Purple Pants

I am plagued with buyer's remorse. Rarely, but every so often, I will be in a store and will have an irrational need to buy something.  Suddenly, that navy and white striped shirt (I now own three of these) or that copy of the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice for $4.75 becomes the only thing in the world that will make me happy, and I have no choice but to buy it. Then within 24 hours I regret wasting the money and accumulating more stuff that I don't need.

My sisters are all the opposite--they regret not buying things. As in, they will leave a store and actually think about all the things they left behind? This reverse buyer's remorse is crazy baffling to me. All I ever feel when I leave a store empty handed is victory and relief.

This was all true until I encountered the purple pants. I'm in Vegas with my sisters (Lowe sister's reunion 2013!), and we went to the outlets yesterday. At the Gap outlet I tried on a pair of plum purple jeans. At first thought they seemed like a silly purchase (they're purple!) and they were $30 ("clearance," Gap? Really?), so I put the jeans back on the rack, bought a button-up with tiny orange hearts, and confidently left the store.

And at first I felt just like I always do--relief and a little self-righteous for my ability to minimize the crap I buy. We went to a few more stores and even went back to the Gap so my sister could get some jeans she wanted, and I mostly forgot about the purple pants.

But later in the evening those pants crept back into my mind. Purple pants! Of course I need a pair. With one of those navy and white striped shirts I have and some cute flats? Shoot girl.

I need those pants.

I tried finding them online. I tried gap.com and then I tried finding a similar pair at loft.com, oldnavy.com, and bananarepublic.com. No one has plum purple pants.

I don't know what to do. I feel so lost.

UPDATE: Bought the pants. Wore the pants. Totally crushed it. 

Donuts

There is something about starting a new work week after Christmastime, and hating my job, and feeling like I'm going to freeze to death due to winter that makes me 100% preoccupied with eating donuts. I think about them all the time.

To be clear, so you don't judge me, I don't actually eat them constantly. I just think about them constantly. Annie's Donuts, Coco Donuts, maple bars, buttermilk bars, cake donuts, etcetera etcetera etcetera. They're just so soft. And sugary. And joyful.

Today at work I kept telling one of my coworkers that we should go get donuts. Over and over. And she kept on laughing like I was kidding. Kidding! About donuts!

So, after getting one too many travel requests and getting bossed around by too many people that aren't actually my manager, I had to take matters into my own hands. Due to the near-death winter conditions here (which really means temperatures in the 30s, but I'm so weak!), I had to go to Fred Meyer's a block away instead of the legit donut shop four blocks away. And I bought two donuts. And to be honest, they were really dry and Fred Meyer-y and not soft and magical. But I walked around the block and ate both of them so no one at work would judge me. And then I  marched back into that bloody office and owned the rest of the day.

I should go get more donuts right now. I'll take one dozen! To stay!

Update: I was just browsing my iPhoto pics trying to find a new Facebook cover photo (important work!), and I came across this picture. I had to post it. Look at those beauties!

NaNoWriMo

November is NaNoWriMo, and today, in a hazy fit of motivation and what I thought might be creativity (but I now recognize as sleepiness), I decided to start! Immediately!

For those of you who aren't my Englishy friends pretentiously posting about NaNoWriMo on your Facebook wall, it's National Novel Writing Month, and you try to write a novel in November (aka, you try to write 50,000 words).

So I sat down at my computer, I opened a Word document (I literally don't think I've opened that program since I converted my masters thesis to a PDF for final submission), and I started writing words.

And I'm not going to lie, as I was typing my first words, it felt crazy easy. 1,600ish words a day? No problem. I figured a wave of inspiration would fall upon me, and I would type furiously through some mess of a story. And within an hour I could get caught up on my writing for the entire first week of November.

I mean, it's just words and stories and typing. And it was probably going to be a masterpiece, and I would get randomly discovered and fulfill my dream of becoming an author that scholarly critics write papers about, and I could scorn them for being critics rather than creators (was I really an English major?).

But by sentence two I was so exhausted. Words? Stories? Typing? So much work. I was able to muster 177 words in 45 minutes. And then gap.com was calling my name. Sorry, brain.

NaNoWriMo, we might just have to chalk this up to an epic fail.

But, at least we now have the below amusing comparison between the start of my NaNoWriMo novel in 2007(!) and my measly opening paragraphs in 2012. (Side note: should I be concerned that the first thing that came to me in 2012 was the image of an old woman sitting in a hoarder's house?)

2007
Kerrie slapped the jam side of the sandwich down and sliced the knife through the center before sealing the halves into a plastic bag. It had come again—the first day of school. Grabbing the rest of her lunch and her backpack, Kerrie rushed out to the bus stop. She always felt silly with her packed lunch; after all, she was in middle school now, but her mom insisted that cafeteria food is the root of all evils in America, and the ritual had become habit. So Kerrie was still eating peanut butter and jelly in the eighth grade. She was known for it, in fact.

2012
The blinds were cracked slightly, letting the cold light glow the specks of dust in the air. The large piles of stuff grew the edges of the room into amorphous shapes, disrupting the smooth symmetry of corners and floors and ceilings. Patches of color revealed distinct objects in the wallpaper of stuff lining the room: yellow spines of National Geographics, blue opaque plastic bins, the stale form of crushed cardboard boxes shoved between an armoir and a rocking chair, a large bolt of brown fabric with tiny polka dots and frayed edging weaving its way between a crushed Monopoly box and a backgammon board with a large crack down the center.

A little lamp with an orange and blue plaid shade propped up on an ironing board glows warmly in the middle of the room, and a small lady sits in the rocking chair, slowly oscillating back and forth as the sides of the rocking chair brush against the cardboard boxes wedged beside. Swish. Swoosh.

This is the night that the world is going to end.

Chicken Coop

I'm not really an animal person. Ok, that's an understatement. What I meant to say is that I hate animals. Not in a heartless, I want to cause animals harm kind of way. Just in a leave-me-alone-and-I'll-try-my-best-not-to-cringe-when-I'm-forced-to-come-in-contact-with-them-and-they-invade-my-bubble kind of way. They're so smelly, and messy, and needy, and expensive and unpredictable. I just don't want anything to do with them. The closest I'll ever come to having a pet is within my brief daydreams/daymares that I'm a 40-year-old woman from the 80s with over-sized glasses, bushy hair, and 15 cats curled up around me as I read a book. Incidentally, I'm always a hoarder in these daymares.

However, tonight I went to an RS activity (shock!) about cooping chickens, and I'm absolutely hooked on the idea of owning chickens (double shock!). First, this would finally satiate my unfulfilled desire to grow up on a farm Little House on the Praire style. Second, I'm a sucker for a good project. Third, the idea of producing my own food is really cool to me. 

Here's some info: it's only about $10/month to keep chickens. They're much lower maintenance than dogs or cats. They lay about 1 egg/day. They're very obedient and stupid. You only have to clean the coop about twice a year if you use a deep layer method where you add layers and layers of straw to the bottom of the coop regularly (when you clean out the coop, this stuff is great for fertilizing your garden). Chickens help reduce weeds. They're not very noisy. They don't smell very much. 

Kind of cool, huh? Unfortunately, it's kind of illogical for me to own chickens because 1. I hate eggs, and 2. I don't have a house/yard.

Every time I dream, all my hopes are crushed. 

Some pics from tonight: 

Summer Cookin'

Today finally feels like summer. It was in the 80s here, I wore shorts and flip flops all day long, and I passed a lemonade stand while driving. Plus, the air had the slightest hint of mowed grass and Elmer's glue sticks.

It was the perfect weather to sit on my back deck and brainstorm all of the reasons that I'm convinced my neighbors are cooking meth.

I have some really compelling evidence.

First, when I was in high school one of my friends (who has a little more drug knowledge than me) casually opened the lid of my neighbor's garbage can one day while we were walking to my house. He glanced in, chuckled, and said something about drugs. I don't know what he saw, and I don't know what drugs he was referring to, and I don't know what drug knowledge he really had, but this doesn't not support my thesis that they're cooking. (Double negative!)

Second, they are hoarders. Their whole yard looks like an untamed jungle, and I can see junk piled up in their windows. My most recent two Google searches suggest that hoarding and substance abuse might be linked. Also, my cousin's drug-busting husband says that it's common for meth cookers to be hoarders. Compelling!

Third, they have a huge white truck parked in their driveway that says "Mobile Wash" in large blue letters. But the truck almost never leaves the driveway. Breaking Bad has taught me that this must be both a traveling meth lab and a fake business through which they launder their meth money. It's the only explanation.

I suppose I should admit that my only meth knowledge comes from wikipedia and Breaking Bad.

As I become more and more convinced that they're cooking, I imagine elaborate sting operations to catch them in the act. Well, by "elaborate" I mostly mean brief, simple and ill-thought out plans. Like calling the number on the mobile wash truck and saying, "hey is this where I can buy some meth?" Or walking up to them while they're outside and saying, "you guys look like the type that could hook a girl up with some meth."

Unfortunately, neither of these plans would work because this childlike, wide-eyed sense of wonder has yet to really wear off

and, more importantly, I'm unfamiliar with the terminology. Do people still call it meth these days? Would a real user call it "glass"? Or "crystal"? Or "ice"? According to wiki these are all possibilities.

I just don't know.

Running

A week and a half ago I decided I was going to start running. Three times a week at least. I would start with two miles and work my way up. And then, soon, I would become one of those people who casually says, "Oh yeah, I did a 6-mile run last night," or "I love running--it's like a drug," or "I can't imagine not starting my day with an hour-long sprint." We hate these people. They think they're so superior to all the average lazy people. But I wanted to join their smug health-nut ranks so I could look down on all of you for "watching TV all evening," or "doing homework." I would buy brand-new neon running shoes. I would look good in running shorts. I would become a runner.

I think we all know how this ends. 

Let's begin with day one. I managed to convince myself to put on my running clothes right when I got home from work. This is key. If I put on my running clothes before thinking through the act of running then I can shame myself into actually going because it feels like complete and utter failure to change out of exercise clothes without actually exercising. So, I tied my Asics, put my running mix on shuffle, and headed up the hill. As my feet pounded the concrete to Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over," I tried every mental trick I know to make myself believe I was having fun. I tried to think about long-term goals. I tried to tell myself that this could be fun if I did it more often. I tried to think about breathing deeply. And then I tried to think about absolutely nothing. The 2.2-mile route seemed completely endless. And all the reasons that the 457 other times that I've decided to "become a runner" haven't panned out came rushing back to me. I just barely finished the run.

Days two to present: Take a wild guess. 

But I've hardly had time for running anyway because I have been devoting some really quality time to watching Dawson's Creek (90's teen dramas!), and feeding an odd obsession with Disney animated musical numbers. Like this:

See, she used her brains to conquer physical tasks and then became a master of everything because of it (obviously)! She would've killed becoming a runner. 

The Panel

Guys, I just couldn't bring myself to go to FHE tonight. I've mostly sort of been really good about going for the last couple months. But tonight I was feeling tired from work. And, most importantly, I heard it was going to be a dating panel. I have only been in this ward eight months, and I have been to no fewer than three FHE dating panels. They are all the same. And they all make me furious.

We all know what went down. First, someone gave a generic speech about the importance of dating and marriage. One of the bishopric members told a story about how they started dating their spouse and how they had an awful first date, but then their spouse's sass and hair flip won them over. Insert additional offensive gender stereotype here. Then someone asked for positive dating experiences. Someone told a story about how they went on a double date where they made pinwheels and then ran around a park waving them. It was so simple and so cute. Then someone told a story about how they went out to ice cream on a Thursday night. It was short and sweet (no pun intended!!!). The discussion leader then asked the women directly, "What could the men do better?" And the women responded with comments like "ask girls out!" and "open car doors!" and "be honest!" And someone asked the guys what they think about girls asking them out. Half the guys responded with "If I like the girl, it's cool and flattering," and half the guys responded with "Girls who ask me out are weird--it's my job!" Then there was an extensive conversation about how men and women communicate differently. Some woman said something like "Men are so dense and can only speak in grunts." Insert additional offensive gender stereotype here. And some man said, "When a woman asks you to roll the car window down what she really means is that she wants you to pull over immediately and get her a drink of water! You just have to learn how to decipher their language." Insert additional offensive gender stereotype here. At some point, someone said something about how going to a movie is an awful first date. And someone mentioned something along the lines of "I know looks aren't everything, but . . . " 

And the conclusion? I will happily remain single. 

Good thing I skipped FHE, got a milkshake from Top Burger, and watched a Little League baseball game in Camas with a friend. Summer is coming. Delicious. 

Devil Wears Prada Moments

Some days at work I feel like a rock star. I'll be working on a press release, or designing a document, or sitting in a marketing meeting, and I'll think, dang. Look at me go. I have two college degrees, I got a job, and I just fixed a comma splice. I'm totally nailing this whole life thing.

But. Then someone asks me to run out and pick up their lunch. Or someone asks me to call the hotel they stayed at last week to see if their folder turned up in the lost and found. Or someone snatches the pen off my desk as they hurriedly walk by without any explanation. Or I have to spend six hours booking travel for people who waited until three days before their trip to send me a travel request.

And all of the sudden I feel like Andy from The Devil Wears Prada. Minus the mid-movie makeover and sassy British coworker. And all of my college-level teaching, my international travel, the intellectual scholarly discussions I've had, and the three years I spent as the office coordinator at the Internship Office all fizzle away. And I feel like I'm a frantic, bottom-rung twenty-year-old, just lucky to be gettin' paid.

When I have these Devil Wears Prada moments, I try not to let them get to me. I try not to think about how I have more education than three quarters of the people at my office. I try to tell myself that in the next year or two I will have opportunities to move up within the company. I remind myself that when I was looking for a job, I was just trying to get my foot in the door. And that I'm lucky to have found a job.

The substantive tasks I have go a long way to stave off these feelings. But today I couldn't help myself from having a major DWP moment. I was busy today, really busy. And because everyone assumes that I'm always free and my time is expendable, people kept asking me to do stuff. All day long. And as I was sitting in a restaurant on 21st Ave., waiting for a pick-up order to be ready, after power walking half a mile to get there so I could hurry back to finish my actual work, during what should have been my own lunch break, the waitress getting the food said, "I sure hope one of these meals is for you since you had to pick it up." I smiled and responded, "No, of course not!" She seemed genuinely annoyed, shook her head, and said, "You probably work for a bunch of dudes, don't you."

She gets it. She gets it.

Dear Mindi

In high school I had a YW leader introduce me to the show Felicity. Her name was Mindi, and she had all four seasons on DVD, so I would spend long Saturday afternoons at her apartment watching episode after episode. I love Felicity. I love her over-sized sweaters, her blue converse, her awkwardness, her borderline stalker behavior, her infamous season two haircut, her love of Sarah McLachlan, and her endless Ben/Noel debate. My favorite over-the-top-dramatic-but-incredibly-endearing aspect of Felicity is the tapes that Felicity sends to Sally. Sally was her high school French tutor, and Felicity has never been able to talk to anyone the way she talks to Sally. So instead of writing, she records cassette tapes and sends them in the mail. She always starts her tapes "Dear Sally."

In the middle of my Senior year of high school, Mindi moved to Tehachapi, California. After Mindi left, I was really tempted to start sending her tapes, but I felt silly blatantly recreating the world of Felicity. (Or maybe I didn't have a tape recorder.) So instead, I sent her a series of "Dear Mindi" letters. Maybe it's because I've been watching My So Called Life, or because I've been listening to my nostalgia-infused playlist on the way to work, or because I'm back living in the place I grew up, but I've recently been preoccupied with my high school days. At the risk of revealing how silly and emotional I was during high school, I'm going to share a Dear Mindi letter.

Imagine that your laptop is a clunky gray desktop, put on some Sarah McLachlan, eat a pizza pocket, get out your high school yearbooks, and enjoy this lovely blast from the past.

Dear Mindi,

Tomorrow I turn 18 and in 3 weeks I graduate and in 3 months I'll be a freshman in college. I can't imagine actually being done with high school. No more 6 period days where the classes are easy, but you still feel challenged. And all your teachers know your name, and know you're a good student. No more complete lack of responsibility, and no more Mt. View. No more seeing my friends every day and soon no more Vancouver. It's sad, and overwhelming. So many things are changing and life will never be the same. I'll move on and forget a lot of my high school days, and the sad days and the memories will blur into a blob of "high school" that will seem meaningless and so long ago. And I don't know how I feel about it all. I'm excited and I hate it and I'm nervous. But most of all, I hate this limbo phase where change is looming right ahead, and I know it's coming, so everything seems bittersweet. I feel carefree, but at the same time everything is tainted with the knowledge that I know it will be over soon.

It feels like all of high school I've been waiting to get out. I've been waiting to move on and be an adult and live. And now I'm almost there, and I want to go back and be kid. I don't want to go to college. It's like passing through doors that lock right behind you. You can't go back. Maybe I have control issues. I want to be able to choose. But time kind of takes the choice away. And I know college isn't really adulthood yet. But it feels like I'm giving a lot up. And I'll have to take on a lot of new things and independence. I really thought I would act differently to all this change. I thought I would be strong and indifferent and ready for what next year will bring. But I'm the opposite. I'm going a little haywire as it all becomes real.

My life has been consistent for the past 18 years. And now I feel that after this change, more change is just going to come, and I'll constantly be saying hello and goodbye to people and things I'm a part of. I need more consistency. Life really will never be the same, and it's all work and a challenge. It's like stairs leading up higher and higher and sometimes you reach landings and can rest, but ultimately you keep climbing and climbing. You never feel like you've made it, like you can just stop. But I guess stopping would be boring, and you wouldn't learn anything if you weren't going anywhere or doing anything. It just drains the energy out of me thinking about how uphill life is, and it's not going to change. But hopefully I'll change and be better at dealing with it.

All of these realizations are things I've known in the back of my mind. But until now they haven't really affected me, and I'm starting to realize that they are really true. It's so different to have knowledge floating around in your head than it is to really know it's true from experience. I feel like I have a lot of knowledge floating in my mind, but I don't know a lot of things. Does that make sense? So I could spew advice to myself about how to deal with certain things because I know that it will all turn out for the best in the end, but I really don't know that.

I think one of the hardest parts of leaving high school behind is the feeling that I haven't changed anything or done anything with the past four years. I don't feel really sad to say goodbye to friends, but it's almost sadder to know you don't really have anyone to say goodbye to. The past two years I've been floating in and out of groups of friends, which has been fun and a lot less drama. But in the end, I don't feel any strong connection . . . I feel easily forgettable. I just hope that all the people that I will remember will remember me too. I really hope they do. All of my best friends and the teachers that I have loved and the people I had long conversations with. I just want them to remember, so it doesn't feel like it never happened.

I'm being silly and sentimental, and I don't care. I'm too many emotions right now. I just want to fast forward to next year when BYU will be home, and this will feel like a long time ago. I can't imagine walking across the stage at graduation. And that feeling of everything being so final. What was it like for you? Were you as crazy as I am now? I need to feel sane about this.

In one hour and ten minutes I'm legally an adult.

Love,
Kristin

Ping-Pong

There are two types of people at my work: those who play ping-pong and those who do not.

Those who don't play mostly forget that the ping-pong table exists. They use it as a place to put their stuff while they pour their coffee or heat up their lunch. They don't give it a moment's notice as they pass it on their way to grab a granola bar or trail mix from the snack table. To them, the tap-tap tap-tap of the hollow ball blends seamlessly into the background music and sounds of conversations and phones ringing.

But make no mistake about it, those who do ping-pong are not messing around. They own their own paddles. They own cases for their paddles with zips and padding. There is trash talking. Layers of clothing are removed. Sweat is involved. They're good.

And I want in.

I don't know if it's because I sit right next to the ping-pong table. Or if it's my obsession with this movie (which is amazing, btw). Or if it's my crazy-competitive nature. Or if it's because I still feel a little bit on the outside of things. But I have an irrational need to become a ping-ponger. It has been the sole preoccupation of my spare time--I have spent the past two and a half weeks observing the ping-pong scene, trying to figure out how to make this happen.

My first problem is that I'm not very good. And it's kind of a boys club. If I were to ask someone to play with me, I would immediately feel like the damsel in distress. Oh kind sir, I am absolutely helpless when it comes to ping-pong--would you please show me how it all works? Oh this is what they call a paddle? I want to be taken seriously because, sure, someone would have to familiarize me with the rules since I haven't played ping-pong since I was a 14-year-old boy (read: never), and I would need some practice, but I'm very coordinated. And I catch on quickly. And I have a mean tennis forehand that I think would translate famously to ping-pong.

My second problem is that I don't really understand how games are initiated. Are there rules about who you ask to play? If you're really bad, is it taboo to ask someone really good? Is there some sort of underground tournament that I would be disrupting if I were to initiate a game? Is ping-pong time so precious that someone would be intensely annoyed to waste their time playing a newbie? Mostly I envision a game initiation going something like this

Me: Hey X, want to play ping-pong?
X: Ha!

Or worse

Me: Hey X, want to play ping-pong?
X: Uh, sure. I guess. (wince.)

I'm about three weeks in, and I think I've almost worked up the courage to ask someone to play tomorrow. Or maybe Friday. Or maybe 2013. 2013 seems like a great ping-pong year for me.

Work

On my first day of work I had a meeting with the marketing director. She was going over the structure of the company and branding guidelines when she off-handedly said, "by the way, don't blog about your first day." Apparently, one of our competitors' new employees blogged about their first day and their role within the company, including a handful of pictures of their work space and the company offices. Someone at my company has a Google alert set for all our competitors, so the blog showed up in our newsfeed. Not that the information was super incriminating. Or even that useful. But something as simple as how their office is set up or the size of their work spaces is apparently interesting to us. The marketing director and the employees who work near her all laughed and laughed about this new employee's ignorance. I laughed to. Who would have the audacity to blog about their first day?

I have been terrified of blogging ever since.

I think as long as I don't use names or specific proper nouns, I'll be fine. But I'm still a little nervous about describing my job in anything more than really vague and generic terms like "I work for a company at a desk in front of a computer." Or, "I drive to work and then I complete tasks that have been outlined for me."

I will say that I'm liking it pretty well. My coworkers are nice. I love working in Portland. I almost don't hate every second of the commute. And I'm doing a wide range of tasks--from writing to designing to accounting data entry.

Ok, no way is this post getting picked up on any Google alert unless it's bundled with a million other entries with the words "marketing director," or "Portland."

I'm clearly a little paranoid.

Ten Minutes Late

I am horrified. I was ten minutes late to an interview last week. Ten minutes! Nothing says "I'm irresponsible and can't plan ahead" like being late to an interview.

Here's how it happened. The interview was scheduled for 2:00pm in downtown Portland: 14.3 miles/19 minutes away. I sensibly decided to leave at 1:10pm, giving myself a thirty-minute cushion in case of random afternoon traffic and stressful parking. I did plan ahead.

Wearing a professional dress, tights and heels, with my portfolio in hand, I got into my Jeep and headed towards Highway 14. I'd had a phone interview prior to this in-person interview, so I was feeling unnaturally calm: they at least liked me enough to take the time to meet me in person, and I already had a feel for their business and questions. I might even say I was enjoying the drive. It was a sunny day. I was listening to 95.5 really loudly. And it had been a while since I ventured into Portland.

Right before I hit the I-5 bridge exit to cross into Portland, traffic came to a stop. A complete, only-inching-forward-every-couple-of-minutes stop. I didn't panic quite yet. I still had plenty of time in my cushion, and I assumed the I-5 bridge was being raised or something. 20 minutes later, I had moved 100 yards. I started feeling a little anxious, but I finally got on the bridge at 1:35pm, passed the source-of-the-traffic accident, and traffic quickly picked up after crossing the bridge. I now had 25 minutes to drive and park. As long as I didn't hit more traffic, I was only about 10 minutes away and would still have 15 minutes to find parking and walk to the office. Cutting it a little close, but it was still doable.

Traffic was a dream from the I-5 bridge to downtown. My spirits lifted. At 1:45pm I drove by the office. Perfect timing. Now I just needed to park.

Street parking in Portland always confuses me, so I drove a few blocks to try to make sense of it. I passed a Star Park lot, and, after driving a few more blocks to let the stress of parallel parking thoroughly set in, I decided to turn around and pay for parking at the Star Park. I took a right. I planned to take the first right after that and circle the block to get back on the Star Park road.

I began searching for a right turn to circle the block. Half a mile passed. There was no right turn. I kept driving. 2 miles passed. 3 miles passed. No turns. No exits. There was a barrier separating me from oncoming traffic, so pulling a daredevil U-turn wasn't even an option. And then the road turned into Highway 26.

And then I began to panic.

It was 1:50pm, I was driving away from the office, and I had no idea how to back track. At this point, I was in a haze of disbelief and anxiety. How could my luck be so off that I took the one turn that led me miles away from my destination? It all seemed like it wasn't meant to be. I thought about driving home and pretending that none of this ever happened. Finally, after a harrowing 7 miles on this detour, I came to an exit. I took the exit to loop back to downtown-bound Highway 26. Luck was still not on my side: traffic was at a dead stop. As I inched along, I watched the clock tick closer and closer to 2:00pm. There was absolutely no way I was going to make it on time. I felt so defeated. I knew I needed to call ahead and tell them I was running late, but I just couldn't--it somehow signalled complete failure to call and admit a silly traffic mistake. I kept holding onto some crazy hope that in 3 minutes I would be able to cover 10 minutes of distance, and park, and walk into the office. Finally, at 1:58pm I texted my sister (While driving! Don't judge. Desperate times.), asking her to check my email for their phone number. Yes, I left my house without putting their number in my phone. Let's remember that I left my house 50 minutes before I needed to arrive--I didn't think I would need it. She (thankfully!) responded immediately, and I called to let them know I was running late.

Finally, I navigated my way back, parked in a 2-hour spot that I probably wasn't allowed to park in, ran two blocks (in a dress and heels), and walked into the office at 2:10pm.

The good news: I got the job. I started yesterday.

White Elephant

Nothing brings me more social anxiety around the holidays than a white elephant gift exchange. I know that it's supposed to be a funny and low-stress holiday tradition that allows the spirit of giving/humor/cheer to pervade through parties with minimal effort and money. But there is so much pressure to be clever. It's like playing Apples to Apples (which I also hate): you have to guess what a certain group of people will happen to think is funny (which somehow seems much more difficult than trying to come up with something that is intrinsically funny). And, even if you come up with a genius gift, the reception of your gift is then left at the mercy of the opener who then interprets the gift for the rest of the gathering. Even an excellent gift can't fully recover if the opener is unamused. It's so hit or miss.

Yet, every year I find myself participating in a white elephant gift exchange. And I go through the same process each time: I glance through my books and DVDs, completely uninspired because I don't own things that I don't want. Then I look through my one box of odds and ends and try to imagine different scenarios where someone could possibly think that this Rubiks Cube is hilarious or that stapler is somehow ironic because it's so mundane but by unexpectedly taking it from its normal on-the-desk setting is just bizarre enough to slay the crowds. (I think it's pretty clear that I'm an awful white elephant gift giver.) This year I thought I'd pander to the crowd's sense of nostalgia: I made some bead geckos. Best-case scenario someone in the crowd remembers making them as a child and offers a modest giggle at the memory. Worst-case scenario no one gets it and we awkwardly move on.

I always wrap my measly offering in beautiful wrapping, so at least people know I didn't fish it out of my glovebox right before entering the party. And so I arrive. Beautifully wrapped present in hand. And as I make small talk in a corner of the room while holding a plate with mozzarella cheese sticks and cucumber slices, the white elephant exchange is looming. At least five times throughout the evening I regret bringing a gift at all and consider slipping my present into my purse, mumbling something, and leaving with haste.

But I stay. I stay because part of me has always wanted to be the hit of a white elephant party. For my present to be completely perfect for the audience, for the opener to deliver the perfect combination of glee and gasping laughter, and for everyone to want to steal my gift.

Not only does that never (ever) happen, but the person who is the hit of the white elephant party always seems to end up with my gift. And they are always disappointed. This year was no different. The absolute hit of the party was a guy who brought a hardcore bow and arrow wrapped in a huge 3'x3' cardboard exterior. Everyone laughed, everyone gawked, everyone was jealous of the girl who unwrapped the bow and arrow. And this young hit-of-the-party fellow got my bead geckos.

Death to the white elephant.


Afterthought: I hate people that show up looking hot to an ugly sweater party. It's like they know everyone is going to look their homeliest and they conveniently "forget about the ugly sweater part" of the ugly sweater party and show up looking dazzling so that, by comparison, they're stunning beauties. Those rascals. I wore my ugly sweater proud. 

Why I can never be a teacher

I try to avoid thinking back on certain moments in my life because I feel waves and waves of awkwardness when I do. My thesis defense, for example. I can't spend more than 3 seconds thinking about my defense before I feel overwhelmed with feelings of awkwardness/anxiety/horror. It was a perfectly fine defense, and I passed without revision, but I still somehow feel horrified that two people witnessed me give the answers I gave. For two straight hours. And I feel similarly when I think back to how I reacted like a monster to a certain golf cart rental company in Ohio when they incorrectly overcharged me $53 and wouldn't refund my money (though part of me still believes they deserved it). And I feel the same way when I think back to how I treated my friend Destiny in middle school. It's a mixture of awkwardness, regret, and horror that I'm still walking around on this earth when there are people out there who have seen me at my worst.

But most of my waves-of-awkwardness moments are centered around teaching. Like thinking back to anytime I've ever been observed. Or when I somehow calculated a student's final grade as a B+ during a student conference when they were actually getting a C+ in the class. Or when I let my students watch an entire episode of The Office during class.

And one of these waves-of-awkwardness moments happened again today when I taught Relief Society. I was already a little frustrated by the topic--not a lot of room to talk about personal experiences, and I felt underqualified to be teaching a topic that we don't have an extensive amount of information on. I'm not good at thinking on my feet. So, when someone asked a question that I didn't know the answer to, I was caught off guard and flustered and gave incorrect information about a really basic principle. The presidency corrected me, and a couple people gave additional comments to clarify. It really wasn't a big deal, and in my brain I can recognize this. But it somehow doesn't stop the constant waves of awkwardness I've felt all day. I tried joking about it with some people after church to squelch the feelings but to no avail. I tried being logical, telling myself that it was NBD, that it was a small portion of an otherwise decent lesson, that most people weren't paying attention anyway, that no one would remember by next week. And now I'm trying a blog confession to see if sending this off into the cosmic void will help ease my mind. But it's still bothering me.

And this is why I can never be a high school English teacher as I have secretly always dreamed. Even though I love teenage angst, high school classrooms, and working with students on their writing, I can't get over the constant waves of awkwardness/anxiety I feel about my performance in the classroom. It's really too bad.