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.

My Ear Buddies

The only thing worse than coming home from a long day of classes and homeworking at the library is coming home from a long day of classes and homeworking at the library and still not being done with homework. And the only thing worse than that is coming home from a long day of classes and homeworking at the library, still not being done with homework, and finding that your left headphone ear-bud isn't producing sound.

Well actually, the headphones I own don't have a right or left ear bud; there's just this ear bud and that ear bud. Regardless, the one I had randomly selected to service my right ear at that particular moment was perfectly functional, and the other was not.

I was devastated.

In horror I popped the ear buds out and tried everything I could think of to restore the buds to their former functionality. I untwisted the cord, massaged the buds, cleaned off the earwax (we've all got it people, calm down), pushed them in and out of both ears over and over, nothing.

I finally gave up, slipped both buds back into my ears to give the illusion of normality, and continued again with my homeworking, trying to ignore my misfortune.

Halfway through my Leadership assignment, I'm pretty sure I started hearing the music out of both ears, but I was too scared to test it out because if I was wrong and my earphones were still broken then I'd just be depressed all over again. I listened for a good thirty seconds trying to figure out if I'm actually hearing what I think I'm hearing, and finally decided to just ignore it. I mean if you think about it, since I couldn't tell whether or not they were working correctly, they might as well have been working for all I cared.

But that made me think. I wanted more than anything to know whether I was right or not; whether I was really hearing music or not. Why? Why are people so stubborn that they just have to prove themselves right? Why can't we just be content with being okay?

In the end, both headphones turned out to be working just fine. In fact, Elton John's "Rocket Man" is currently protruding from both buds in pristine condition. But it definitely made for an interesting personal psychoanalysis. Who would have thought? In honor of this occasion, I will write a poem.



Ear Buddies

You are limp and always slightly twisted,
and smile-like, you reach from ear to ear
embracing my face with your long skinny arms.

You fill my head with your whispers
using all of your many voices,
and even keep your words company
with harmonies and instruments.

No matter the noises, we've always been friends.
Even when you sometimes yell at me
every time I leave the volume up too high;
I guess part of the blame is mine.

Through the Beatles and Eagles,
Elton John, Regina Spektor, and Billy Joel,
Death Cab for Cutie and Imagine Dragons,
you have always been my buddies.

My dearest headphones,
may you always fill the holes in my heart.
Or my ears, as the case may be.



Whew. I think that may have just brought a tear. Hoo. I think I need a moment. Do you mind? Here, uh, please enjoy this picture while I...compose myself.  

Aren't they beautiful? Sigh. Truly. Now don't you ever scare me like that again, you two. Ya hear? 

Free T-shirt: Long Story Made Long

I work as a Ticket Agent for the SUU Ticketing Offices. Yes that's right, I am an Agent. Agent E. Or Agent Em; I can't decide which sounds better. I guess Em would get confused with M, but that's sort of the cleverness I'm going for. Then again, in the heat of the battle, I guess Agent E is the more logical option.

Anyway, as most employees in the minimum-wage work-force, (Actually I get paid $8 an hour, so take that you peons!) I deal with many different kinds of people. There are the kind and considerate people, the angry and opinionated people, and (my personal favorite) the absolutely clueless people. And then I guess there are the ambient just-people people who cause no problems and leave no impressions. ...And now I think about it, you can't forget the weird, what-just-happened people, and then there are always those trying-to-be-funny people. Mostly teenagers. 

So, put them all together, and what do you get? A people pie! ...chart. 

So this blog post wasn't really going in the direction I wanted it to. I haven't even foreshadowed the title yet.

Do not despair my friends. That time will come. Follow me through a few more paragraphs of build-up; we shall eventually reach the climax. 

Ahem.

During my times working in the ticket office here at SUU, I have encountered all pieces of The People Pie. Some of my favorites were:

The lady who had just been sent from the ticket office on the other side of the stadium and was "looking for a man by the name of Will Call"

The man who paid for a ticket requesting "one for the groom's side" 

The guy who asked, "Do you have change for a ten?"

The child who, after hearing his dad tell us "He's three" said, "And my dad's thirty five."

And my new favorite, the T-shirt man. 

(DUN du-NUH!)

A couple work days ago at an unimportant time, my two colleagues and I were helping out regular customer with an irregular problem and a disproportionate bad mood. One of those angry and opinionated kind. I don't know what exactly he wanted to do, or what tickets he had claimed he bought for whom at what time with what account, but Mckay was doing all he could to help the gentleman, and the gentleman was giving him nothing but rude remarks. After trying to get what he wanted from both mine and Alyssa's window, to no avail since Mckay was the only one who could help solve his problem, he and his equally angry friend finally marched off. Mckay continued searching the ticketing system to try and solve the problem, and by the time our manager Shon showed up, he had successfully found the man his tickets, and gotten him into the basketball game. We all sighed in relief and shook our heads, putting on our best smiles for the remaining customers. 

Days later, today comes, and I go once again into work. I apologize for being late (stupid hour and a half math test) and Shon hands me a card. Like, a letter card. It was an apology letter from that guy for being rude and impatient. Along with the card, this man had provided a T-shirt for each of the Agents who had been working that night. 

The T-shirt reads, "Have a great experience at SUU". 

This is the part of the story where I would analyse this experience and share my thoughts about this event. But I'm pretty worn out from all the back story and build-up (which was actually just unnecessary introduction down the tangent path away from en media res) so I'm just going to leave it at this. 

So long friends! And remember, don't do drugs!