"Sexy _________"

*insert noun here* 

That was my brother's response to my frantic text asking for advice on Halloween costumes last night. I forgot how, in college, any costume worked, as long as one half of your body was readily visible. Oh, those were the days. Except that I never really did sexy? Not well, anyway. 

Freshman year: as Sarah Palin herself - Miss Alaska 1984. Complete with hatchet and borrowed snowboots.

Sophomore year, nothing. No Halloween. Working at Wawa, you guys - it's not for the faint of heart. They don't let you off work early for anything.


Junior year, apparently I felt like an American flag. In moccasins, after two hours of my feet hurting. 

Last year, I was a cat. A really thrown-together, last minute cat. There are exactly two pictures of me, because I felt ridiculous. 

So obviously, "sexy _______" was never really in the cards, although Sarah Palin got some whistles. I guess freshman year was my Halloween prime?

Tonight will be another last-minute, scrambled Halloween at the apartment. No dance parties or stumbling around til the late hours of the morning for us working stiffs. Just a few people over, lots of candy for the kiddies, possibly a dressed-up baby, and a Funfetti cake. Really, what else is there to life? ;) 

I'm a little sad that A won't be there, but determined to make the best of it anyway. He's working so hard at school and it feels silly to be complaining, but this being an hour away nonsense is really no fun at all. 

What's everyone else doing for Halloween? Anything exciting?

the bracelet.

It's last October. I'm in my room at college, on my bed. I'm pretending to study, but I'm really watching A. He's sitting at the other end of my bed. It's afternoon and light is streaming in the window perfectly the way it always did around 4 pm. My roommate is still in class, and A is perched on top of my pillows, with string taped to my desk, and he's making bracelets.The kind with three colors that you knot around each other. I picked the colors out: white, pink, turquoise. His was turquoise, white, and orange. He loves the Miami dolphins. I remember making fun of him for that.

He made one for himself. He made one for me. It took a while because he wanted them to be perfect. We weren't dating, not yet, but that was the beginning of it, at least for me. I had something physical, something touchable, something his. And he had the other half. No one knew it but us; it was our secret. We both put them on. Tied them for each other. Left hands; matching.

I don't have a picture of that day. I wish I did, but I don't need one. Some moments don't need proof. My memory sees it perfectly. There's the sun and there's A, and he's hunched over the edge of my desk, focusing so intently on making those tiny knots complete. He's wearing that red shirt and those jeans that he always wears, and his Nikes that he'd just gotten. I loved him right there, right then, without reservations.

Yesterday, it finally broke. It fell off in the bathroom, as I was washing my hands, but I didn't notice it until I was back in my office and panicked, running all over the building to try to find it. I backtracked to the bathroom. Found it. I cried.

For the first time in almost 10 months, my wrist feels naked. There will be more; he says he'll make new ones for us. "You'll have to pick out new colors," he says. No other bracelet in the world, no matter how fine, will ever mean half of what that one did to me.

In those tiny threads, those carefully tied knots; in that impossibly small rainbow is us. Is our beginning.

glimpses

My parents always taught me that time is precious. That it should not be wasted. Now that I'm a grown-up in all the legal ways of the word, it's finally hitting me how right they are. Working from 730 to 5 every day doesn't leave much time for doing things that are for me, like being with my family, spending time with friends, or cooking, or photography or reading or painting my toe nails, whatever. It's like, sometimes you know your parents are right but it takes something to actually make it sink in, you know?

Since working full-time I feel like my actual life happens in glimpses, in those precious few hours that are all mine. I got to spend a few hours back at UC with some of my sisters the other night, picnicking on the lawn in front of the library and slapping at mosquitos in the dusk. I haven't been back there since graduation but those few hours made me realize that I will always feel at home there.

And okay, so a good deal of our conversation was about weird stuff, like Ari's new personal trainer and how he looks like the most attractive man ever times a million, and how Eva and I don't like feet (does anyone else call sweat "feet juice?" no? didn't think so), or how Rachel is starting acupunture, which freaked the rest of us out a lot. But that's what sisters are like, really. Telling your weirdest stories and laughing at everyone else's, and for taking weird statue pictures and stuff like that.

I don't get to see my friends nearly as much as I'd like to. I don't get to be around my family much, either. Part of adulthood is realizing that, I guess, and finding ways to appreciate the little times you have with the people who make your world go round. Cause, you know, that's the important stuff.

I graduated college!

listening to: the study edition

Check out that look of intense concentration ... 


It's weird to say that this is the last time that I'll be studying or doing homework. That I'm done as soon as this last assignment is turned in. It seems like life is comprised mostly of lasts right now, and frankly, it's kind of exhausting. 


One thing that's not exhausting? Stereomood.com. I kid you not, it is a lifesaver. Lifesaviour, even. I'm one of those weird people who can't listen to music with words when I study (easily confused, maybe?), so sites like Spotify or Pandora don't cut it for me when I'm getting work done. Stereomood, on the other hand. Now that's a website that does it. Their home page has a whole list of "mood words," like happy, sad, chill, sleepy, etc. I picked "instrumental," even though I'm not sure that's technically a "mood word." It hasn't been disappointing for over an hour now, so it deserves a good review. So go, check it out! Instrumental Mood Music from StereoMood.com


On another note, sorry for the lack of real pictures lately. Yes, I am one of those people who don't consider webcam pictures "real." But my new laptop has a webcam, and frankly, I'm far too lazy with all the work going on right now to dig out my Nikon when I could just push a button instead. 


It's probably a cardinal sin, I'm sure. 

nothing but awesomeness

via

The capstone paper of my nightmares has been turned in, which gives me a heck of a lot more free time than I knew previously existed in this universe. 
Which isn't to say that I'm done with work entirely, but the load is lightened, people.


So, naturally, I went shopping today. And bought nothing but underwear. What is with that? 
There's something about wearing cute underwear that makes the day a little bit better.


Too much, probably ... Sorry. You know what I mean though.


A and I are trying to plan our trip to Virginia this summer, which is not going well. At all. I mean, the trip is going to be amazing. Neither one of us are planners though, so our conversations go a little like this:


Me: So, what kind of place do you want to stay at?
A: Where do you want to stay?
Me: No, I asked where you want to stay?
A: Well, I don't care. 
Me: What about this one?
A: Whatever you want, babe.


Boys. 


He is absolutely adorable though. He's started doing this thing where he'll sneak up behind me, grab me gently around the waist, and tell me, "I absolutely adore you."


Planning kinks or no, I think I'll keep him around for a while. 

on free souls

via

Freshman year of college, I made a really good friend.

Well, nix that. We were friends, yes. But he is muscle-y and hugely intelligent and has an Eastern European accent and a deep love for photography and words, and so of course I was immediately head-over-everything in love obsessed with him. Don't act like you would have done anything less. In hindsight, I was probably kind of creepy about it, actually. Do you ever look back at yourself and cringe? It's been happening with alarming frequency lately.

But anyway, so we were friends, and we would watch movies together and share books and smile in passing on campus, and I thought it was really cool that I had a secret friend who I was hanging out with stalking. As creepy as I make it sound though, it was less of that and more of a friendship where your soul meets someone with a similar kind of soul and immediately recognizes it. But when you're 18, you don't know these things. My friend Julie and I gave him a code name: UKK. As in "UKrainian Kid." Original ... and yet we still use it today. Because while we hung out sophomore year in our film photography class and had lots of deep conversations about what life and death mean and whether Charles Bukowski was right about loneliness, we lost track of each other junior year.

I thought he was abroad in the fall (at least that was his plan), and I was in Scotland in spring, and by the fall of this year I didn't think much about him anymore, except for the occasional facebook stalking or email that I would start to write but never send.

So why all this about my unnamed Ukrainian friend with the incredible abs and awesome accent? Because I rediscovered him this winter. As in, I walked into my International Political Economy capstone and there he was, grinning absurdly. Like it hadn't been a year and a half since we'd seen each other, things have gone right back to normal. Except that I'm not obsessed with him anymore; I don't get those stupid weird butterflies every time I see him. Those are reserved for my best friend and the person I care more deeply about than anyone else. Instead, I get a warm happy feeling of recognition that happens when soul meets soul.

There are a lot of friends that I've been blessed to have during college; some that I will keep in touch with after, and some that I love but probably will not remain in touch with forever. And that's okay, you know? Because the older I get, the more convinced I am that people have a time in your life when they shine brightest, and sometimes the memories of that shining  are what you hold onto, not the person themselves. That's how it goes. And I can count on one hand the number of people whose souls and mine have shone together, and I think that's how it's supposed to be, too.

Free souls are a good thing. We may not see each other every year, or email regularly. That's okay. Because if I've learned one thing about it over the last four years, it's that like soul will always recognize like soul, no matter how much time has passed between meetings. It might even be unexpected, but I know that someday I'll walk into a room and there will be that absurd smile again. And I'm okay waiting for that.

“the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

some things I've learned in the past 24 hours

- Wawa Mac n' Cheese isn't ever nearly as good idea as it seems


- It rarely tastes good re-heated


- If you ask a drunk old man to take a picture of you and your friends at an inaugural ceremony, it will look a little something like this:

(poor guy couldn't find "the viewfinder" ... and now there's beer smell all over my camera from him pressing his face against the screen, trying to see )


- I cannot stay out until 2 am anymore. When did I get so old?


- Even for a guy who hates dancing, a live jazz band and myspace shots are sure to make him smile 

- 90's candy is still the best candy

(please note the long lollypops, rock candy in the background, and button dot candy on paper rolls)


- Drunk professors make the best dance partners.






The End. 

we got all dressed up ...

... for our research presentations yesterday.

Afterwards, we got to shake hands with the president of Ursinus,  Bobby Fong (affectionately known as "BoFo"), who showed up randomly to the presentations (and gave all of us heart palpatations because he actually came to ours), and had lunch with him and some of the others in our research groups.

I got to shake the president's hand .... me. I may never wash it again. Except not, because that's kind of gross.

I was super proud of me and my handsome dude for all the hard work and late nights put into these projects. And doesn't he look good in a tie?

Such a cheese.

Before and After

Despite the $50,000 in tuition costs for this glorious institution I am privileged to attend, there is still no air conditioning being turned on. And so my roommate and I are sitting in our room, both shirtless, in our matching purple bras from Target, drinking copious amounts of water, and - pardon the expression - sweating our balls off. 


I took my friend Katie's graduation pictures today. And my roommate and our friend Jessie came along, and it turned into an extended photo session for all of us.


This is my friend Jessie! My favorite picture of her, before editing and after, via picmonkey. She's just naturally photogenic, so it was a complete joy taking her pictures. 

The before:

And after:

I am so, so grateful for these friends of mine, who let me pursue my creativity and love walking around sun-lit fields barefoot just as much as I do. 

I've never done this before ...

.. but tonight I'm participating in a drag show as a model's coach. 


It's just a small thing, a fundraiser for my sorority's foundation, which helps terminally ill children receive play therapy. We have about 17 guys willing to strut their stuff on stage.


The guy I'm coaching is a friend of A's, so we're already friends, and all day I've been getting frantic texts from him:


"Hey coach! Do I have to paint my nails?" (no)


"Hey coach! What if my dress is too short?" (it won't be)


"Hey coach! Do I really have to do this??" (absolutely, yes you do)


"Hey coach! Is my chest too hairy?" (is this something I should know?)


He's terrified, and it's hilarious (I may have made it sound more threatening than it actually is).


So within the next hour, my little pageant queen will be on the catwalk, terrified, while I stand backstage trying to hold back gales of laughter. 


Pictures to follow. So if hairy guys in short dresses is your thing (I won't judge) ...


Stick around. 

"no, we named the monkey Jack"

Me: I got my first loan disbursement paperwork today.
Roommate: Your lungs? What's wrong with your lungs?
Me: My lungs?
Roommate: You said you got your first lung disbursement today?


It's been a strange day, friends. 


You know, the kind of day where weird things come out of your mouth and you fall asleep twice in the library and wake up to your boyfriend poking you in the nose, quite happily.


The kind of day where you've done so much work that by 8 o'clock all that's left to do is rent the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, even though you know it's going to be absolutely terrible.


The kind of day where you only got four or so hours of sleep because you kept remembering more work you had left to do, and needed to get up at six to get more done, and only slept between strange nightmarish segments that you can't quite place in the morning. 


It must be the bronchitis medication. 


As it turns out, one should go to the doctor early on when they are sick, and not assume that it is only allergies. Listen to your body! 

via

I'm not at all impressed with this movie so far ...


At least one can say that Geoffrey Rush is always a charmer. 


(Except Jack is blonde in this movie? What gives?)

a note to my typically dramatic self

via

I've been thinking about this a lot today.
There are so many things in my life that I thought would be the end.
The end of a life, the end of a relationship, of a friendship, of a chapter in my story, of life as I knew it.
That life afterwards wouldn't be the same, but more importantly, that I would never be able to be as happy as I was before. 


Never. The end. Life after.


They all sound so final, so dramatic, like the flat-lining of a heart monitor. 
But they aren't really, are they? 
Obviously life goes on.


So life after graduation is going to be strange. I'm going to have to get used to another life.  I won't be surrounded by the people I've cared deeply about for four years - at least not on a daily basis. I won't have class or a highly regimented schedule, or easy access to a gym, or student discounts. It will be different. And no, I probably won't like it at first. 


But I will get used to it, and I will love it, and everything will be okay. Even better things are on the way. 

Letters II

Dear senior year, 
Where have you gone? I distinctly remember moving in yesterday, and now we only have 59 days left together until the g-word.


Dear roommate, 
I freaking love you. Thank you for being the best person to live with, for forgiving my early morning grumbling and falling into everything, for taking dorky piano pictures with me every year, for sharing your poptarts with me, and for letting me play with your hair. 

Dear A,
I love you. I love how we can't smile at the same time, and how excited you were about your tie, and that you danced with me even though you hate dancing. 

Dear Mucinex,
You are advertised as making "coughs more productive." I can personally attest that you do in fact perform that function. Instead of just coughing, I sounded like I had a hairball or something equally vile in the middle of the dance floor. Sexy. 


Dear friends and sisters,
You have made my senior year as amazing as I'd hoped it would be. Although every second hasn't been perfect, being with with you has made it the best year yet. 

Dear blisters,
You were worth it.






Love,
Emily

this isn't breaking news or anything

But I'm sort of having a dress crisis. 


My school has this fantastic dance every spring, the whole student body is invited, it's at a fancy hotel in Philly, there are hors d'oervres (or something like that), and the thing is only five bucks. WINNING.


I've convinced A to go, all my best friends are going, I have new shoes to wear ... and no dress.


Well, okay. I have a dress. I have two dresses. But one of them I'm planning on wearing to my sorority's formal next month, and the other is a lot little too short, and slightly boob-tastic. 

I can't be the only person in the world who's had to deal with this.


#first world college problems

thinking green

A and I started watching The Hulk the other night. Not the old version, but the new version (newish?) with Edward Norton.


Holy cheese balls, I love that man. The muscles, the half smile, the side swept hair .... oh, Edward.

Wait, you thought I was talking about A? 


Oops. 


The sad fact of the matter is that when he suggested we watch The Hulk instead of my suggestion (chick flick), I whole-heartedly agreed because I think Edward is the cat's whiskers. 


We didn't get to finish the movie; neither of us can stay up much past midnight on a week day (old people), so tonight I will be reunited with my beloved Edward  cuddling with A (who also happen to be a pretty fantastic hunk of man) and listening to his excited yelling every time something blows up. 


Lucky for me, this happens quite often. 

view of a Monday

Because I'm too lazy to wear big girl clothes today

Downing these suckers like it's my job, since my body decided I should get allergies

for the first time in 22 years

Awesome sauce.

Best at home, non-damaging whitening product I've found yet

I obviously own too much makeup

Note from A in class perfectly describing my current scholarly situation

My body still hurts from all those dance rehearsals and trying dougie like I'm not a white girl on Saturday night, so my workout today is some Pandora dance station and rocking around my room like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Not embarrassing at all.

A likes to leave me notes in my binders, especially when we're sitting next to each other in class. He's done it ever since the fall, before I even really knew him. Every one of them makes me smile, and some make me laugh aloud. He is such a fantastic human being.

Hope everyone's week is off to a grand start!

Choreography

My sisters and I (7th from the left)

My school has a tradition - every spring for the past 29 years, they hold a contest called Airband, where different groups create dances which are then judged in categories: most creative, best costumes, best choreography, best overall, etc.

Over spring break, one of my sisters roped me into joining our sorority's act, which was a Charlie's Angels spin-off. Three angels, bad guys, policemen, a party scene - we had it all. Being a part of the creative process and the physical act of dancing and having so much fun with my sisters, although time consuming, was one the best experiences I've had this semester. We've been practicing pretty much every night for the last two weeks, and last night our hard work paid off!

Waiting to go onstage, being behind the was terrifying. The audience looked huge and the room cavernous. We hadn't anticipated so many people. Everyone was looking pale and complaining of nausea, including myself. I used to take dance lessons, but I haven't been on stage in a long time, so my nerves were fully engaged, every single one of them.  By the time we finished our dance party segment, I realized that my knees were shaking, and I had stopped breathing almost entirely. It felt amazing.

When it was time for the awards to be announced, all of us leaned forward, scarcely breathing in anticipation. Most creative, best costume: both went to other groups. Then the MC announced it: "best choreography goes to ... Tri Sigma!"

 We screamed so loudly, the auditorium was reverberating. Second place! 

Our elation was huge. 

Letters

I've seen this idea floating around in a bunch of different places, and I think it's great. All the little things we should say on a daily basis but don't, for a million different reasons. Why is that, really? Why don't we take the time to say what we really feel? Is is fear, or a polite sense of decorum? There's a thin line between the two, I think. One that I haven't yet learned how to tread. 

Dear weather,
I love you. Thank you for making it spring, so I could go get free Rita's.

Dear A,
I wish I had the words to tell you how special you are to me. You make every day a million times better. Just seeing you makes me smile. I forgive you for hitting me in the face with a football yesterday. And that bug bite that's making your right eye swell shut ... well, you look like a pirate. Just saying.

Dear cleaning lady,
Seriously, what do you do? Because it isn't clean. Our house is just as dirty as when you got here, like, six hours ago.

Dear little,
You light up my life with your persistent joy and constant picture taking. The powers that be knew exactly what they were doing when they put us together. 

Dear professor(s) whose work I've been avoiding all semester,
... Sorry. Please don't hate me. I'm a senior. 

Dear all of my sisters,
You're all crazy. All 55 of us, we have some serious issues. And sometimes those come to a head and things get real messy. But we work through it, and get back to the way things should be, and that goes a long way towards restoring my faith in people. I love you all. 

Dear (biological) brother,
I love that all I have to do is text you one line of lyrics from "Africa" by Toto and we'll text sing the entire song. It was rough for a few years, but you turned out to be a pretty cool kid after all. 


If you were to write a letter to the people in your life, what would you tell them?

catch a grenade for you

And no, I'm not referring to the song.

Yesterday, the entire campus recieved this email at approximately 3 pm:

"During routine maintenance in the basement of an unoccupied campus house, a Facilities Services staff member found a very old grenade.  He alertly followed emergency protocols, and  Police and Fire departments were notified. 

As a precautionary measure, a bomb squad has been called in to safely remove the grenade.  There is no need for alarm nor a call to evacuate campus at this time.  I will be in contact with the Police Chief until the process is complete."

really.

a bomb squad.

There are no unoccupied houses on campus. Our housing directors are turning study rooms into dorm rooms because people need places to live.

It could have been any house.

Heck, it could have been my house.

And um, why a grenade? You don't just buy those things at Target and then forget about them.

Makeup? Brita filters? Coffee Mate? Socks? All yes.

Grenades? Not so much.

The roomie and I were on the floor, laughing hysterically.

This occured less than 24 hours after the incident in which someone set a sponge on fire in a microwave, and no less than eight fire trucks showed up to contain the fire in a dorm hall.

For those of you interested, microwaving is a perfectly normal way to disinfect the common kitchen sponge.

Ten to fifteen seconds is an acceptable time to kill germs.

At four minutes and thirty seconds a sponge will burst into flames.

Just a heads up.

Have a lovely weekend.