Tempest Rising

An interesting tidbit from the day before yesterday: Michael and I had a pretty important meeting back at Absegami about using their stage next summer for our musical. We brought a CD of the songs and a copy of the script. I was there with the rest of the script in my head ready to go. We were ready for any questions they wanted to ask us, since we figured the biggest reason, after money, that we wouldn’t be allowed to do ‘Bat Outta Hell’ at Gami was the content, which is based off of Meat Loaf songs. There’s sex. Instead, we got a green light to go up to the school board, and they will either approve or reject our proposal. Sweet. We were told just to sell the alumni angle, which isn’t difficult since both Michael and I are, of course, alumni.

So that’s going somewhere (which is slightly terrifying since I haven’t touched the script in over a week. Too many novels waiting to be born.)

And then yesterday my friends wanted to meet up. I haven’t seen one of them for nearly a year, but had to ask, “Have you looked outside?”

The text I got in reply was just, “oh.”

There was a storm brewing yesterday morning, and it broke out full-force around ten o’clock. We’d come all the way back to the beach house so that Michael could go to work, and were sitting on the couch with our guitars in the minutes before he had to leave when he got a text saying, “Don’t bother coming in.”

Well, if we’d known that an hour ago we wouldn’t have bothered going all the way to the beach house. But we were already hear, and didn’t want to be caught in the storm, so we decided to just…wait it out.

The good part about the beach is that the power doesn’t seem to be nearly as temperamental as it is at home. We never lost power, even though the storm seemed determined to drown the island in a few minutes. So it was a morning/early afternoon of Netflix and knitting while Michael played a video game. Every once in a while we’d peek out at the storm, which wouldn’t let up for about two hours.

View from the front window. It’s 10:00 am.

There were four or five hours in the afternoon where the island wasn’t in danger of capsizing and Mike and I decided to hunt down Rock Band, a video game we’d played a lot in high school. Even though it’s one of the few games I actually know how to play, apparently five years is like fifty when it comes to video game life. We couldn’t find a copy in any store nearby.

But that wasn’t for lack of trying. We went off the island to a Best Buy, and decided on the way to take in a movie. Why not? It was a pretty horrid day outside. There was a five o’clock showing of Now You See Me, which both of us had been interested in watching. There were six of us in the theater, probably because even though rainy days are perfect for going to the movie theater, a monsoon is not the best driving weather.

So we got nearly a personal viewing of the movie, which was very good, and by the time we walked outside it was raining harder than ever. A quick look into Best Buy showed nothing, zip, nada in the department of Rock Band (though there were about a dozen versions of Guitar Hero) and we headed back to the beach to hole up indoors for the night.

One nice thing to do when a storm’s raging outside? Learn a duet on the guitar. Now we just have to tackle Meat Loaf songs and this show will be in the bag.

Annual Visits

This was the seventh time I’ve taken the ferry from Cape May to Lewes, Delaware. It’s an annual trip we do with the Seeing Eye Puppy Raising group, and it’s my favorite event of the year, mostly because we get to walk around Lewes, which is a very cute little town, and eat lunch and ice cream and head home.

Every family who had been in the puppy group eight years ago when we started raising our first dog, Igor, has moved on, and we’re the only old hands left. The ferry trip is therefore filled with a constantly changing cast of characters whose names you don’t really know. In the way of most things to do with the puppy group, you collect the dog’s names first, the people’s names only if they stick around for a year or two.

So. The ferry trip. Get up at 6:30 by dad, who never goes on the ferry because he gets terrible sea-sickness (an affliction passed along, luckily, to only my older sister. The rest of us are like my mother — completely unaffected my the shifting of a boat on the water) But my father is incredibly punctual, so even though the boat does’t leave until 9:30 and we’re only an hour away, we are out the door by 7:15, driven by his fears of being late.

Diehl trying to watch a show with me and Amanda on the way to Cape May.

Diehl goes between sleeping and playing the whole way down. He is only a baby, after all. Amanda and I try to list the dogs we’ve met, seeing if we have one to fill every letter of the alphabet. Too many C’s, not enough A’s. Still, we’ve met a great many dogs, and remember their names long after their owner’s faces slip form memory.

There are nine other dogs waiting for us. We were expecting three, but had been prepared for up to ten. The people are counted, too, a rough tally of thirty or forty. Everyone goes around and asks about the dog’s names and ages, asks “is this your first dog?” More than half the people say “yes” to that last question — a great many get involved for one dog, realize the work and heartbreak that go into fostering a puppy, and leave the program. Diehl is our seventh, as I said before, but we were outstripped for most puppies raised by a family from Cumberland country who were on their twelfth dog.

We get onto the ferry after mom talks her way out of a snafu with the tickets, and Amanda and I pass the time by playing Name That Tune and looking at the pod of dolphins we visit every year. It’s sixty or ninety minutes to Lewes, depending on the weather, and the time always seems to pass in the same lazy way. No one’s in any particular hurry. We made our lunch reservations conservatively late.

Mom, Amanda, me, and Diehl in Delaware

It’s interesting, traveling with a puppy with a vest on, especially traveling in a group of them. People stop you on the street to talk. I had a woman come up to me while we were taking pictures and grill me on every facet of the Seeing Eye for fifteen minutes.I know the answers by heart: we raise the puppies for 12-14 months. Yes, it’s hard to give the puppies up, but you get a new one, and none of them every die on you. He’s a boy, his name is Diehl, he’s four months old. The Seeing Eye was founded in 1929. The first Seeing Eye dog’s name was Kiss (“Buddy!” Amanda shouts next to me, and I explain to the woman the Kiss’s owner was a man who changed the dog’s name to a more masculine Buddy.) Yeah, our group operates through the 4-H.

We eat at the same restaurant we’ve gone to for the past four years (the first four, we went to a place across the water that burned down.) It has a beautiful view and great fish. This is my favorite part of the trip, because of course sitting at a long table means that you have to talk for the next hour and a half, and I wanted to know all these new people’s names.

The view from the restaurant.

Mom got herself entrenched in a conversation about colleges, a subject she’s become a veritable expert in, leaving Amanda and I to talk to a new puppy raiser (another Kate) and her two boys. I asked one about his Ireland sweatshirt and he said no, he’s never been. I said neither had I, but I’d been to Scotland. Ah, Study Abroad, saving me from social awkwardness at every turn. We talked about Europe and traveling until the food came. The dogs slept under the table. Poor Diehl. He was so tired.

Then the pet shop to pick up a new toy, and the ice cream parlor for something sweet before getting back on the ferry. The trip back is when the exhaustion creeps in. Every year without fail you feel drained after the ferry trip, disproportionately tired to the amount of work you’ve done. We played a lazy game of Golf and talked about Harry Potter. 

And that’s our yearly trip across the bay. It’s a nice change of pace to go on the ferry and a great experience for the puppies, who need to be exposed to as many things as possible to make good Seeing Eye dogs. Everyone’s usually happy to see so many well-behaved dogs, and it’s an excuse for the different puppy groups to come together too do something relaxing and fun.

It is also an excellent way to welcome the start of June, and the gorgeous weather it brings with it.

Stop On By For A Visit

Last Thursday, Becca and I finally found some time for each other.

It’s harder than you’d think, being able to see friends even when they’re less than fifty miles away. I always had something to blame it on before — Europe or Florida, being a week or two or three away from going back to Europe or Florida and wanting – needing — to spend that little time with my family. Now there’s three uninterrupted months of beach in front of me and it’s my friends running off in different directions. Alyssa back to Boston and Caryn saving the world from bugs and Becca working on classes and at her job and there’s me, with my couple-hours-a-week job and all my books and the books waiting to be born in Word documents.

So it’s harder than you think, getting together. But we finally did.

One of the funniest things we figured out last Thursday night, between talking about college and friends and Glee and our hazy futures and our shared pasts, was that we’d both, completely separately, established a Girl’s Night in college. And for both of us this was Thursday night.

“Weird,” I said, “I mean, ours landed on Thursday because of Vampire Diaries.”

Becca shrugged, “Sometimes I think Girl’s Night is the only thing that kept me sane.”

“Me too!” I made a sweeping motion with my hand. “Hey. It’s Thursday night. Michael’s on a date. We got a house to ourselves. Girl’s Night.”

And it was a very girly night. I made dinner and we talked for hours. We stayed up til one thirty and ate ice cream and watched Darren Criss and the pretty doctors on Grey’s Anatomy and we reconnected.

I have a kind of paranoia that my friends won’t speak to me when I finally see them after a while, but I never felt that with Becca. Maybe because we both admit how vulnerable we feel on a regular basis. My college friends are absolutely fantastic, inspiring girls, and I am myself around them, but Becca and I have been going strong through high school. She told me how alone she felt at her college, and I told her how I thought for a while that I’d chosen the wrong school, and what an awful mistake that was since I was three thousand miles away in London at the time. We admit we’re not as strong as we want to be, as we hoped we were, and that kept our friendship strong even if we don’t regularly text or Facebook or call or Skype (so many modes of communication!) Instead it’s just a quick sentence every couple of weeks: “I miss your face.” “Ditto, girlie.” Translation: I love you and I miss you and I can’t wait til we get to see each other again.

(these blog posts are getting overly literary. i think this can be blamed entirely on the play i’m co-writing/novel i’m editing/novel i’m beginning. i apologize for the effusiveness. i also apologize for the word effusiveness.)

The view from where I work. Totally convenient, since it’s only a ten minute walk from the house.

In other news I began my job at the toy store last Saturday, an easy four-hour shift where I sold mostly hermit crabs. Since I’m the only one working in the store (which is a testament to human’s trust in other humans, or maybe a little bit of stupidity.) But it’s an easy job, and I like talking to the customers, mostly teenagers and young kids. I only wish I wasn’t the only one working in the store. I was hoping to make a few friends.

I don’t despair over my job’s lack of relevancy to anything I want to do with the rest of my life. I like the idea of being able to say on the dust cover on my books Katie spent her first two summers in college working at a library in Florence, Italy, and a Toy Store in New Jersey. I’m eclectic already.

In other other news I’m making myself into a bit of a chef. I have most of the day to myself, and while I spent 80% of that time either reading or writing out on the porch or beach, I do spend a portion going on walks with Kramer, and mostly these walks lead me to the produce or grocery store, where I pick up crab meat or red peppers or a fresh sprig of parsley and see what I can make with it. So far I’ve made a brie and tomato sandwich (not as good as expected) and crab cakes (very good, but very filling) and creole-style baked shrimp (my favorite. i have to stop eating them.) Cooking is a great hobby, because it offers instant gratification. You put in a couple of hours and you get a certain result based on how well you followed instructions.

And I’m not convinced that a little part of this isn’t genetic. After all, I am growing up in the shadow of a grandfather who made five-course Thanksgiving dinners. And the rest of my family don’t get lost in the kitchen, either.

But this is my life now. Settling into the routine of summer takes some getting used to, mostly because I’ve gotten into the study abroad mentality of “I should always be doing something in a new country” and the college mentality of “there’s always someone to hang out with.” Sequestering myself to write is one of the greatest opportunities I’ve ever had, and I plan on using every moment to enjoy what is shaping up to be a gorgeous summer.

After a Little Hiatus…

This is written almost one month after my last blog post, on the day I get internet at my grandfather’s beach house, where I am

The Girl’s Night group (Thursday was one of the things that kept me sane all year)

spending my summer. There have been several interesting developments over the last month, not the least of which involved me finishing my second year of college. This time last year I was in Florence, Italy, gearing up for another semester abroad. Now? Now I have a year of “real” college under my belt. Despite what people told me, Tallahassee was not all that boring. I was no longer spending weekends exploring abandoned castles or ancient churches, but I was enjoying approximately the same college experience as those who went to FSU in the 1950s, which was glorious and exciting unto itself.

And I got to cement friendships I had been afraid of losing. My friends scoff and think I’m being melodramatic, but my greatest fear has always been that I get more attached to people than they get attached to me. So after meeting Patricia in the Fall of 2011 and seeing her again in the Fall of 2012 (or Ari and Kat in the Spring to Fall, or Nicole four weeks before Tallahassee) I was afraid that they would ignore me at FSU. Paranoia, and luckily they all find that trait adorable.

Me and Patricia, in Paris together almost 18 months ago. Time flies, huh?

So I became better friends with those I met abroad and met new interesting people (here’s looking at you, Laura) and the Fall passed and the Spring passed and I learned about Modern Poetry and also Asian history and a smattering of science fiction. I went to the SLC and ordered a lot of milkshakes and drank wine at Girl’s Night and watched Netflix and laid out on Landis listening to stand-up and people watching. And it was brilliant. When it came time for Summer semester, I found that the need to leave wasn’t so pressing this time. I was building a life away from my home in New Jersey, a life that I liked and liked returning to, and while this was a nice development for someone who had once suffered crushing homesickness in the first weeks of college, it was a little sad to realize that my family was no longer the fixed center of my universe, and New Jersey was no longer the only place I could call home.

Moving out involved a night without anything more than a blanket, a pillow, and my guitar case stuffed with dresses. Patricia had very kindly agreed to drive me to Orlando so I could catch a flight that was $600 less than the one leaving out of Tallahassee. I thanked her for her graciousness with sweet potato pancakes and a tank of gas. We listened to 90s pop songs and she had a last opportunity to tease me about being Captain America, because out of a hundred songs I recognized three. Then I was at the airport alone, my best friend of a year going back to her life in South Florida while I was spirited a thousand miles away.

My worry about getting a guitar through airport security proved unfounded: if you ever want to smuggle something, smuggle it in a guitar case. Not once was I asked about why I was traveling with such a cumbersome instrument. Not once was I asked to open the case. As someone who grew up predominately in a post-9/11 world, this lack of interrogation while getting onto an American airplane was exhilarating and a little frightening.

I got back home with no major problems, excepting that my plane had been delayed for nearly two hours. Both of my college-aged

Me and Diehl, while he is still little and silly.

siblings had been there for a week before I arrived, and the next morning Michael went to the Ocean City Block Party (have I ever mentioned that my family raises Seeing Eye Puppies? We are currently on our seventh, an adorable Shepherd named Diehl after David Diehl, a right tackle for the New York Giants. My father said if his name had been Donovan we’d have to request a different dog) My sisters went to my mother’s fashion show, where we won a bicycle and a tiny iPad and raised money for Sandy relief.

Later that day I was greeted by a very pleasant surprise: the sixth Seeing Eye puppy we’d raised was a loveable, hapless Golden Retriever named Kramer. He’d failed out of the Seeing Eye (60% of dogs do) and my family, for the first time, had adopted back a dog we’d raised. He was now Michael’s puppy, and he planned to take him down to school in the Fall. For now the plan was that he’d join us at the beach house for the summer.

Here the sequence of events start to blur. I went to pick out a bed (mine had been transported to North Carolina for Michael’s new house) and Caryn came over and gave me a lesson in bugs and listened patiently while I talked about the marvels of the public library. I applied for a lot of jobs (more on that later.) I read several good books, like Jurassic Park, which is a terrific book, ten times better than the movie, and The Interestings, which has been on the Bestseller list for a while now and definitely deserves to be there.

I came down to the beach with Michael, who’d already secured a ridiculously low-paying job at the Surflight theater as a carpenter for the sets. I was looking for work, too, anywhere I could get it. I want to have a “real” job under my belt and like the idea of something to break up the long summer weeks. Unfortunately, everyone is a small business and want someone who can guarantee work through Labor Day. The commute from Florida to Long Beach Island is too much to promise that kind of commitment.

After striking out at every business in a twenty-block radius with a HELP WANTED sign, I went down to a job interview at Wawa, where

Part of the “Restore the Shore” campaign for Sandy relief, these signs are all over the island

I was told I could have as few or many hours as I liked and they’d hire me and I could start the next day. The only problem is that the six miles between Beach Haven and Surf City took ten minutes to travel in the off –season and forty-five once people started pouring onto the island in the Summer. So, no dice.

Kramer was my constant companion on these job hunts, and I took him on walks as I talked to business owners who were sympathetic towards my Creative Writing major and assured me that making subs and working a cash register was not rocket science, but they just couldn’t take on anyone who would only be around until the third week of August.

Last week, Kramer led me through the alleys of Bay Village, nose pointing towards a small dive that sold Chowder. Next door was a Toy Store that was loading all its inventory in. A man was just putting up a HELP WANTED sign. Why not? I held Kramer tight and stepped into the mostly-empty store. “Is there an application I could fill out?”

“Sure,” the man said, amused by the Golden Retriever and the fact I’d come in just moments after the sign went up. He asked about Kramer and I mentioned that he was a failed Seeing Eye dog. Like so many other people I’d talked to on these walks Kramer led me on, he was intrigued by the Seeing Eye and, as someone who had being raising these puppies for eight years, I answered the questions while still filling out the application.

“You live so close!” The Toy Store owner, who introduced himself as Nathan, exclaimed, “you have to work here! It’s only weekends until the middle of June but…”

“Definitely,” I said, jumping over his words, “sounds perfect.”

He promised to be in touch, told me I was hired, and after two weeks of looking, I finally left with a job.

What else can I say about the last month? I spend most afternoons writing and cooking meals out of a cookbook my mother gave me, only occasionally moaning about the lack of internet. Michael and I eat while talking about the musical we’re writing together, and I occasionally read him the scene I’m working on. We watch movies (some horrible, some good, some old VHSs that are lying around the house) and Young Justice, a television show I happen to have on my iPad that never fails to remind me of Nicole and Florence.

I managed to see Caryn and Alyssa, two of my best friends from high school. We’ve all three changed, but when we’re together we click

Alyssa (left) and Caryn, doing two years ago what we do now — talk too much and argue.

back into a recognizable group from two years ago, with Alyssa and I always bordering on the edge of an argument and Caryn playing peacemaker. One day Caryn ditched work for an afternoon and joined Alyssa and I on the back porch of my house, where we drank tea and ate watermelon and talked about computer programming, Game of Thrones, and the destructiveness of carpenter bees.

Two days ago, when I was back in Galloway for a dentist appointment, Caryn surprised me at 7 am with a text: WANT TO MEET ME AT MY GRANDFATHER’S HOUSE AND SHOOT?

We’d filmed movies together in high school, short projects for school that were always fun and hilarious. I assumed: SHOOT WHAT? A MOVIE?

LOL NO. THINGS WITH GUNS.

I told my parents, who laughed at the idea of their clumsiest child with a gun but gave their blessing. While my parents don’t own weapons, they’re not anti-gun, and think that not knowing how to shoot is probably irresponsible.

So I went out, and Caryn’s father, who was once a Marine, patiently taught us how to shoot a .22. “This is too easy,” I said, after shooting down the eight targets on the second try, “they should make it harder. Like when the typewriter was invented, and the letters weren’t in any particular order to make people go slow? Guns should be like that. It shouldn’t take an hour-long lesson for me to shoot eight targets.”

Me, and the little baby I babysat all weekend.

Then we tried on a .45, and I didn’t say anything about guns being too easy to shoot. A. 45 is loud, and heavy, and hard to aim. Of course, Alyssa’s dad came to pick her up. He, too, was once a military man, in the Air Force, and he shot the .45 with accuracy that surprised all of us, who’d always known him as a very soft-spoken man.

On a different front, since I haven’t yet started work, I took up babysitting last weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night I went down the island at 8 pm and made sure an adorable one- and two-year-old didn’t wake up. For the first couple of nights they didn’t. I finished The Interestings on the couch and made cups of tea. The last two nights, the one-year-old baby woke up, and I rested him on my shoulder while texting my friends and murmuring memorized poems out loud to him until he fell asleep.

My friends make fun of me, because I often say I want a baby (eventually, mom.) But these things are insanely cute, even when they are waking up at night. Of course, I get to hand responsibility back over when the parents come back (and pocket a not-insubstantial amount of cash.) But the want for a baby is still there, while all of my other friends claim not to feel such a need.

Christina with her crutches and Diehl taking a nap.

Anything else? Christina got surgery on her feet, which have bothered her for most of her life, and is couch-ridden for the summer, spending copious amounts of time watching Criminal Minds and asking me to make her grilled cheese sandwiches. This is more annoying for her than for everyone else, obviously, except when it came to the Star Trek movie.

My family are all varying degrees of Star Trek fans, with my father, brother, and I loving the series (and all things sci-fi) the most. Christina, Amanda, and mom all like Enterprise a lot but have little patience for the other series. Still, we’d all watched more than a little Star Trek, and were very excited for the sequel to the 2009 movie.

Christina’s house-bound state made it difficult to see the movie, and we ended up going to a newly-opened IMAX on a Wednesday night. Michael went without his girlfriend and Amanda didn’t invite her friends and so it was just the six of us at dinner and a movie, which was really nice. We made fun of Christina for being a cripple and she huffed, annoyed, as we raced into the theater without her.

(the movie was brilliant, especially since we’d watched the Genesis project episodes and Wrath of Khan before going to the theater. so what if the dialogue was word-for-word? Chris Pine and ZQ are way hotter than the TOS cast)

There are two pieces missing. Typical.

Memorial Day weekend brought an influx of people to the island, including my grandparents, who exclaimed over the dinner Michael and his girlfriend Tatiana spent an afternoon making. They helped Amanda cover strawberries and other things in chocolate, and brought with them a puzzle from my other grandmother, a present for our slow-moving resident cripple, which led to a spree of puzzle-making. Even though we bought it new, one of the puzzles, typically, was missing a couple of pieces.

But mostly the past month has been spent in a state of pleasant relaxation. By the end of the summer I’m sure I’ll be climbing the walls, but for now it’s exactly what the doctor ordered. I love school, and my friends, and my life in Tallahassee (and, before that, varying European countries) but when at school you have to be on all the time. I eat with people and sleep with a roommate and spend most waking moments with friends, and am always conscious of what I’m saying and who I’m saying it to.

At home, it’s mostly just me and Kramer and library books and the steady pounding of the ocean against an island that, despite its best efforts in the Fall, was not washed away. It’s a resilient place, a healing place, and, for now, a quiet place. It’s perfect. Life is good.

Florence in Tallahassee

Nicole is graduating, which is sad because she’s one of my favorite people and because she basically embodies my Florence experience. So we decided to do a Florence day before we say goodbye (or goodbye for now — Nicole is moving to New York, which is not all that far from New Jersey. I told her to crash at the beach if she needed to get away from the city in the summer) And that’s exactly what we did.

Florence days, of course, are not nearly as rainy as yesterday was. It was gray and cold and miserable, which is no fun for going outside and chilling on Landis but is perfect for getting crepes and cheese and wine and bread and chilling inside. So that’s exactly what we did.

Nicole and I covered just about every subject when we were in Italy for three months, so our conversations are comfortable and easy, happy lobbing of subjects back and forth, paying particular attention to superheroes and novels, fantasy worlds and life after college. We had our ceremonial last crepes together in Tallahassee (a truly sad thought) and then headed back to Nicole’s place and spread out on her bed.

After a couple hours of Batman: the Brave and the Bold, (a truly cheesy campy show that’s too cute not to love) we started talking about The Name of the Wind again, and Nicole admitted that she’d started reading the second book even though she hadn’t graduated yet. “I can’t help myself. It’s too good.”

I completely understood. I love books like these ones, where you’re so excited to read them, to escape into the character’s lives and settings, that you ignore friends and let school fall by the wayside and don’t sleep and you just read and read and read and find yourself being super happy when people ignore you back, because it means you get to read more.

“Wanna read it out loud?” I asked, because this is what I’d done with Kat at the beginning of the semester. It was one of my favorite ways

We took turns passing the book back and forth. Seriously, best way to spend a day.

to spend an afternoon, and I liked the symmetry of reading the book with Kat at the beginning and with Nicole at the end of everything.

So that’s what we did. With wine in one hand and the book propped on my knees I started reading a particularly funny chapter out loud, giggling to myself even before I started.

“I don’t get it,” Nicole said when I was a page in, “what’s so funny about this?”

“Just wait.”

By halfway through we were howling with laughter. I had to put the wine down before I spilled. This is an example of the best kind of book — the kind that makes you feel happy, sad, mad, excited in the span of fifty pages with the power of words. (this is kind of mushy but whatever — a wannabe author always needs to write a love letter to the power of words)

But the day always has to end. We looked at the clock and realized it was six thirty, and I needed to pack and Nicole needed to pack and Florence needs to be put behind us.

(packing is fun until you get to the heavy lifting part, which Patricia and i got to today. we will proceed to flop on the bed and watch Psych.)

I’m going to miss this year. I’m going to miss my standing dates with friends — with Nicole on Fridays and Laura on Thursdays. I’ll miss living with Patricia and crashing at Ari’s when campus gets to be crazy. I’m going to miss the semester, and mostly I’ll miss the people, but I’m excited for next year too.

And I’m incredibly excited to spend four months not studying, four months at the beach, four months with my family, four months to detox and rejuvenate and remember why it is I go to school so far away anyway.

 

Mahjong (or: the necessity if the fourth)

In order to play mahjong you need four people. This probably made a lot of sense in China, with their 1 billion people who know ow to play, but in America it is hard to get four people who know how to play the game in one room.

Monday we packed, which involved walking through the rain to get boxes and drop off rented books, and it was thundering which scared me and I’d get startled by it and plow sideways into Patricia, who was wet and annoyed and didn’t find it very funny. By the end we each got a couple of cardboard boxes to haul home, and those got wet too.

So…find stuff on Netflix to watch (we’re back to West Wing) and pack and throw stuff around the room and say why aren’t we home yet and get annoyed that things like clothes are necessary for the rest of the week, making it impossible to pack all the clothes away.

By seven we were sprawled on beds, not moving, wishing Monday could melt into Friday, and that’s when Kat reminded me that mahjong needs four players to happen correctly, and did I have time for a game?

(A game takes about 6 hours)

But since I’d done be little I went over to Courtney’s and we started playing mahjong, knowing that it would probably be the last game of the Summer. Milo decided he wanted to play. Milo is a cat, and is not very good at mahjong but is instead more interested in sitting on your lap and purring.

We eventually indoctrinated another person into the cult of mahjong, I mahjonged so many times Kat threw tiles al me (to be fair, one of m hands was worth only 60 points) and was told that they’d never let me play with them again…

Until the next night, when Courtney called me at 10 pm. They needed a fourth.

With Nothing Else To Do…

…you start doing some very strange things.

Like on Friday, which is my favorite day of the week because it starts early, and Patricia and I do laundry (which just smells good) and watch Boy Meets World and talk about how they don’t make shows like this anymore, and we put on Darren Criss while we fold the nice new good smelling clothes and I leave at eleven to go to lunch with Nicole.

How can you not like a day that starts off like that? With crepes and talk about superheroes and lazy plans for New York and seeing each other at the beach, with serious conversations like war and not-so-serious ones, like why Benedict Cumberbatch should play Kvothe’s father in Name of The Wind, should it ever be made into a movie. And then we say how much we look forward to seeing each other every Friday, and I muse to myself that I may just have too many standing dates with my various friends, and then Nicole drops me back off at campus after giving me a hug and promising to see me next week.

Seriously — it’s a great way to spend a Friday morning. And then to follow it up with Psych, and laughing even though the plot lines are getting seriously sad? And then to follow that up with Glee, and laugh even though the plot lines are non-existent? And then to lazily talk about what we’re going to do for the rest of the day — end up sunning out on Landis with books and blankets and tea? How can you not love a day like that? Fridays, man. Sometimes I wish Fridays would never end.

The SLC — a full-sized movie screen that shows films on campus for free. One of my favorite places.

Patricia wanted to see Django Unchained at the SLC, and since it was the last movie the theater was playing for the semester I said sure, why not. It was only when we were at the theater that Patricia asked me whether I’d ever seen a Quentin Tarantino movie before.

“Nope,” I said, taking a sip of my tea — black and bitter, and Patricia always made fun of me for that.

“Oh,” she looked up from her coffee, “you might not like it very much. I don’t know. Maybe you will.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, shrugging, “blood doesn’t bug me.

After the movie, Patricia asked me on the walk back to the room whether I’d liked it, and I paused for just a little bit too long. She laughed a little, “yeah, it takes a little getting used to. Wanna order pizza?”

So we spent the rest of the evening with pizza and Rocky Horror, which just might be the most stereotypical way to spend a Friday night at a liberal arts college, but it was nice and we sang and did the Time Warp and ate a lot of pizza.

Saturday and Sunday passed much the same way. After a defunct mahjong game and an hour spent talking about graduation and books in a room high up in Smith, we went over to Laura’s house and caught up on Smash, which was a good thing because — and you probably should skip down a bit if you watch the show — I spent the rest of the night going, “yeah, that’s a great dinner you made Laura. I can’t believe Kyle was hit by a bus.”

Two hours later….”yeah, whatever, graduation. I can’t believe they’re killing Kyle.”

So that was my Saturday night. Kat and Laura and good and bad television and pulling a dog on my lap to cuddle with her…I miss my puppies.

And then yesterday…yesterday Patricia and I both slept until midmorning, then woke up and declared to each other 1) we had nothing to do for the rest of the week and 2) hunger. Lots of hunger.

So. Off to get donuts and tea, and bring a blanket to spread out no Landis, and an iPad full of stand up, and lay on your back and eat donuts and listen to stand up while watching Seniors scurry around, trying to take their graduation pictures. After an hour and a half of this past time, the sun was definitively up in the sky and it was hot, so we wandered back to the room so Patricia could write her paper and I could try to embroider the word COURAGE into a blanket, which takes way more time to do than you think it will.

And of course, if you’re going to do this you have to have a Star Wars marathon. Patricia and I scared each other by quoting the same lines at the same time. We’re merging into one person (“MAwaage. MAwaage is what bwwings us togewer today”)

It was not a productive weekend, minus me knitting half a blanket and submitting my papers for the end of term and learning I’m not getting a B in any of my classes and…okay, it wasn’t too bad in retrospect.

Five more of these days to go. One final in there somewhere. Lots of hugs and goodbyes and trying to see everyone before we go away for a summer/before people graduate. And then home, and my family, and my house and part of the country and beach. Life is good.