Concentric Happenings

So the year has come full circle.

Well not really, cuz I started the blog in August. Let's try again.  

Center point being (circle pun), I've regained a share of college knowledge, returned home--same family, new house--and retrieved last summer's job. School was great, family is great, and a job will be great as soon as school can get me one of those fancy pieces of paper significant to the workplace world. For now, it's just me and my headset, stealing minutes off of ears across the nation for the sake of research. 

Call center. I'm back at the call center. 

Recently I've discovered something useful. For these past few weeks in which I've been homing, I've thought to myself, I should do some things. I should wake up before nine, read my scriptures every day, clean my room more than twice a month, and do some preparatory things for my forthcoming eighteen month Argentine fishing trip (see Matt 4:19). Instead I slept, procrastinated, and caught a chapter of Preach my Gospel every couple days. What a goose I am. 

Yesterday's randomly sought missionary chapter just so happened to be "How Do I Use Time Wisely?" with a special emphasis on this here blog post's topic, circles. I mean goal setting.

I've always liked the idea of setting goals, and I always have a few burrowed in my mess of mind mass, but I forget how effective it is to dig them out and acknowledge them. I'm sure it has a thing or two to do with the English major in me, but taking an idea and painting it out on a page using the representative figures we've come to call our alphabet, it works wonders. And it makes sense; things are always more official when in writing. Stories, documents, signatures.

And it's not like I've never conveyed my goals in the written word before; I have. I had a darling blue and green markered list of goals on my apartment bedroom wall down in this here Utah's South, and they all done darn been pretty well got did. Okay so I didn't exercise daily, but I'm gonna blame that on my traumatic cycling accident. (Stop laughing. I still have a pretty sick scar from that.)

So I wrote down some goals. Guess who got up this morning to actually do some things!

Yeah, yeah, who's surprised? David Tennant is, so there.

Moral of the story is, the alphabet is basically magical, and so is a summertime 6:30 AM. I'm serious. Be a morning person kids, it's the time of day.

Exclusive Inside Look of Emilyn's Writing Binder

I thought about apologizing for my virtual absence of the entirety of March.

Moving on.

I have this English professor (I have yet to find a character or actor to which he bears a likeness to, physically or otherwise. I did find one for my psychology professor, but more on that another day.) who seems to enjoy doing two things during class. 1) Monotone (this teacher calls for the non-existent verb form of the word) incredibly boring lectures filled with "I want all you students to guess what word I'm thinking of" questions, and 2) spew out delightful phrases of genius. It's a little difficult to fish out said genius from the slow ocean of monotonity (also a non-existent form of the word) with which he fills the room, which is why each one is penned so happily into my writing binder with stars and arrows. And with that, I figured I'd dedicate this blog post to his delightful genius fishes.

Ha. Genius fishes. I'm totally making that a thing. "Ooh! Did you hear that genius fish? What a whopper!" "Watch out guys, I feel a genius fish a-wrigglin'." Oh yeah. This is a thing.


"As you mature and become more professional, things don't get more complicated they become less complicated." 
I like this one. When you become better at something it's less about you doing harder things than it is about the same things becoming easier to do. For example, the multiplication table was just as hard for you in first grade as factoring polynomials was for you in high school, but because you only have the multiplication to compare to, factoring seems much easier. Sigh. I love factoring. I could Algebra forever.

"When children start doing what they don't want to do." 
This phrase is an unfinished sentence in my binder, but finishing it with different things almost interests me more. I almost didn't put it in because I wanted to keep it to myself. But I guess since it's about doing things you don't want to do...

What does happen when children start doing things they don't want to do? They mature? They succeed? They truly live? Or is it a bad thing? They stop shooting for their dreams? They lose their sense of themselves? They become boring adults? Did you notice that this paragraph is made up entirely of questions? Because it is. <----irony.

"The story doesn't say that, it creates that." 
(Note: This one has to do with writing and may not apply to all readers. I thought about apologizing for that as well.)

As simple and as helpful as the phrase "show not tell" is, it's not entirely true. A writer doesn't want to come in and tell the reader, "Emilyn is angry because there are dirty dishes in the sink," but he also doesn't want to say, "Emilyn's eyebrows tilt from a high point on the outside of her face, and slide all the way down to her nose as she stares at the dishes in the sink. Her hands produce sweat, and her nose sucks air in and out and in and out. She can't breath in through her mouth due to her clenched teeth." Instead, just let the anger happen. "Emilyn comes into her apartment. Dishes in the sink. And the dishes she washed yesterday are probably still lined up on the dishwasher racks. She walks into her room. Someone else had better do them." It's not a perfect example so you can just get over that right now, but hopefully you see the difference.

(WARNING: These excerpts are not affiliated with Emilyn's life in any way, and any similarities to it are completely coincidental. Also, this entire warning could be a lie.)

Let's see...one more...  Ooh.

"You know, I loved the world when it was just pencils. It was a neat place."
This professor is always struggling with technology. The classroom computer, his files, his flashdrive, Youtube videos, "tweeter", and anything else more complicated than his piece of chalk with which he gratefully uses often. He also gets the chalk all over his suit jacket, but he obviously prefers it to the stress Microsoft word gives him.

But this phrase reminded me of something else I heard recently at SUU's Tedx night. One of the speakers said, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son will fly an airplane. His son will fly a rocket. But his son, his son will ride a camel." I don't recall the exact point he made. Something about being careful to not repeat history, or maybe it was about the end of the world being near. And I almost want to say, in light of my professor's phrase, that a pencil will always be more reliable than a computer, but I don't really want to go that far. Computers are pretty darn effective. But it is true that there is something about a pencil that a computer just doesn't have. Maybe that's because I grew up with computers so a pencil world seems "so totally vintage" to me. I don't really know. Maybe it's just a personal problem. Or maybe it was the way he said the last part. I want to live in that neat pencil place.



So the moral of the story is that instead of getting angry at your dirty dishes you should send them on a camel to your great great grandson because dish-doing will be less complicated in the future.

Gesundheit!

Leaves and People

The weather this week at Cedar has been strangely pleasant. Gray clouds still occasionally accumulate overhead, but they only whine a little with a poor excuse of a rainstorm before grumpily bumbling off to allow the afternoon sun to brag of sixty-five degrees. The best part though is that except for the large, old piles still found in the shadows, the snow has all melted away. My roommate and I closeted our coats and toyed with the idea of wearing shorts.

Even my English teacher says this has been the mildest winter he's experienced in thirty-five years. He said it worriedly and grumbled something about global warming before assuring us that that April and May would surely bring an "unexpected" snow storm. Some hipster in the second row protested. "But my birthday is in May!" Well excuse me little Miss Early Spring, couldn't you let us late winter birthdays have our little moment in the sun?

I mean, although the birds have been chirping happily in the mornings, it's still not entirely spring weather. It's almost like a rerun of fall. For one thing, it was pretty windy today, which we definitely got a lot of last fall. Today's wind was just a little more than a breeze, but last semester the wind was so fierce you could hardly walk in a straight line on campus; anyone driving past must have thought we were all drunk. And there were leaves everywhere. I felt like Pocahontas gone wrong. Instead of this

It was like 

One particular day there were even leaves spread across the floor of the science building. I had arrived early and found a spot in the circle of armchairs and couches leaving, of course, a buffer cushion between me and the next guy so as to avoid human interaction. After playing around for a while on my phone, a group of students came in opening both of the building doors. The wind burst in and caused the leaves to flip and roll around the room, making a crackling noise like a bonfire in full blaze.  It really was the weirdest thing. It's one thing to find mud and leaves tracked in the hallways on a rainy day, but here we were chilling out on some furniture, and these leaves just start violently flying around us. 

And you can't just ignore something like that. All our efforts to keep to ourselves were whipped away with the magical leaf tornado, and we all kind of looked at each other like, "Are you seeing this? This isn't normal." Yeah that's right. We like, made eye contact and stuff. 

The weirdest thing though, was that some students still tried to ignore it and everyone else in the room. And it's like, um, the world just did something extremely strange and...leafy...and you're just gonna sit there like nothing's happening because, why? What is it about connecting with other people that's so scary you'll fight against the world just to be alone? I mean there's the element of "I don't want to bother you because you're alone and my presence might be annoying to you," but...I mean...whatever. People are weird. 

So, I guess that's the moral of the story. No matter how weird the world gets, people still try to be weirder. 

Something New and Interesting

I guess it shouldn't be such a surprise to me that every time I decide to scramble out of the crevice of my mattress and participate in a non-sedentary activity, my life becomes less boring. Do the math Emilyn, it's a simple equation, easily first-year algebra. One semester out of math and she's already forgetting how to solve problems? Geez Louise.

Anyway, I think even the action-packed life is often graced with the world's surprises. Like the happenstance I came across today during my off-my-behind festivities. Ahem.

Just after locking my bike to the dumpster behind the bank, I saw two ladies in the small parking lot, one coming out of the building, and the other going in. The lady coming out had light blue jeans, white cotton hair, and a bright pink, collared jacket. The lady going in had light blue jeans, white cotton hair, and a bright pink, collared jacket. Wait. What? That's right my friends. They were CLONES. Talk about embarrassing. I can only imagine confidently flaunting my way through town with that kind of bold and hip attire only to find the same style choices playing back thread for thread on another woman. The nerve.

The question is, who wore it better?

No, the far more inquisitive and articulate question is, wha? My first thought is that they're together. They just finished at their synchronized swimming competition, or are meeting up before attending their Never Too Old to Wear Pink Club. Wrong! They didn't greet or even acknowledge each other. They calmly and slowly passed through the twilight zone and moved on with their lives. I guess they could have been swim-meet contenders, too proud to condescend to an arch-enemy hello. Or maybe it was disrespectful to comment on a fellow NTOWP member's pink-wearing business. Whatever the case, it kinda freaked me out. After finishing my bank errands and exiting the building myself, I almost expected another brown-haired college freshman with a scarf and khaki pants to come riding up main street on her bike.

But, alas, it was just me. Just Emilyn, drifting a little wobbly down the sidewalk due to the rough cement work and my recent favoring of the right pedal since my left peddler is still causing me a little trouble in the knee area. (Currently icing it. See last post).

Moral of the story is, if you don't have a clone, your life is one of two things. It is either a) too boring and blah to be considered, or b) too original and awesome to be fathomed. And let's just say life goes a little better if we choose to live assuming the latter.

Oh. And if you do happen to find a clone in the mysterious forest of life, acknowledge them. Shake their hand, search their face for the truth of life, and then nod your head in understanding and say, with a tear of joy if you can manage, "I know."  Because chances are, you do.

The Unexpected Expectation Exception

WARNING: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

Last night when I decided I would go running this morning, (think about it...it works) I expected a plethora of things to come up in the moments between planning-on and having-done that would try to keep me from following through:

1) I knew I wouldn't want to wake up at the whopping six a.m. for which I had set my alarm.

That was easy to expect since that's generally how I feel on mornings of days that I know will involve doing things. But by placing my phone on the opposite side of the dresser and far enough away that I couldn't possibly stay in bed while attending to it, I avoided this crisis.

2) I expected my homework to suddenly come of incredible importance enough for me to skip the exercise and work vigorously on it in the wee hours of the morning.

I did recall today's Spanish quiz I hadn't studied for yet, but I boldly ignored the temptation. Some like to call that procrastination, but given the circumstances I'll refer to it as my fitness resolve.

3) I expected some piece of my running outfit to be "out-of-order".

Clean shorts, clean t-shirt, clean running socks, and wait...where are they?...ah. My tennis shoes. Oh, and a nice jacket for the cold bike ride down. Speaking of cold bike rides,

4) I expected the ride to the gym to be cold and miserable causing me to turn back before even exiting the apartment parking lot.

The ride was cold. I put on my gloves, tilted my head into the wind and with my determined eyebrows, pedaled into the dark morning.

5) I expected the gym to be closed.

Yes they say it opens at 6, but who knows. Today could be one of those special cleaning days where maybe the gym is open, but they're repaving the track or replacing all the light bulbs. Or maybe the basketball team had a flu outbreak during yesterday's practice and the entire building has to be sanitized. Things happen in this dangerous world of ours. But I come around the parking lot hedge and see people moving around in the weight room, pulling and lifting and fulfilling their own fitness resolves.

Yes I expected and thwarted all of these things, and my bike is just cruising toward the having-done part of my plan when suddenly my bike stops moving, and I'm hugging a metal parking sign. With my face.

In case you didn't get that last part, this was your typical "la la la I'm walking along and everything's fine--POLE" moment you see in cartoons. It really was. The light was just dark enough, and the sign just skinny enough, that while I swear I was looking straight ahead, it somehow got missed in the whole "image registering to the brain" process. Some lucky joggers got to see the crash, and asked if I was okay just as the pain shivered through every part of my body.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Thank you." I pulled my bike from the sign, and kind of unconsciously walked toward my water bottle which was faithfully rolling the rest of the way down the parking lot. Almost more than feeling pain I was feeling anger and stupidity for making such an embarrassing mistake. After twisting my black bike lock around my shining pefectly-conditioned vehicle and the gym rack, I stubbornly continued into the gym as the melting pain slowly coagulated to the right side of my neck and my left knee.

I washed up a bit in the locker room and assessed the damage:
Ick. Neck is definitely scraped and looks disgusting. Not bleeding much though.
Knee bleeding a little, but not anymore. Mostly bruised.
One thin, bloodless cut all down the side of my face, a delicate, signature slice of the kind parking sign.
And bruises. Pretty much everywhere.

I went out to talk to the man at the front desk.

"Hey, do you have any band aids, or a first aid kit or something?"
"Oh my. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, it's fine; I looked at it. Do you have any band aids?"
"No really, that looks really bad. Have you seen your neck? You should check that out."
Yes sir. I realize there's a wound on my neck. I can feel the pain radiating from that area quite efficiently.
"Yeah...I just looked at it, it's not that bad. I washed it up. Do you have band aids?"
He brought some out. "You really should look at that."
Thank you sir. I'll send my regards to your mother, tell her what a help you've been.

So Emilyn is a little injured. I thought I was doing a good thing, going early-morning exercising. I guess I should have seen the signs. Or even the one sign. Just the one sign would have been good.

Oh yeah, and at the end of it all, while bandaging my neck in the bathroom, I realized I had forgotten to put my hair up.

Moral of the story, Emilyn's knee will require some special ice and elevation care, and she'll need to stock up on band aids next grocery shopping trip because front desk gym gentlemen are only generous enough to spare two.

How I would have begun my day had life not been...life. Yeah, we're gonna blame this on life and take my negligence to use my sense of sight out of the equation. It's all part of the Experience. With a capital E. Which was kind of an accident, but it sorta fits. 

Here's just after the crash. 

This was a day or two after the crash

And here's Chelsey's rendition of the story. :)

Smells like Pemberley

I don't think there is anything in this world that brings back memories more clearly and vividly than smells. (Which is a really weird word by the way. I can't stop looking at it. Smell. Smell. Smell. ...Where was I?)

There are a couple smells that really throw me back, and one of those is just the general smell of fall. Whenever I come across the crisp and ripe smell of leaves I'm always taken back to the same memory.

I'm twelve years old and living in our little Pemberlita in Provo. The house was called Pemberlita due to our family's Pride and Prejudice obsession, as well as our efforts to look past the...close-knit qualities of the home. To the far right of the front yard next to the neighbor's green hedge was our beloved tree, Half n' Half. I kid you not, the tree grew deep purple leaves on one side and light green ones on the other. And I believe it was the purple side that also contained these little berries that were some sort of mix between a plum and a grape. They were pretty tasty if you caught them on their good day. Every other day they were just globs of purple mush on your shoes and pants and anywhere else you happened to fall and smash one during a game of yard-tag.

Being home schooled during this time spent in Pemberlita, the fall had a little different feel than the general back-to-school spirit. Instead of getting up and ready for school each day with a backpack and new back-to-school sale Wal-mart shoes, I woke up with my sisters, and in our pajamas we would throw change out on the side-walk in front of our house, counting how many school-kids passed by without looking to pick it up. Or after lunch we would climb Half n' Half with blankets and books and shush each other as the kids passed my underneath, rarely finding our little hide-out. I don't know if these kids just ignored our every move, or if they really were that unobservant. Huh.

Anyway, only my second semester out in the big wide world, and I've noticed a couple smells that have already bound themselves to this Cedar City memory. The lovely puff of lavender from my dryer sheets under the sink when reaching for my brush, some tropical coconut fun from my body wash, and then of course the 'ol apartment which smells of new paint, dust, and stiff bathroom cleaner. Not exactly the "welcome back" I was looking for, but at least it's stopped smelling like toilet water from our little flooding accident.

Moral of the story is, make sure you always smell good because when the observant people remember you, at least you're off to a good start!

Pemberley. Sigh. Gorgeous. 

New Years Readolution

I recently watched an old family video of myself in purple leggings and a soccer-ball t-shirt struggling over the childhood classic, Hop on Pop that my mom held up for me to read. I watched as my three-year-old self furrowed her little eyebrows and combined all the literary powers in her brain to move from P to U then back to P again, trying to squish the sounds together to sound like a word. I laughed and bounced a little on the couch when I understood the sounds to be the word "pup", and then moved along in the story to discover what word the next letters could turn out to be.

By the time my years had doubled I was reading about Harry's adventures in Hogwarts, so if it hadn't been for this video evidence, I would find it hard to imagine myself not being able to read.

But then there I was a college freshman, with my three ring creative writing binder, mechanical pencil at the ready, listening to my English teacher recite a little piece of advice. "Listen to your ear, listen to your ear. But only if you are a reader." (I think it was supposed to rhyme. Cute.) I scribbled the phrase into my notebook, nodding in agreement. Oh yeah. I'm a reader, I thought. I can trust my literary ear. Definitely. I love reading.

And then something really scared me. I couldn't remember the last book I had even read.

I guess that wasn't necessarily true. The last book I'd read was Hamlet the last month of my High school career. Before that was Poisonwood Bible, then Great Expectations, Heart of Darkness, and The Road. Then there was Twelfth Night, Huckleberry Finn, Frederick Douglass, and wait a minute these are all school assignments.

So I really had to think. What was the last book I had read for pleasure? At first I really scared myself and thought it was the Children of the Promise series back in eighth grade, but then I remembered reading Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins the summer between tenth and eleventh grade. (A real work of art by the way. I highly recommend it.) And I think that's the one. The last book that I had, of my own free will, been through from start to finish.

So I got myself a library card and went to the library.

And it was beautiful.

The rough and dusty smell of book pages, the rows of alphabetized shelves, and the ominous air of quiet wisdom. Even the Library Catalog that can find every audio book in the place before even considering you might possibly be searching for the actual book.

So here's my New Years resolution: READ, READ, READ. I can't believe I ever stopped. There are so many words out there! So many works and authors and subjects, and I've already gotten three years behind! Hello Emilyn, wake up and smell the pages! And get back to work. Stretch your literary muscles a little, and start calling yourself a reader again. Good grief.