Boston and Mark Twain for 10 days.

My parents are sending me a package in the mail, full of coffee supplies and holiday treats. ("The Valentine's stuff I got for half off, because I went in the day after Valentine's Day." My mom's such the little money-saver.) It'll be the first package they've ever sent me in my year and a half of college life. I'm so excited. ("There's a package in this box that wasn't supposed to be opened, but Dad didn't know that and helped himself. But I'm sending it anyway.") She's also sending me Toy Story, upon request, and finally my addiction-like desire to watch that movie can subside. No wonder so many alcoholics fall off the wagon.

I've been getting up early every other day to "run" on the elliptical machine at the Luce. I love the quiet mornings before the campus has awoken. The sky looks so pale and fresh, like a pastel fleece baby blanket before it's been soiled or worn. The whole day is like freshly fallen snow, with no footprints in it and endless possibilities of snow forts and snowmen. Wow, the similes are abounding this morning.

The best part of waking up, is similes in your cup.

the pro bowl

"You do not often see a Bengal and a Brown high-five each other in the endzone."

This is what I love about the pro bowl. The fact that Derek Anderson is calling in plays to Peyton Manning (my two favorite fellas!), and Peyton Manning is throwing touchdowns to Braylon Edwards, and Braylon Edwards is high-fiving TJ Houshmandzadeh. It's like heaven, when the lion will lay down with the lamb. This is my last time to see my boys play before the long, cold off-season. It may be summer, but Sunday afternoons blow with a bitter chill that I don't understand until I remember there's no football.

we need a good assassination

When my alarm went off at 7:00 yesterday morning I thought back to Christmas morning when, after going to bed at midnight, I woke up at 6:15 and eagerly bounced out of bed. Now I was struggling to get out of bed after 8 hours of sleep, and I delayed until my roommate's alarm went off at 7:30 before finally venturing out of my 100% Egyptian cotton sheets. There's such a difference between getting up to eat Stollen and sit by a fire while my cat toys with the ribbons on our presents and sitting for an hour and a half in my economics class while it's raining outside.

It's also interesting how much I didn't want to get up at 1:30 in the morning to sit in the basement during a tornado, as opposed to how excited I'd be to get up at 1:30 in the morning to, say, rise with all the saints at Jesus' second coming. I can just imagine Sam coming into my room and saying calmly, "Heather, Emily, you need to wake up. Jesus is coming back." I'm sure silver trumpets would be a much better awakening than tornado sirens. Though I think there's a special bonding that occurs between girls who are scrunched in the hall of a basement, wearing pajamas and sharing blankets, girls without makeup or contacts, wearing glasses and retainers. It's funny to see what people thought to bring when in a hurry to flee from a tornado. I thought about what I would miss if our dorm was destroyed and all of the contents of my room strewn across campus. And the one thing I thought about wasn't the 60 DVDs or my pristine complete history of WWII book or even my guitar. I began wishing I had brought down my teddy bear. I'd be sorry to ever be without Gilbert.

Mom and Dad are getting 12 inches of snow today in Wisconsin, and Dad woke Mom up this morning to make him pancakes. I sat in semi-darkness this morning at 7:15 eating cereal I stole from the cafeteria, and though I enjoy raisins and granola and bran, I wish I could have traded in my groggy munching for Mom's homemade buttermilk pancakes and Perkins' apricot syrup. I'm not quite ready to forgo my sweaters and argyle socks, but if it's going to be 65 degrees and thunderstorm anyway, I'd rather it be summer so I could go home and eat pancakes. Weather, get your act together.

I miss doing this....