My mom paid 25 bucks for the school to find out I have a cat

So back during Diwali, I got a kitten. Her name is Matilda. Here is her the night we got her, making friends with Edmund the Roommate.



As I type this, I can hear her out in the living room trying to rip his leg off. Boy do they grow up fast.

There's a small catch to having a kitten, though, here in our crap house. It's owned by the University and pets aren't allowed. We've implemented this thing called Matilda drills. When the doorbell rings, Rachel locks Matilda in our room, I hide all the cat toys, Eddie slides her food dishes under the counter, and Fabian, who has the best poker face, answers the door. If the coast is clear, we let her out. Otherwise, I occupy the bathroom with the litter box for however long the RCC/maintenance guy/quarter collector is here. Guess which one of us has the worst poker face.

So when our toilet broke and we realized we would need to call maintenance, we were pretty sure we could keep Matilda under wraps. They said they would come out the next day. That morning, I was taking the garbage out when I saw him--the maintenance man--going to the door.

AHHHH! Matilda was in our living room, frolicking happily! He asked me if he could go in. AHHHH. There is a reason I do not play poker.

"Um. No."

"I mean, I can come back later."

"Um. The toilet isn't clean."

"Well, we clean the toilets when we fix them."

"NO, I mean it's not. Clean."

"Oh," he said. "Well...I can come back in twenty minutes."

Being a college student, he probably thought I had to hide my drugs and skull bong. Okay. Let him think that. As long as he wasn't coming back for twenty minutes. I ran back into the house.

"Guys, guys, Matilda drill, Matilda drill!"

We hid everything at the speed of light, including dragging the litterbox into our room, then I left for work. I didn't get back that day until four thirty. When I walked in the door, Matilda was out in the living room again, and everyone was sitting in their usual spots, only they all seemed a little mad when I walked in.

"Did they fix the toilet?"

"Yes."

"Boy, you all are cheerful today. Where's my welcome home? Where's my how was your day? I slave away for you three and all I get in thanks is zip. Nada. The occasional agreement to feed my cat when I'm out, which we all know is only because you like her more than you like me. What did the maintenance guy say, by the way?"

"He said don't flush any more cat litter."

ZOINK.

So, after winter break when my roommate brought Matilda back from Portland, I had a Dumb and thought the new litter was flushable. What? Our old litter was flushable. I flushed exactly ONE clump of urine soaked litter before I thought, "Hmm, actually that didn't go over as well as I thought it would." I have not flushed a single ounce of litter since, but apparently it was hiding in the S Bend or T bend or the pipe or something waiting to exact a grainy, stinky revenge.

So what happened, you ask? Well the maintenance guy didn't seem to care. Those darling housemates of mine aren't letting me live it down though. Every time I carry something somewhere they remind me not to flush it. This includes oranges, books, and my drawing pad. Thanks guys.

I don't know how to end this, so here's another picture of Matilda.

The Christmas Blog, In Which I Give My Opinions on Various Yuletide Details

On Christmas music:

It starts on the radio a few days before Thanksgiving, and since my parents listen to country music, for almost a whole month my ears are inundated with aural manure. Let me give you this lyric example:

Christmas in the Northwest is a gift that we can share/Christmas in the Northwest is a child's answered prayer/Something Something Something, Something Something Something/Christmas in the Northwest is a gift God wrapped in green.

Hm, I can't remember the last time I decided to share weather or holidays with somebody. It kind of just happens. Believe me, if I could, I would put all the sunshine and hailstorms and Diwalis in a box and selfishly hide them in my closet. No Halloween for chu! Then I'd sit at my computer in my Sailor Moon costume and browse the Internet every October, for no real reason. Every Independence Day I'd get arrested. The line that really gets me, though is the one about the child's answered prayer. Gu-huh what? I was born and raised in the Northwest, and if I ever prayed for a grey sky, perpetual rain, squishy lawns, grody-looking cars and houses from all the mud, and still, somehow, a need for gloves, earmuffs, and other snow trappings, DESPITE THE LACK OF SNOW, may I be struck off this earth.

Oh, look. Still here.

I could do a whole blog on crappy contemporary Christmas songs, but I can't bear to think about them.

Why College is Hard

College is hard because everything that can go wrong will definitely go wrong. La la la, you say to yourself as you skip past Todd field on your way to work. Bam! You twist your ankle! Tweedle dee dee, you hum as you walk out of the exam you just finished early. Bam! When you come home the professor has sent you an email assigning everyone a thousand page paper! Dum tiddly dum, you twiddle your thumbs, only to find that the innocent cough your housemate had over breakfast was not, in fact, the result of a miscalculated sip of orange juice, but instead horrific pestilence, and you and the rest of the House sits in the living room wrapped in blankets, passing around a bag of cough drops. We blow our noses in harmonic unison.

College is hard because everybody lives together in tiny houses, and gets sick at the same time, and everyone also has to turn in giant projects and papers for every class at once, while being sick. Last year I had a professor who told me that the reason people go to college in their late teens and early twenties is because they are young and resilient and capable of pulling all-nighters. I guess so, but I'll say this: if I have to pay the government back for this college education, somebody better pay me back in hours of sleep.

Tonight I went to Shari's for dinner with Rachel. We were eating when suddenly we realized we were five minutes from missing our bus back. We threw money down on the table and high-tailed it out of there, me clutching my biscuit and munching as I ran down Union. We barely made it onto the bus, giggled the whole way home, and when we stepped off at our stop, lightfooted and cheerful, another biscuit in my pocket, I was struck by an odd feeling. What is this? I thought. Oh. It was carefree jolliness.

Wait, what? How did I not recognize freedom from worry? Am I some kind of wrinkly radioactive worry monster? What are the future implications for my nonsense-free life? And now, as I worry about this, is all my non-worry going to be tainted by worrying about the fact that I noticed I wasn't worrying about anything?

I am sorry to report that although Rachel and I kept our fish going for a solid ten months, Gabriel and Dr. Vanilla Ice both went to the big rice paddy in the sky last week. ¡Que lastima! But in a way this can be good. It opens us up in the event that we are able to acquire a rat or maybe a kitten. A kitten named Baxter!

I can't really explain why I get so hung up on the name of a pet, but I can say this: I love animals with people names. I've had birds, fish, cats, dogs, and for a brief while I had a snake, all with people names. Why people names? I don't know, maybe because if you think an asinine name like Spot is clever, you need your lobotomy reversed. Or maybe because I am more inclined to like an animal with a person name. Just like I am more inclined to like a person with a person name.

Although I can see myself becoming great friends with a homeless man named Pepper.

Wade, my handsome boyfriend, wants to get a kitten with me even though we don't live together. I told him I certainly wasn't going to raise a kitten as a single mother. It takes a village to raise a child, and since kittens are basically infants with claws and motor skills, I'm sure my household as a team can handle it, but I certainly can't. Besides, one day I'd have to sit my kitten down and say, "Baxter, you have a father." And then the poor kitten would just be confused. Not to mention I'm hoping I can make it to my death without having to sit ANYTHING in my care down and tell it it has an estranged father.

In any case, I should really go to bed before I construct an elaborate scenario that will eventually incorporate pirates, as I am wont to do when weary. Good night, foolish readers.

Jazzzzzzzz Dance!

I signed up for a jazz dance class this semester. Why? Probably due to some kind of cranial injury. I hit my head on the pipe in my dorm room last year while I was signing up for classes and all the brain cells that knew I am not a good dancer were killed off, and the next thing I knew, I was running across the dance room with my knees bent. I'm pretty sure this is how wars start--one minute you're like, "Eh, I could take a dance class. Try something new." and the next you've got a machine gun in one hand and the steering wheel to a tank in another.

You guys might not know this about me, but I am not a good dancer (I actually said that in the last paragraph. So you should have known, and if you didn't I am now calling you out for skimming). My legs are kind of like Maria in the Sound of Music--adorable and short-haired. The rest of my body is like the nunnery, staring sadly at my legs going in the wrong direction while wondering how it got stuck with this. My ankles actually knock together when I run, which explains the clicking sound that always seems to follow me everywhere. I also have very poor balance when called upon to use it suddenly. Give me a few minutes to think and I can stand on one foot, but shout it at me in a hot, sweaty dance room when I'm trying to also remember to bend my knees and smile, and I'm lost. Not to mention, I am supervain. You guys might not realize this about me but I am so vain that occasionally I forget a step because--get this--I was admiring how great my hair looks today.

What? It does look great.

The worst part about the class is that I didn't realize I hated to dance until after the drop date. Actually, that's not the worst worst part. The WORST part about the class is that I had to audit it so that I could also be in choir, and I audited it before I realized I hated to dance. True, I could just stop showing up. There's no grade. And yet, auditing a class is supposed to imply that you REALLY WANT TO DO IT. So badly it hurts. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind if I just stopped coming, because, let's be frank here, it's been five weeks and I still look like an idiot. But what kind of person is like HURR I WILL JUST AUDIT THIS CLASS and then doesn't show up? Why even bother auditing then?

So I have to learn to dance, there's no getting around it. Maybe I can utilize my amazing skills to finally make some friends--I've heard those are good. In case you're wondering if I'm referring to amazing skills or friends, I am talking about both.

You're handsome/beautiful/fun personality. Readers, I love you more than I love corgis. Have a good day.

Emily Does Show Biz!

For those of you who do not pay attention, my long-term career goal is to become an archivist or librarian. If you didn't know about that, seriously, are you even listening? Libraries are all I talk about.

Anyway, last year I had a work-study job shelving books, a job I also held in my hometown library. I have to clarify here: I love libraries but I hate shelving, partially from overexposure, but partially because shelvers are the peons of the library world. When your child smears his poop all over Horton Hears a Who, shelvers clean it up. When you wander into the library with a three-day old beard and fall asleep on one of the couches, shelvers wake you up when the library is closing. Not to mention art books and oversize books are regularly hoisted by our skinny, malnourished college arms. I thought, after a solid four years of shelving books, my passion for Information Technology could be utilized better elsewhere in the library. Enter the Archives job, a mythical position I heard about from everybody except the people who could actually hook me up--the Career and Employment people and the head of the library. No matter! I said to myself joyfully. I will probably land that job by virtue of interest and not actually need to exert myself anymore.

WRONG-O. James, the nice man that had to give me some disappointing news in Career and Employment Services, completely shut me down on the archives thing.

It went like this:

ME: Are there any positions open in the--?
JAMES: No.
ME: I was going to say ar--
JAMES: Definitely not.
ME: Archi-
JAMES: I don't think that will work this year.
ME: ARCHIVES!!
JAMES: I'm referring you to the costume shop in the theater department. Do you know how to sew?

Before you pity me and feel disappointed that I didn't get into the archives, think for a minute. I'm a costume stitcher in the theater department. I sew clothes. They are paying me ten bucks an hour to do a job that half-blind children do in third-world countries for ten cents a day. Yeah boy! No, I don't really know how to sew. But hello, the position title is costume STITCHER. Not costume SEWER. Besides, I'm sure they'll train me. They said they would...so if they don't I'll be stuck putting labels on boxes of fabric scraps when showtime rolls around, and won't they be sorry that they don't have an extra pair of hands when all of their chorus girls suddenly pick up the Freshman Five Hundred and need their costumes let out.

Anyway, this new and foreign job will be an adventurous experience, no doubt. Organizing tunics and clerical robes sounds delightful! Cutting up yards of fabric sounds delightful! Sneezing in the costume shop and being attacked by the ghost sounds like a blast! Bobbins ho!

Emily Does Civilization

I have found the transition from my cave-like basement dorm to my cinder block house an easy one. They share enough qualities--claustrophobic rooms, musty smell, spiders--that I don't feel completely out of my element.

The house is pretty sweet though, I have to say. We have a KITCHEN. I am cooking! Kind of. Campus is right across the street but I still feel like this year I'm going to be more isolated--I only have to go on campus for classes and occasionally to use the library, so instead of campus being home, the house is home. This seems weird on the face but when you consider that pre-college, school was school and house was house, you realize this is just a regression to that.