e-mail from mom to the family. I believe family tells a lot about a person.

Let's plan our Christmas baking day for Dec. 24 - all day. If there are
requests for cookies, cakes, desserts, etc. that will require special
ingredients, such as nuts, candied cherries, dried apricots, jellies,
jams, brown sugar, powdered sugar, let me know by early next week. We
can try some new recipes if you want.

Dad can use this day to put tinsel on the tree and keep the Christmas
CDs going, as well as watch the oven timer and load the dishwasher. ; )
Addie, Rose, and Libby can help lick bowls. I'm not sure what Jake will
want to do, probably go in and out to check the weather.

Love,
Mom

a conversation between a local hipster clerk at thrift store and me as I was checking out:

me: can you judge someone's personality by the type of clothes they buy?
he: yes, to a certain extent. Would you like me to give you a reading?
me: yeah, sure.
(pause pause pause. silence, except for cash register ringing)
he: you have an eye for patterns and textures. You are aware of vintage and aren't stingy. You go to Mizzou and do relatively well in school. You have a fairly worthwhile major that will probably get you a reasonable job.
me: why do you say that I do well in school?
he: you have your priorities straight because you don't spend too much time choosing ridiculous clothes. You choose comfort over choosing something for the sake of its ridiculousness. But you still make an effort not to look like everyone else.


who knew a hipster knew so much?

good news for people who love good news

bad news: I stepped on the shirt of my interview outift when it fell off the hanger as I was walking
good news: I didn't end up doing the interview anyway, so she did not see that I was wearing a footprint

bad news: my dad cut off his finger
good news: the nice doctors and nurses sewed it back on

bad news: I'm receiving an imcomplete in one of my course
good news: I no longer need to study for the GRE, so can complete the course work during the time I would have been brushing up on my vocab and maths.

bad news: sometimes when I blow my nose, both ears pop, and I feel dizzy
good news: this is perhaps the least sick I have felt all semester

good news: this is going to be a great Christmas
good news: I have learned a great deal in the past months, and I do love to learn
good news: I am snowboarding for new years
good news: I get a new bed next week
good news: Mizzou is no. 1
bad news: I'm still not sure what I am going to do with my life

I wonder if

I am using facebook scrabble as a means to escape the more pressing and important things in my life. Probably.

I like libraries

There is no point to this post. I just have to sing my praise for libraries. Bored? Stop reading now.

I spent a lot of time growing up at the library. I can picture in my mind exactly where the Baby-sitters Club series was located at the Riverside Public Library. I remember where the romance paperbacks were, too: basement, in the back, black wire racks. I never read one, but the cover art of orgasming half-undressed Victorian-era characters may have perhaps been my first exposure to sex.

The bibliothèque in Lyon was a place where I could feel at home. Part-Dieu it was called. It was good to find a place to feel at home in a scary foreign country. It wasn't particularly welcoming. In fact the library was quite ugly. But the music section always had something good playing. I spent a lot of time flipping through the racks, trying to select which four albums I would take for that day, with maybe The Velvet Underground as my soundtrack.

The Lemont library sucks. I am not talking about it.

The Chicago library gave me Harry Potter. Spend $35 I don't have on Deathly Hallows? I think not. The main branch ordered 100 copies, no holds allowed. The morning the book was released, Amy and I went to the library and checked out one copy each. I remember she was incredibly bitchy on the way home because I got caught up talking to the reference librarian about the amazing things you can do with research these days.

This appreciation for libraries brought to you after some time spent at Daniel Boone Regional Library. Books, CDs, DVDs… yummmm. No late fees? Yes. Lakota coffee in the library. Hold placed on entire series of Planet Earth. Hope it gets here before Thanksgiving. Oh Thanksgiving. Love, you man.

this happened last wednesday

The sun had just risen, and it was drizzling. I was riding my bike to meet Kelly for a run. A few of Columbia's homeless addicts were standing together in a parking lot, mesmerized by a rainbow. It seemed to be a very childish scence, because they were amazed by something so simple. A few minutes later, as we took the first few steps of our run, Kelly noticed the rainbow, too. It was a great rainbow, spanning across the whole sky. It was a good start to the run.

About 30 minutes later, it started raining, and I couldn't keep my glasses clean of rain quickly enough. A few minutes after that, it started pouring, and I was screwed.

I was thinking about starting a food blog,

for these reasons. I like to eat food. I like to make food. I hate spending money on food when I go out to eat. I always resort to the same recipes, and for some reason I feel that a blog about food would force me to be more creative in my cooking. I don't know why, because I don't know who would read it. But then again, I don't know who reads this one.

Anyways, it would be great! I could call it something spectacular like… Betsy's Kitschy Kitch. It would be all about my adventures in the kitchen. How more worthwhile could this project get? I don't believe there is an answer to that question.

Tonight's dinner proposed a problem, however. I burned my grilled cheese sammich and the soup I ate wasn't anything to tell mom about. I'm not even that good of a cook.

it's a new week!

AND the radiohead album comes out in two days. Also, I don't hate puppies. Check out this adorable puppy picture I took over the weekend:

This is what happens when I decide to work 30+ hours in one mon-fri span:

Stressed. There are not enough hours in the day to do the things I need to do: study, write, run, go to the grocery story, interview, eat, shower, sleep. Thus, there is no chance of time to do the things I want to do: laugh, have nice dreams, clean my room, read, send mail, journal, have friends.

I start to hate people who are not as stressed as I am. I hate my sister for going to Vegas. I hate my friends who go out on Thursday. I hate people eating burritos outside Chipotle. I hate puppies. Now I am filled not only with stress, but hate. Add little sleep and general grumpiness mood.

I feel gross. I haven't done any running except between class/work/interviews/class/work. I haven't taken a shower since… I forget. I am driving myself into coldsoredom.

I wake up after six hours of sleep this morning, all thanks to my redank schedule and I hate my life. I hate that I have to do two interviews back-to-back, I hate the journalism school and I even hate all the music on my "Greatest Songs in the World" itunes playlist. I hate happy people.

And what is the point of all of this? Basically, I need to never do this again. Is all the money I made this week worth it? Maybe later, but not now. Definitely not now. I cannot do this to myself. This will be a constant reminder of how to rank priorities. Certain things are more important than I originally thought. Like being happy. Like taking showers.

Yesterday:

As I exhaustedly collapsed onto bed last night, I thought about what a day of extremes it had been.

Before I left for work at preschool, I was in the worst of moods. Too much to do, too much work, too much school. Too many assignments, too litle time to do them all. And when am I going to have time to train for a marathon in all of this? I was stressed to the maximum.

Then, preschool. I completely forgot about everything. The kids are so simple and so real. We ate Jello for snack, and did you know four-year-olds eating Jello is adorable? When I finished school, I was worry free. Sure, I still had all that stuff to worry about, but meh… it's really not a big deal. I had 45 minutes to cram in some Foucault, and then I ran over to babysit the most adorable kids ever. I ran around like a crazy and almost melted when Jackson screamed "J'AI UN DRAGON!" (I am a dragon). I was happy happy happy.

Then, home to get some reading done and write a paper before sleep. I got distracted and did some writing for a different class because I felt like writing something. Suddenly, I started writing this really personal thing about my grandpa and became really upset and started to cry. I cried until the last word and gathered myself together to finish my homework so I could finally sleep.

And, like I said, I was exhausted once I finally got there. I feel like I felt too many things in one day. That's okay though. I am the toughest person I know. ha, that was a joke.

in case you didn't know me, I am a very judgemental

The other night, which may or may not have been last night because the whole week has had no specifics for me, some kids I know left Lakota to go watch the OC. I was all hunched over studying and thought to myself mean things about these people. Seriously guys. The OC? Why don't you go read some Kant or something of the sort and spend your time in a worthwhile fashion? Then I forgot about it and continued crafting complex-compound sentences.

Tonight, I spent a worthless hour watching The Office, and it was brilliant. And I hated myself for hating the OC-watchers. Because the non-depth of it completely took my mind of ELT I have been concerned about lately. I am now refreshed to read John Locke with a cheerful mind.

I seem to consistently attract creeps. That's all I'm saying.

Found

I was cleaning up my desktop and found this paragraph I transcribed from a This American Life episode. I can't remember which one it was. But it goes like this:

I think most of us are like that, like Phillip Dick or Ellery’s father. Most of us are toiling away at daily work that doesn’t seem as important to us as the ambitious dreams we have for ourselves. We’re convinced that we’re not living up to our potential, that there’s a better part of our ourselves that just hasn’t expressed itself yet. Until our daily lives are over and what’s left is that daily work. Whatever it is. Whatever we gave it.

Remember when?

Today is September 11, 2007. Did you remember? I feel sad mostly. I have a great deal of work to finish, but I'm not quite in the mood.

To quote a simple song titled Colours by Donovan "Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking."

Today I biked beside a butterfly for about five seconds. It was the best five seconds of my day. I felt as though the butterfly and I were friends, running out a race we had bet against each other, the winner gets a lollipop. But there are probably two lollipops, so it didn't really matter who won anyway.

deux things:

1. I wonder why it is socially normal for boys to have short hair and girls to have long hair. What a strange world it would be if most boys had long hair and most girls had short.
2. I like when my room is a little messy. Maybe the heaps of clothes is a little over the top, but I do like a little disorder. That makes it feel like home.

tonight I am looking at POY Winner's Gallery while eating dinner. And I am listening to Sky Blue Sky, as a whole, one of Wilco's more somber albums I think. These pictures are sad.

I wonder why I don't have eloquent enough words to describe the feeling that makes me not want to finish my Garlic Herb Chicken with Egg Noodles. Haven't I been to three years of journalism school? I start eating the noodles one by one with my fingers, feeling this is somehow the right thing to do. I force myself to read the captions even though they hurt my little heart. Sometimes I wonder about the shallow and mean things I have done to people and wonder if I cannot feel feelings. But right now, I think this is not true.

I am a happy person. But there are things that make me sad.

For my Ginger Ale Friend (we know orange is better)

I am really glad I started running again. Even though getting back in shape is consistently one of the most painful things I put myself through, I forgive myself. There is something to this.

Now go listen to "It's All Gonna Break" by Broken Social Scene.

Changes. (you know. like the 2pac song. or the david bowie song. whatevs.)

So summer in the city is officially over as I am leaving in the a.m. to drive to Columbia, MO. Thus, I feel I should say something insightful about this next change in my life. But I have no insight here.

I can only think about the recurring memory of speeding north up I-55 towards the distant Sears' Tower, cranking some phat beats (most likely a mix cd a friend made me), and making air waves with my hand in the 70 mph wind. This is a good feeling, and a nice thing to remember.

And, that is all. Next post to come from the Show Me State. What does that even mean? Beats me, it's not my state. Represent, Land of Lincoln.

I have been very into reading memoirs lately. And I would be lying if I told you I don't know why. The reason I read these witty likely-enough stories of well known contemporary authors is because a) they are entertaining and b) they make me feel better about my sad excuse for a summer job. Steven King once shoved dirty sheets into a industrial strength washing machine to make money. David Sedaris carried boxes of books up and down flights of new york apartment stairs. Sarah Vowell was a temp for 13 months while crashing on her married friends' fold out couch. And look at where these people are now!

I don't intend to be a famous contemporary American author. All I'm saying is that these stories help drive home the fact that even though I hate my job, it pays well and I'm only 20. Also, I realize that living with my parents isn't too horrible 100% of 40% of the time.

I mean Augusten Burroughs, my god. Even if the whole book is lies, the life portrayed is raw and makes me appreciative. His mom encourages him to fake suicide so she can have some peace and quiet. My mom says "how many meatballs do you want?" I say four or five and ask her if she can fix the straps on my dress, I would like to wear it to Amanda's party on Friday. "Just run upstairs and grab stome straight pins," she says. "I only need a couple."