June Jollies

JUNE.

In seven days, it will be precisely one month since I graduated. This is both delightful and vomit-a-trocious.

For Memorial Day weekend, one of my best friends (Hilary/Hil/YEE/Agnes) invited me to come take her sweet younger sister Karla to Camp Seafarer, and then hop a ferry to Beaufort and drive to Atlantic Beach. Before she even finished her sentence, I was packed.

I love the ocean. As in "love" cannot even encompass how much I adore the beach. I always feel the greatest sense of peace when I'm there, as if time just stops. And I've always sworn up and down that the day I have enough money, I will buy a place on the coast. And just as I expected, Beaufort was charming and just lovely. We ate lunch at Beaufort Grocery (sadly we had a really prissy waiter man named James, so I pretended to be a food critic and made him uneasy), visited the Sanitary Restaurant where I purchased a burnt orange shirt, and fiiinally drove to the beach. Atlantic Beach let me relax and check out for a couple of hours. It was absolutely gorgeous out...not a cloud in the sky, warm water, and a bright, tan-inducing sun. And hanging out with Hilary is always an adventure and conversation never runs dry. I am just plain old lucky.

One of my other sweet, sweet bests, Espanol teacher extraordinaire, Kellie, and another friend, Mandi were tweeting the other night and I caught a couple of their tweets. Kellie had the brilliant idea to turn June into "No Junk June" and clean house, mind, and body. Frankly, I am in love with said idea. While I am about to have an adventure with MK Cranny-Cran to Goodwill to get rid of a ton of clothing (Goodwill's about to hit the motherload...), it got me thinking. One of my biggest downfalls will be sweets. I mean, I love fruit. I will eat seriously any vegetable. But when it comes to chocolate, toffee, anything sweet, really, I cave. Can't help it. Summers have always been marked by a once-every-other-day trip to Henry's Gelato or late-night Goodberry's or Whole Foods to retrieve my ginger molasses cookie (always take the middle one in the glass case, they're the softest). Fine, Confessional Moment: I actually do have a royal title. I am Queen of Stress Eating. Proof: I sent my resume to a school in Los Angeles and promptly had cupcakes with Sheryl after. My grandmother asked why I didn't like the idea of nursing school (answer: I hate blood and bodily functions and will probably drop a bedpan on a patient), and I immediately went to Skinny Dip/broke out into hives. See? ISSUES. Why not make it a No Junk Food June? So thus begins my month of...substitution, so to speak. And, well, I just graduated and am still job hunting like a fiend, so why not toy with my BMI percentage? If anything, my Weight Watchers calendar will look like a freaking dream, points and all.

And so, June, I welcome you while I fight the good unemployment fight, continue taking hip hop classes, make an attempt to not bite my nails, and choose healthy over heart-attack-inducing items.

(And no, I am not counting coffee as junk food. I'm not that intense. And plus, we all know I would probably throw myself off of a bridge after ten minutes if this happened)

New Year, New...Feet?

It's day two of a new semester and it's already a snow, er, ice day. I'm sitting in my room in my super comfy bed, a cup of coffee in hand, and a reading on Plato. Life is pretty fabulous right now.

It's 2011, y'all! 2011. The year I graduate. In four months. Asdkfjasdlkfjkjdakfjalkd! So far 2011 has consisted of the following: cobbling together resumes, auditioning, toting around a new purse (thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, sweet Kasey G!), and marveling at he fact that next year I will be in a different state.

Every new year I make a list of goals, most of them the same as that previous year; things like, "I won't bite my nails," and "I will fold my laundry and not let it sit on my floor," and "I will not treat my floor as an extra shelf." But really, these are more like daily goals that I try to work on. So I figured it was time to shake things up, and my lovely pal Kellie gave me an idea. Instead of focusing on a ton of mini-goals, I decided for the year of 2011, I would work on one thing that seems to have a common occurrence this semester and was the cause of my semi-demise towards the end of the semester: stress. My goal is to make sure that I don't get too over my head in my last semester of college, and to always make sure to check in with myself periodically. And maybe instead of saying yes to everything, thinking it through. Before last semester got super hectic, I loved going to the gym to take a class, run, and basically get out some frustration and kick in the endorphins. But I stopped going once school, Corn, the show, finals...everything started piling up. I really missed going and seeing the friends I made in toning and dance classes, and I missed getting the "me" time I knew was long overdue. Over winter break, I started going six times a week, taking classes, rocking out on the elliptical, and...taking yoga.

My dad said that taking yoga would not only work on building the flexibility I used to have when I was younger, but it would also give me a chance to check out and chill for about an hour. All of the stretching, all of the "downward facing dogs" and whatnot means you stare at your feet a lot. And frankly, after about two weeks I got tired of staring at my unpainted toes for so long. So I decided to make a little purchase:

And the rest is history. I feel almost dainty when I lean down to stretch out my back and calves and I see my classy red toes. We'll see how the rest pans out.

Alright, 2011, let's see whatcha got!

New MCG's

I woke up this morning with a huge lump in my throat that I couldn't soften. I tried and tried but it wouldn't budge.

It may have been because it was 4:30 IN THE MORNING and I had only gotten two hours of sleep. But there I was, awake, unable to shake the sadness and semi-fear of what was to come: orientation crew. Some of you reading this may be thinking that I am not only on drugs but that I have reached the prime state of paranoia and social anxiety. But it wasn't because I was afraid of the people. It was this whole battle with time thing that had me anxious.

We welcomed the class of 2014 this morning. Twenty-fourteen. 20fourteen. Twenty14. Twentyfourteentwentyfourteentwentyfourteen. And my heart was breaking a little bit. See, I remember moving into Meredith. I remember not being able to sleep, having stalked everyone I had "friended" on Facebook the night before, running into the garage at 2:30 in the morning, making sure that I had packed my light blue bin with the clear lid with all of my books and that I had not forgotten shampoo, soap, or my favorite faded flip-flops with a huge picture of Snoopy on the right shoe. I remember the actual move-in day itself, stuffing my car to the gills to the point where I couldn't see anything when I was moving in, to the point where if I was about to switch lanes on the highway, I would put on my blinker for a full two minutes, say the Lord's prayer, and jerk my wheel to the right, straight on to exit three Hillsborough, turning left at the light, going straight for a couple feet, and then making my final left turn into the front drive...where I was greeted by a slew of fabulous ladies all screaming, "Welcome to Meredith!" and telling me to honk my horn. I remember how my dad and I tag-teamed and took a box of clothes up to my room, only to have the bin crack and explode a plethora of colorful bras all over the second Heilman stairs. I remember meeting Megan and Carolyn and Brittany and Caroline and Tricia and having Danielle teach me how to "walk it out" that night. I remember it all.

I cried all the way to my beloved Meredith today, because it really and truly hit me: I am a senior. I will be leaving after this year. This is my last orientation crew. I will know the class of 2014 for exactly one year...and then I leave.

It scares the curls out of me, sometimes, knowing that next year I'll be driving good old Leo the Geo up to New York, where I will probably still over-pack my car and still put my blinker on and give other drivers a fair warning before Leo makes his move. It scares me knowing that I will not see my friends, my sisters, really, for a long time.

And yet.

Though I had a mini-breakdown that included a lot of ugly crying and blowing my nose on a random sock that I found in my car (sometimes ya do what ya gotta do, okay?), I had a blast today. Even though it was five o'clock, being with all of my friends and getting ready to greet the new freshies was just so exciting and made my insides brim with adrenaline. When it was time, we donned our sandwich board signs, held up our cookie sheet and silver tongs, cranked up the music, and started screaming. The reactions we got varied...some girls looked petrified, others excited. The boyfriends were the best, though. Michelle Cox would play good cop, bad cop, gently waving them through the circle with her tongs, and then when they got close, she would pound on her cookie sheet and bellow into their windows, "WELCOME TO ME-RE-DITH!" coupled with the classic guy bark. I really thought I would wet my pants.

Every senior that I ran into would give me a hug and then we'd exchange a look that only we understood. The feeling that it would soon end, but that surely in the end, it would all be okay. Regardless, I have never seen my campus lovelier today.

Class of 2014, welcome to Meredith. I hope you love this campus just as much as I have, and that it is just as phenomenal to you as it has been to me. I hope you fumble through your first Corn but get incredibly excited for the next. I hope you go on late night Cookout Runs. I hope you figure out that the showers have a habit of going from lukewarm to burning hot to ice-drop cold in a matter of seconds. I hope you have run-ins with the geese. I hope Jean Jackson asks you randomly to quote memory lines...in public. I hope you grow into yourself and begin to see that you are actually pretty great. I hope you love your friends to the point that it hurts. And I hope you have a lot of pride in this school. Class of 2014...welcome home.

We're about to roll out...

It seriously happens every single break. Ever since I was little up until now, I've always gotten a tad bit emotional on the last day of break. I'm sitting in bed, wallowing on the precious hours of freedom I have left to read what I want, stay up until four a.m (not doing schoolwork), happily dashing from one friend's place to the next, and lounging in my comfy bed until three in the afternoon. Technically at 12:16 a.m it's Tuesday. Wednesday brings the start of another semester that will just fly.

This semester I'm assistant stage managing Kabuki Lady Macbeth (saying "Macbeth" is supposed to be off-limits, but what about typing? No idea), doing my thesis (aieeeee), and trying to figure out my life/summer plans. Oh, and p.s., I'm a student too.

I know I shouldn't be wallowing because I have had one of the most eye-opening breaks, filled with lots of amazing conversation, realizations, and a lot of laughter. I shouldn't be that sad because really, on Wednesday while I'm glancing at my Chaucer syllabus on the way to the Hive, I'll run intooooooo:

My friends. I've missed them so, so much. If I could post a million pictures of their beautiful faces, I would. I'm so excited to catch up over coffee, moan about assignments, and have late night should-be-study-sessions-but-really-we-have-girl-talk-time in the library. Ready set, gooooooo....!

Out with the old, in with the new

New Year’s Eve. I never thought it would come this quickly. I’m sitting in the Cleveland Airport right now, dignity intact this time (I wasn’t the “random selection” in the searching process, thank God. My pride can only take so much), and I’m marveling at how things in my life have suddenly changed. Relationships, classes, residency, family…me. I swear, my freshmen year college self wouldn’t recognize me now at all. I’m older, that’s for sure. Wiser? Getting there. And yet, there’s a childlike worry of the year that follows. Last night when I totally should’ve been sleeping, Divya and I had our classic “last night of the trip” talk fest and covered every single base we hadn’t gotten to in the past six days. Talking about the future made my insides swirl around because the future really isn’t that certain. But my future at Meredith College is coming to an end. After 2010 comes 2011 and along with that year comes college graduation. While I feel like I’m older and a little more street-and-people-savvy, the ideas of what I want to do are still not fully pieced together. It scares me. And just as I was getting into the place of panic where my breath was catching and my stomach was tightening, a sudden thought ran through my mind: Live in the moment.

Living in the moment is something that the ladies in my acting class are always lectured on. You want your scene to work? Live in the moment. Do you want an honest reaction out of your partner onstage? Live in the moment. We’ve learned that sometimes truth isn’t planned, that it just shows up spontaneously in your face when you least expect it onstage. Lying in that sleeping bag last night, I thought about how it not only just pertains to acting but to life as well-offstage. It’s good to be prepared, but preparedness can only take you so far sometimes. The choices you have to make aren’t scheduled into your daily planner; at times they just show up at the most unexpected time. And that even though I have only three semesters of college left, some of the life choices I still have to make haven’t reared their heads yet. But that’s okay, and instead of panicking, I should just see and really just enjoy what I do have in the present moment-which is actually quite a lot.

So tonight, while you're celebrating the newness of 2010, take in what's around you in that moment. Be safe, sip on yo' drank (keep it classy), and have a blast, everyone! Bring on that new decade!