Liquid Gold

Back home, my mom used to make me fresh squeezed orange juice in the morning before I left for school.  There were quite a few times when I didn’t finish it, either because I was rushed or I didn’t want to. 

Now, I look back on my high school self and wonder, what in the world was I thinking?

At school it’s rare to get truly fresh food.  Sure, the fruit is supposed to be “fresh” but a lot of the time it’s mediocre and probably pretty cheap. 

Except for the oranges. 

If you have the patience to peel one of those things it’s pretty delicious. 

Do I have the patience?

No. 

If I eat an orange it’s because Will took the time to peel one and I simply stole a couple slices.

I can’t believe it took me so long (more than a school year) to remember how often I used to have fresh squeezed orange juice at home.  And I suddenly had the most brilliant idea I’ve had in a long time.

Buy a juice maker!

The exact juice maker I bought...
I love it.

When it arrived in the mail a couple days later I couldn’t wait to try it, and I had a stock of oranges in my room since I grabbed a couple every time I ate in Gwinn.  After I unpacked the juicer and cleaned it, I grabbed my roommate’s knife and began slicing oranges in half, then pushing the individual halves down on the squeezer to extract the juice.

The juicer happens to make a terrible grinding noise when the top part turns to remove the juice, and when Taylor walked into the room she asked, “Is your printer choking??”  Dwight, my printer, has been known to chew up paper before and it actually makes a pretty similar sound.

I just laughed and showed her the juicer, and after I had squeezed 6 or 7 I was able to pour a glass for her and myself.  I’ll admit that I paraded my juice around a bit and showed other people, but I also promised to make them some as well. 

A couple days later I texted my friend Sarah, who was in Gwinn, and asked if she would grab me a couple oranges and have the other girls with her grab some as well.  When they walked into my room, oranges in hand, they asked, “What are you going to use all of these for?”

“To make fresh squeezed orange juice!” I told them. 

“Oh.  We thought you were going to give them to the boys so that they could throw them off the balcony.”

Their assumption is understandable.  The boys occasionally do things like that, especially because they are called the Orange Men, so it’s rather fitting.  Never will I give the boys oranges to throw off the balcony when I can turn them into juice. 

The $18 I spent on the juice maker is possibly some of the best money I’ve ever spent.  Every day I try to grab a couple oranges when I’m in Gwinn.  One day I managed to sneak out 8 in my backpack, which I will never do again because carrying all that weight up Ashton hill was a lot harder than I expected. 

The point is, as long as I’ve got fruit, I’ll have fresh juice.

My brother referred to it as “liquid gold”, which I would agree is very true.  

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Once Upon a Time I Feared the Wind

I’ve been a terrible blogger lately.  Basically, I took last week off entirely.  Every once in a while I need a break, especially when finals hit.  I was busy writing a paper, and studying for Biology and Psychology tests.  I was finished by Wednesday afternoon, and by that time all I wanted to do was lounge around and do absolutely nothing.

I can’t even remember what I did during those last few days.  I watched a couple movies, cleaned up my room a bit, and packed a carry on for spring break that consisted of 3 pairs of jeans, 10 t-shirts, a jacket and some toiletries.  I was rather impressed that I managed to take hardly anything home with me.  I guess I’ve learned to pack light since I have to travel back and fourth so much.

The Colorado weather was absolutely gorgeous the first days I was back and I was able to wear shorts, a tank top, and flip flops to my brother’s baseball game on Saturday.  Yesterday, a mere three days later, it was somewhere in the 30s temperature wise and I kept my younger brother on my lap for warmth.

Colorado is incredibly fickle, not to mention extremely brown compared to Seattle.  I’ve decided I love both places for different things, but it’s also really hard to be switching all the time.  The first few days home were rough, but now that I’ve settled in I’m quite happy to be here.

I’ve already been to a choir concert for my brother, a few high school baseball games, and answered a billion college questions to whoever happens to ask about it, which is pretty much everyone who hasn’t seen me since winter break.

But that is merely an update.  There is one thing I want to write about specifically.  It happens to be the wind.  You might thing I’m joking, but it has been more than blustery lately, especially at night. Just a couple nights ago it was incredibly windy and my sister was begging me to allow her to open the window because our room was “stuffy”.  I felt absolutely fine, and I insisted that she shouldn’t open the window.  Please, please don’t open it, it’s windy.  I caught myself then and wondered, did I ever get over it? 

When I was younger I was terrified of the wind.  I was dreadfully frightened of it until 5^th or 6^th grade.  When it was too windy at night I would walk across the hall to my parents room and crawl into bed with them until I felt safe enough to return to my own bed. 

I was convinced the house would blow over, or that a tornado would sweep everything away.  I have reason to believe this fear developed when I first saw The Wizard of Oz at a young age.  It instilled a fear in me that could not be merely removed.  When I was in 1^st grade I told my teacher that a tornado was coming—I was frightened because of how windy it was outside.  She offered no sympathy.  She told me she was sure a tornado was not coming, and sent me trembling back to my desk.  Occasionally, tornados would turn my dreams at night into dreadful nightmares.  

There came a point when I tried once more to crawl in bed with my parents and they answered with a resounding No.  After that I took to hiding from the wind by burying myself in covers, clinging to my stuffed animals (of which there were several) and sleeping with my head under the pillow.

I’m not sure when my fear ended.  I don’t know if it ever did.  Maybe I just learned how to deal with it.  Occasionally I still wake up at night when it gets windy outside.  A huge boom of thunder won’t wake me, but a blustery windstorm somehow will.  I remember when I started to read books about weather.  I knew everything about the clouds, and precipitation, and I read a lot about tornados.  There were a few pages in my book specifically dedicated to them, and I must have read them dozens of times. 

The biggest fear is always the unknown, and once I learned about how tornados formed, where they occurred most often, and how much danger I was in, (practically none) I was able to relax.  It didn’t mean I was done being afraid, but it meant that I could move on instead of constantly being paralyzed.

It seems like kids are afraid of clowns, snakes, spiders, and the dark.  But, on the other hand, I was the only one I knew of to be afraid of the wind.  I know the wind makes some people uncomfortable, but not to the point when they can’t think of anything else. 

On the surface level I know I’ve gotten over it, but deep down it must be hidden.  I think I’m rather determined to keep it that way though.  Hiding from the wind at college would be rather embarrassing, so I don’t want to be doing that anytime soon.

I know I probably never will, but it’s interesting how that one event a couple nights ago caused me to remember a series of events I hadn’t thought of in years.

It makes me realize how far I’ve come.  I’m being totally serious.

From a tiny kid afraid of the wind, to a college kid willing to step into the world by writing her heart out every day. 

I’m done hiding under the covers.  

It's About Time I Told You Why...

This is my 100^th blog post.  To be honest, I had no idea I would make it this far.  When I started it, I never gave an explanation as to why I was blogging.  I felt as if I didn’t need one.  In a way I thought it was partially self-explanatory as to why you would start a blog and I wasn’t about to waste my words on that when I had a story to tell.  My very first blog post, My Room Wants to Eat Me now has 123 page views and 6 Hours holds second place with 115.

I think it’s fitting that I explain now why I’m writing, whom I am writing to, and what I’m trying to accomplish.  I suppose it all comes in the form of a story, as do most of the things I write about.  This one starts a really long time ago.

When I was young my Mom couldn’t keep the house supplied with enough paper, scissors, and tape.  I was often taking paper, cutting it up, and taping it back together in various forms.  Then I would color it or do with it what I pleased.  Most of the time I made little books and drew pictures in them.  During one instance I invested a day into copying an edition of Martha Speaks into a cut-and-taped paperback book that I had created.  I loved that fact that I could flip through something I had made and read the words I had written down.  It didn’t matter to me that the work wasn’t actually my own, I was proud of it. 

A few years later in elementary school I was part of Beat Street, the program that my school ran for kids that wanted to “publish” their own books.  I wrote and illustrated two during my first few years.  I don’t remember what they were called but I vividly remember the pictures.  One was about a rainbow, and the other was about my zebra beanie baby getting lost at a circus.  

In 5^th grade we were required to make an Autobiography, and in 6^th grade we wrote and illustrated a children’s book.  On the side, I wrote in my journal fairly consistently and often wrote poetry.  It seemed like I was writing all the time.  I was good at math and understood science well enough, but I loved to write.  English wasn’t necessarily my favorite subject (I think P.E. was in middle school, but that was everyone’s favorite) but I knew how to write.  In 7^th grade I won an in class competition for who could write the best patriotic poem. 

Middle school finished, and I entered the local high school.  My English class was dominated by technology.  We had fishbowl discussions by commenting on a blog and we were required to have a blog of our own, of which I’ve long since deleted.  The transition from paper to word document never appealed to me, and I continued to journal in a notebook.  Junior year I compiled a collection of my favorite writings from the year.  The project was a requirement and a lot of work, but every once and a while I enjoy going back through my binder and reading everything I wrote. 

My favorite things to write were the things I made up, or got creative control over.  I’ve always been a thorough essay writer, but my biggest passion was creative writing, which is why it has become my intended major.  When I was younger I wanted to be a waitress, a major league baseball player, a teacher, a vet, an astronaut… a lot of different things that didn’t pertain to writing.  Yet, here I am attempting to get a creative writing degree. 

Some of you are probably thinking this doesn’t have anything to do with why she started the blog.  I promise, it does.

This past summer before I left for school I was a nanny for Tricia, the widowed mother of two darling boys.  I learned a lot of things that summer, including the fact that I wanted to be able to write like Tricia someday.  She had a blog of her own and I read it every single day.  (Her current blog is The Thoughts and Writings of Tricia Lott Williford.  You should read it, she's going to be an author someday.)  Not once did it cross my mind that I should start my own blog.  Blogging had always been something I was required to do throughout high school, and I found it miserable that entire time. 

The week I was leaving for school my family invited Tricia and the boys over for dinner.  I wanted to be able to spend time with the three of them and my family before I left. 

After the boys and some of my younger siblings left the table, my parents and I began to talk to Tricia about her life and how the writing process for her book had been.  She had ideas for one and was starting to put it into form, and I was extremely curious how everything was going. 

The conversation shifted slightly and I found that Tricia’s next comment pertained directly to me.  “If you want someone to pick you up as a writer someday, you need to be writing every day and they need to see that.  Elisabeth, I highly suggest that you start a blog.” 

If I was going to listen to anyone about such a matter, it was Tricia.  I admired her, and still do, in more ways than I can count.  That night I created No Mercy for Mosquitoes and wrote my first blog post.  I felt silly writing something the whole world could see since I had no idea how anyone would react.  It’s amazing how far I’ve come.  It’s natural.  It’s a habit. 

And I’m writing my hundredth post… wow.  I have 18 followers and will hopefully gain more.  People from more than 30 different countries have read my blog and I have more than 7,000 page views in total.  This had gone way further than I ever thought it would.

I want to keep writing.  (I know that I will.)    

I really hope that I write something long enough to be called a book someday.

So that is why I’m blogging.  It’s practice.  And I love it.  

TOMS: From One to Another

I have a beautiful pair of olive green TOMS.  I’ve had them for more than a year and they’ve served me well.  Except for the fact that I’ve sewn them up numerous times since my big toe always breaks through in both shoes, creating a gaping hole.  I’ve had numerous people tell me that my shoes have holes in them, and I always nod my head and agree.  Yes, yes they do.  Nice of you to notice.

I think I’ve sewn them up at least 3 times and I’ve placed duct-tape on the inside of the shoe to act as reinforcement.  In the end it didn’t help because my toes broke through again.  I reached a point a few weeks ago when I decided that it was about time to get a new pair. 

Picking a new pair of TOMS is one of the hardest choices in the world of apparel, since they all seem to be so darn cute.  I’m not much of a sucker for shoes, but I do love TOMS and would buy every pair if I had enough money.  I sat down at the computer and browed through shoes for about an hour, then I went back the next day and picked a pair and ordered them. 

They were metallic light blue and cream, and I was extremely excited about getting them and wearing for the first time. 

A couple of days later I went back and checked the reviews on the shoes… during the few days since I had bought my shoes several reviews had begun to appear about the shoes being way too big and not fitting correctly.  One of the reviews was titled too long and skinny.  Great.  My feet are short and wide, the exact opposite.

The shoes arrived right on time and I walked down to the mailroom to pick them up.  I walked back to my room and sat the box down, then proceeded to just look at it.  I knew they would be too big and that they wouldn’t fit correctly.

I opened them anyway.

I was right.  Bummer.  Major bummer.  I’m kinda ticked about this.  I showed a couple of my friends the TOMS and put the new size 8s next to my old size 8s.  There was probably a difference of at least an inch in length.  I didn’t understand how in the world that could have happened.

At first I considered sending them back, but I didn’t want to pay for the shipping.  As I sat there and thought about it I decided my best option would probably be trying to sell them to someone at the school.  I posted to a few different group pages on Facebook, advertising the fact I would be more than willing to sell some brand new TOMS to whoever wanted them and fit in them. 

A few of my friends tried them on, and I met up with a girl from another dorm so that she could give them a try.  I can’t begin to imagine how flustered the prince from Cinderella must have been when he was trying to find Cinderella and allowing hundreds of other girls along the way to try on the glass slipper. 

If I was him I probably would have given up.

Suddenly, I had a major Ah-ha moment, which we had ironically been talking about is Psychology that week.  Something sparked in my brain and I picked up the shoes and marched toward the elevator.  I got off on level two and ran to my friend Kendra’s room.  (She and I went to the same high school together.  We were close friends before SPU, and remain so.) 

When I didn’t find her there I ran to the longue at the end of the hallway and was thrilled to see she was there.  “Kendra!  Do you want some TOMS?!” 

She laughed and asked if these were the ones I was trying to get rid of via Facebook.  I sighed and answered yes.  Then I handed her the shoes and said, “I remembered randomly that your feet are probably long and skinny and I guess I just assumed these might fit you really well.”

They did. 

Then, since we’re great friends, the argument about pricing began.  I insisted that she just take them, but she wanted to pay me.  In the end we decided she could pay me about half, if I let her.  I ended up letting her about a week or so later when she knew for sure that she wanted to keep them and had received several compliments on them. 

They were her first pair of TOMS and I had aided in the process of getting them to her.  I was actually rather proud of that fact.  Ironically, looking back on the pair that I picked, they would have looked way better on her from the very beginning.  The colors on them fit wonderfully with her blond and beautiful self, and I was happy that I had bought them.

Guess they were meant for her all along.

Which I’m quite happy about. 

Someday I'll Have a Book

Last night I was reading for my UCOR class.  It was late and I had endured a rather emotionally tiresome day, but I was quickly able to immerse myself into the book and pick up where I left off in the storyline.

Before I knew it I was along the seashore chasing seagulls, admiring the beach houses, and painting.  I was standing in a room walking through sculptures and taking part of an art show.  I was there, or I might as well have been. I had fallen into the pages and become a part of story.

It’s as if the words were coming out of the page and dancing before me.  My imagination has always been this way, which is why I love to read.  Reading a good book is way better than watching a five star movie, that’s simply how I function.

The other day I watched Lord of the Rings for the first time.  So far I’ve only watched the first movie, but I was thrilled to discover that Bilbo Baggins’s home is exactly as I had envisioned it when I read the book.  I love it when the world I read comes alive and is transformed how I see it.  Which is also why it’s hard for me to read a book and watch the movie—it will never match up exactly. 

Anyway, last night I was reading and captivated by the story.  I loved that the author spent the time to create a world that I could step into.

Which made me realize, this is why I want to write.

I want to write so that other people can step inside a world that has been created by me, planned and executed with a certain style, transformed into something beautiful and moving. 

I can’t wait to get to that point.  I simply can’t wait.

However, I’ll have to wait and take general requirements before I get to take all the classes that will count toward my major.  But that’s not going to stop me from writing all the time.  I’ll write no matter what classes I have.   

Someday I’m hoping I’ll have 300 pages of something that people will want to sit down and read from start to finish.

Someday I’ll have a book. 

P.S. One of my best friends just came in a exclaimed, “You’re blogging again! Yay!”  (I feel the same way; it has taken far too long for me to find a captivating idea that I feel compelled to translate into words.  I’m glad I’m back.)  

The Bathroom Wallpaper

I went on a run with one of the girls from my floor this morning and after we returned we decided to stretch before we went inside.  We were talking about our families and telling different stories of the pranks we’ve played on them.

It made me realize that there was one I would really love to share.

It involves my beloved sister Rebecca, who is quite a few years younger than me, and one of my best friends Aubrey who is now hundreds of miles from me.   

My Mom decided when I was in 5^th or 6^th grade that she wanted to redo what we called the “kids” bathroom.  The walls were coated with ugly wallpaper that must have dated back to the 80s.  I can still remember what it looked like, with purple flowers and blue patterns that vertically lined the wall. 

Aubrey and I were in charge of peeling all of the old wallpaper off of the wall so that my Mom could prepare it for the new paint.  My middle brother joined in on the fun and before my Mom said “Go!” we were stripping it off the wall.  It had already been peeling and the task wasn’t too hard. 

However, there were certain spots that wouldn’t budge.  I don’t remember if I went to grab forks from the silverware drawer or if my Mom provided them for us, but I remember having the silver utensil in my hand and using it to scrape pieces off the wall.

10 to 15 minutes into the task my younger sister, who must have been about 6 years old at the time, wandered down the hallway into the bathroom to see what we were doing.

She stood in the doorway in her blue floral patterned dress (she was always wearing a dress during that era of her life), and she asked, “What are you guys doing.”

Aubrey casually answered, “Taking this off because your Mom wanted us to.”

Rebecca looked as if she didn’t believe us.

I can imagine the mischievous grin that spread over my face, and Aubrey’s as well, when we decided to step it up a level and see how far we could push things.

In a sarcastic and impish tone that should have been unknown to an 11 year old I said, “No Rebecca, actually we are destroying the bathroom wallpaper because we feel like it.”

Aubrey added, “Yeah.”

Before either of us knew what was happening, huge tears began to swell in Rebecca’s brown eyes and spill over onto the rest of her face.  She ran back down the hall and down the stairs.

Aubrey and I on the other hand couldn’t stop laughing.  We never stopped to contemplate that we might get in trouble for a teasing lie. 

However, within minutes my Mom marched up the stairs, took our forks away and sent Aubrey home.  Rebecca wasn’t the only one crying after that. 

We tried to tell my Mom, “But we told her the truth before!  We were just teasing!”  She wouldn’t hear any of it and after Aubrey was out the door, I was sent to my room.

I don’t remember who took off the rest of the wallpaper after that.  I assume it was my Mom, but the rest of the details about the bathroom being redone have escaped my memory completely. 

I should have been sorry, but I don’t think I really was. 

In fact, when I called Aubrey to discuss the story with her before I wrote about it we were both laughing all over again. 

Good times.