Revisiting Italy

I'm in the midst of a multiple-week cleaning and organizing project at my house. During the process, I've uncovered many forgotten gems: senior photos of my high school friends, abandoned craft projects, and an unbelievable amount of disjointed electronic equipment accrued from my father (mostly against my will) over the years.

I also recovered the journal I kept during my two-week trip to Italy with Ryan four years ago. The journal contains a detailed description of everything we ate, saw, and experienced, which I'm grateful for now, having forgotten many of the little details of our trip (but not the bigger ones, including my accidental purchase of $35 worth of cheese, a result of linguistic overconfidence on my part).

Below is a list of reflections and memories I wrote out while waiting in the Milan airport for our plane home:

• Sometimes you just have to pay a little more to sit down for a drink or meal
• The tap water is no good
• Most Italians in the service industry speak enough English to make things happen
  
• Every city is SO different
• There is definitely a more 'international, European' feel in the North
• It's nice that you can travel anywhere by train, bus, etc.
• I got groped on a bus in Rome and almost got robbed in Milan
  
• Probably paid too much for my leather purse in Florence
• I did a surprisingly good job packing
  
• I hate birds!
• Italian towels suck
• The Swiss Guards are seriously funny-looking (what's their story??)
  
• So very many tourists
• Yay for Cultural Week! (free entrance to most museums we visited)
• Incredibly blessed with no late or missed trains, planes, etc.
• I lost weight, despite the copious amounts of pasta, wine and gelato consumed (all that walking!)
  
• Every city except for Milan felt safe
• Loved the tour at the Coliseum (must watch Gladiator!)
• Street artists EVERYWHERE
• I am terrified of trains and planes
• Thank you God for keeping us safe thus far
• I liked the side streets in Rome
• Soccer really is a huge deal here
• I can't believe I drank wine every single night!
• Going to the bathroom is a pain - have to pay everywhere
• There's no such thing as 'a huge cup of coffee'
• Italian breakfast is dumb

I hope and pray I get to return one day. Best diet ever!

Hi-Ho indeed

As I drove home from my Religious Ed on Wednesday night, I felt panic rise in my chest. My spring semester of grad school had finished the night before, ending my twice weekly drives to Clemson (90 miles round trip). I was about to hand in a massive project at work, one which had kept me in stress headaches for weeks. The RE class I was leaving was the last of the year, a year spent with 20+ little monsters of the first grade variety. Despite my often-stressful job and a heavy load of grad school, the one hour a week I spent with those kids was often the most exhausting one of my week. In the end, though, it was worth it. Playing a review game as part of our end-of-the-year party, I was struck by just how much they'd learned throughout the year. Who was our first Pope? What was Jesus' grandma's name? Why did Jesus die for us? They nailed almost every question- and, at the risk of sounding like a braggart, they can now almost pronounce Bishop Guglielmone's last name. ALMOST. I figure I can consider it time well spent if even one kid manages to hang on to the knowledge of God's vast love for him/her and what that means in his/her life.

The panic I felt was of the "what am I going to do now?" variety? I was genuinely anxious when I thought of the free time I was about to have on my hands. What would I do with myself in the absence of writing research papers on Charlie Sheen and figuring out a good craft to do for the second week of Lent?

Turns out my panic was unnecessary. The answer was spending Saturday morning garage saling with Alycia. Cooking in my kitchen. Going to a baseball game downtown. Spending time with John Paul.

Speaking of which, while I recognize the depth to which my prejudice runs, can we not all agree on the cuteness herein?



*I was singing the Snow White working song to him one day, you know- "Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go" and the only part that stuck with him was the "hi-ho". For whatever reason, it cracks me up every time he says it.

Life is good. I have a summer of great friends, beautiful weddings, and LOTS of reading to look forward to.

One More Class to Go This Semester and I am Wearing Thin...

This pretty well describes my experience in grad school thus far.

If You Give My Dad a Can of Rustoleum...

... he's going to want a jar of spot putty to go with it.

It's been a little bit 'If you Give a Mouse a Cookie' around my house this week. My parents are visiting while I'm on spring break from work, and my mom mentioned on the phone to me last week that they were bringing some stuff down to repair a few rust spots on my car. The conversation was something like "Oh we have this stuff, like a rust stopper, and I just thought we could spend a little time and put that stuff on, and then paint over it- you know, it's going to look great or anything, but it will hopefully stop the wheel well from disintegrating as you're driving down the highway one day." Okay, I agreed. That all sounds reasonable enough. Let's do it!

Oh, Karen of a Week Ago. So naive.

As we began to chip away at the relatively small area of rust, it revealed more rust underneath... and above, and to the sides and on and on. Power tools got involved and pretty soon the surface area had doubled, and then quadrupled. Alright, so there was a little MORE rust than we originally thought, but no big deal. We sprayed on the rust stopper and let it dry. In the meantime, my dad and I started watching DIY car repair youtube videos from the 80s, involving a product called Bondo Hair, which looks very much what I imagine would happen if you got an entire jar of peanut butter stuck in your hair. "Hey" said my dad. "This stuff looks better than the poly fiber strands we brought down. Maybe we should check it out at the hardware store." Okay, I agreed. There's an Advanced Auto Parts mere miles from my house. Let's do it!

Oh, Karen of Two Days Ago. So young.

On our way to the store we stopped for gas. While pumping, I was reminded that my windshield had been awfully streaky lately. "Hey dad, I noticed recently that my wipers have some little strings hanging off of them- is that bad?" He lifted one up and started laughing. "Uh, yeah. Those need to be replaced." "Really?" I asked? "How often are you supposed to do that?" He gave me a pointed look. "Every six months or so." I've owned my car for three years. Guess how many times I've replaced the windshield wipers?

So now wipers were on our shopping lists. It was about this time that my dad noticed that part of the casing on one of my back doors had become detached. Now, we can't have that, can we?

What had started as a minor spray-paint job had quickly evolved into an episode of Pimp My Ride, except I was drawing the line at painting lightning bolts down the sides of my car. (I drive a Ford Taurus. The idea of racing stripes doesn't exactly go with the 'roomy interior' and 'sizeable trunk space'.) It took multiple trips to both Advance Auto and Ace Hardware, but eventually we got our act together and would you believe that it actually worked?

Before:

*Not my actual car because we forgot to take a 'before' picture.

And after:

*Also not my actual car, but a spitting image. What can I say, I'm lazy?

Not too shabby, right? Only took eight hours to finish and a minimum of four years off of my life. All that stress makes me really want to go for a cookie. And if I'm going to have a cookie, I might as well pour myself a glass of milk to go with it...

This Post is Off the Heezy

I am the youngest person by a good 15 years at my job, though I know a certain Headmaster's assistant who would swear up and down that she's 29 (a lie). But most of the women I work with are literally old enough to be my mom, and- much like my mom- aren't always totally up to speed on pop culture.

To help in their education, I recently decided to use my God-given gifts to start an 'Urban Word of the Day' email* for some of my less, er, culturally-inclined coworkers. Listed here are a few sayings particularly appropriate to my life.

Work Mouth:

A form of self-censorship practiced at work to avoid offensive or cuss words. Typically includes cuss-replacements you learned from your grandma. Potentially embarrassing if accidentally used outside of work at parties or in the company of your drunk friends. May also be used in the company of grandparents, teachers, preachers, and others who disapprove of cussing.

eg. At a party: -Did you just say fiddlesticks? -Yeah, sorry. I still have my work mouth on.

My mother has had her work mouth on since 1949, I think, though her angry phrase of choice is 'horsefeathers'. I will admit to letting the occasional f bomb fly, but when I'm really mad, when my ire is just at an all time high and I can't take it anymore, I let loose with an 'OH HORSEFEATHERS'. Then people know I mean business.

Hangry:
When you are so hungry that your lack of food causes you to become angry, frustrated or both.

Many of the women in my office joined Weight Watchers at the start of the new year, and let me tell you- most of them have been hangry since January 1. It is not a pretty sight, and I face death glares every time I pop a bag of popcorn with lunch.

Premake:
The original version of a song that another band has made a remake of, often used in a sarcastic manner.

eg -Whoa, is that Journey singing 'Don't Stop Believin'? -Yeah, it's a premake of the Glee song.

This reminds me of dear Hannah, who likes to say that foods remind her of a food flavored that way- like "Wow! This banana tastes just like banana-flavored runts!" Same concept applies here- often the things which come later surpass their humble beginnings. And true story- when I hear Phil Collins singing 'True Colors' on the radio, I can't help but sigh and wish for the Glee rendition instead.

Social Terrorism**
When someone you know comes to visit unexpectedly and inconveniently, often staying for a long time, and you can't tell them to leave without being rude.

This... is my biggest fear in life. Forget actual terrorism- I am more scared of being cornered at a party by a random acquaintance, thereby being forced into MINUTES of painful small talk, than I am of a suicide bomber targeting my city. You know how they say that we can't let fear stop us from flying in airplanes or riding the subway or what have you, because then the terrorists have won? Well the social terrorists have won, my friends. I AM AFRAID.

I duck out the side door at church, I arrive at class exactly on time and leave the moment we're dismissed, and I hide in the kitchen at work events, under the guise of helping the caterer. It's become exponentially worse since I started working at a school, and have gotten to know more and more people in the community, which translates into more and more people to avoid at the grocery store.

So to any potential 2012 presidential candidates: if you want my support, let's talk about the REAL issues affecting our country, and finally declare war on Social Terrorism.

*All definitions provided by UrbanDictionary.com
** The best depiction of social terrorism that I've ever seen comes from here.

A Smattering of Adventures

As one can imagine, quite a few things transpired during my year-long absence from the interweb, which I will make note of as I think of them. Here's a random selection.

Last summer, I made a birthday cake for my sweet godson on the occasion of his first birthday, celebrated with a Curious George themed party. I was deliriously happy with the final product- I so lack any fiber of craftiness, that any creative victory, in my mind, is tantamount to producing the Mona Lisa. I can't even fake humility about it - I was all "LOOK AT MY CAKE. LOOK AT IT. IT'S LIKE WE'RE ON AN EPISODE OF CAKE BOSS OR SOMETHING".

Of course, what you can't see in this picture is the prep required for such an outcome.You can ask my sweet, patient roommates at the time: DISASTER IN THE KITCHEN. Seriously. I baked no less than 9 cakes to make that big yellow hat happen, and by the time the whole thing was over, it was like a frosting bomb went off in our kitchen and left no survivors. Not to mention that the assembling of the cake was a rather unsavory process that I'm grateful none of the cake-eaters were around to witness. There was a fair amount of 'smooshing' - that is, shoving bits of cake into holes. I mean, I washed my hands beforehand, but still, it wasn't pretty.

In August, we began the new school year. Our first crisis came on Orientation Day. The day before school started. Bodes well, doesn't it? Our Director of Student Life was out of the country at a conference and understandably, missed taking care of a few details. Like arranging for brunch for the 100+ new students and their parents who were coming in.

When we discovered this at 8 am the morning of, alerted by our panicked headmaster, my new boss, only there for less than a week, was sent to the closest grocery store for muffins and donuts, while I was charged with coffee duty. We don't have a kitchen in the school, and the only coffeemaker is located in the faculty break room, several long hallways and a staircase away from the cafeteria. On a day when we are expected to put our best foot forward, making new students feel welcome, and setting their anxious parents at ease, I found myself repeatedly speedwalking through the crowded halls with an open steaming pot of coffee in each hand, smiling reassuringly at newcomers, as though this was standard fare, an integral part of a truly Catholic education. While not one of our finest moments, it is certainly representative of what I live there, day in and day out- and why I love it so.

And lastly, New Year's 2010. Through a somewhat random processing of events, I found myself going to Florida for the New Year, after ten wonderful days at home in Michigan, during which I did very little besides eat, sleep, and shop. Truly- most days, I got up, ate a light brunch, read/watched tv/shopped, then cooked for the fam all afternoon, eating a heavy appetizer in late afternoon while doing a puzzle or playing a game, and dinner with wine in the evening. It's all a big blur of cream cheese and booze now.


I digress. My preferred Road Dawg Courtney and I decided we would make the drive from Michigan to Florida, in one day no less, and so we set out at 5 in the morning, arriving in St. Petersburg a mere eighteen and a half hours later. We joined two more friends there and spent the next few days cooking meals in our rented condo, trying to suntan, and going out on the town. Oh, and making tandem bike adventures around the islands. It was a really fun city, though I couldn't help thinking that we were driving around on a glorified sandbar and bound to sink at any moment. But we didn't, and I lived to tell the tale.

My, oh my, oh my. Hello there, blog. I remember you. I nearly didn't, and then I spent the past twenty minutes re-reading my life in 2009.

I haven't posted in more than a year, and since I'm guessing that my parents have long since stopped checking to see if I've updated, it's a safe bet that no one is even reading this, but I was thinking I should get back into the groove of blogging. It's nice to have a record of the things that go on in your life- especially the little memories. It's easy to remember flying home to surprise my mom two summers ago, but harder to remember reading the book Drunk aloud with friends at Borders on a Friday night.

It's almost comical how much has changed since I last posted, but it is the genesis for my absence. Last March, I was offered a job at a Catholic school here in town, a school I loved for a thousand reasons long before I even first set foot in it. From their mission to their staff to their curriculum, it's like a less homeschooled Hillsdale who pledges allegiance to the Pope. Not hard to see why I was sold.

I spent the week before I started there in Indianapolis, Chicago and Michigan, and while sitting in Patrick and Margaret's Lincoln Park apartment on a Tuesday night, I received an email informing me that I'd been accepted to Clemson's graduate program for school counseling. And so it began.

My seventh day of work at my new job, the headmaster called me into his office. The look of doom on his assistant's face should have tipped me off that not all was well, but like a chump, I assumed the big boss was just checking in to see how my first week went. And when he started out with "I'm not sure how to say this..." my naturally guilty mind immediately thought "oh no- they found out that I checked my personal email during work hours yesterday. It was just gmail, not like I was cruising the personal ads on Craigslist! But they must be really strict here..." So wrapped up in my Catholic guilt was I, that I nearly missed big boss telling me that my immediate boss had been let go the night before. The one I was hired to directly support. Ummm.

I didn't say much except for "okay" and nod my head repeatedly- a response that has gained me a certain amount of infamy in the time since. I guess you don't know what to expect when you give someone news like that, and you prepare for the worst, so the fact that I didn't run screaming from the room instantly gave me some street cred (or the Catholic school equivalent of it).

From that point on, things ramped up very quickly. Two days later, I threw my first event for 70 of our highest-level donors, feeling very much like I was inhabiting someone else's body the whole time. I was, to use the term loosely, promoted almost immediately, and my stress level consequently jumped about 9000 percent. While I loved everything about the school I worked for- the education we provided, the people I worked with, the perks (like half-days all summer long, and wicked awesome vacation time), in my first two months there, I began to experience headaches so bad that I finally went to a doctor and told him, through tears and sniffles, that I was certain I had a brain tumor, because I hurt every day, all the time. My doctor, to his credit, tried not to laugh, and instead ran tests, finally assuring me that I was neurologically sound and based on the events that had recently transpired in my life, my choices were a) anxiety medication, b) therapy or c) waiting it out. Guess which one this anti-drug introvert chose?

So that's the job. It's much calmer now, and the headaches are gone, for the most part, thanks largely to a newfound commitment to working out. I do love it, and everything else that has come in this new phase of life. Well, perhaps not everything- there are moments when I'm sitting in class, discussing Charlie Sheen's psychological issues, when I experience a bit of nostalgia for my calm life of a year ago, but those are stories for another post.