I, I, I, I will be fine

Scene: Me, driving home from work, singing BSB's hit "More than That", J.C. Chasez elegantly maneuvering between lanes and under the green lights of 28th street.

My singing, "I won't saaaaay those words, then taaaake them baaaaaaack", interrupted by my phone. Tom. A co-worker at Nat City (he works at the Mount Pleasant branch nowadays).

"Hi-Hello" I answer.

Tom is good kid (who likes to drunkenly text me little treasures like "a7re yzou aslept?" at 3AM on Wednesday nights). Emphasis on the good, as his Dad is a cop. I doubt Tom has ever had so much as an overdue library book. And, as a bank employee, he chastises me when my account goes into the red. Good kid, that Tom.


(Last summer, I was blonde and Tom was tan.)

Tom will be graduating this spring with a degree in broadcasting from CMU. He wants to be a news anchor. I keep him around so that he can introduce me to Matt Kirkwood, on the local level, and maybe even someday Brian Williams.



I would buy a Brian Williams Calendar, Swooooooon. (You ladies can keep your silver fox, Anderson Cooper.)

Anyway, after the bitching about our jobs, our conversation turns to our impending graduations.

"This is so much worse than high school senioritis." I tell Tom.

He agrees with me, but goes on to say "at least with high school, you knew what was coming next. I hate the anxiety of not knowing my next move."

I disagreed. An hour later, I stand by my disagreement.

The last twenty two years have been planned. The plans have changed, but I always knew my endgame. There is a natural progression, from high school to college, from the first job to the next (and then the next).

For the first time, I don't know where I will be a year from now.

I know where I want to be, but I don't know if it will happen.

Its kind of exciting.

Check Ignition and May God's Love be With You

I am in a constant state of counting down.

Countdown to my next paycheck...(nine days)
Countdown to Spring...(60 days)
Countdown to my birthday (May 27, for those interested)...(127 days)
Countdown to graduation...(????)
Countdown to moving away...(????)

Is this why I am such a boring person? I am so busy waiting for this moment to be over that I don't even consider what could be?

This isn't some uber-inspirational post about living for the moment, because in all honesty, I can't even begin to comprehend something like that.

The phrase is so overused, so cliche, that it has no real meaning to me.

However, a friend of mine was recently telling me about his Christmas break.

"Yeah, we just jumped in the car and took every freeway that said South," he told me. "Eventually we got to St. Petersburg[Florida]."

(Ahem) An impromptu 1,300 mile drive? Who is this guy? Doesn't he have a job to worry about? What about finding places to stay? Money for gas? What if the car broke down? Flat tire?

They spent one night in the car in Florida, another in a tent in a high school parking lot. And they have a story to tell.

What do I have to tell?

I spent Christmas break counting down the days until spring break (42 days).

Don't worry, I'm figuring this whole thing out. Perhaps I will someday learn to "live for the moment". Then I will have real stories to share.

We'll find we're never too far apart.

We spent this weekend in the lovely Chi visiting my hot-mess of a lady-friend, W.



We went to a fabulous bar in Wrigleyville that I now love, called Barleycorn's.

Being from a small scale city like Grand Rapids, I don't have much experience driving through large scale city freeways. Poor Robyn had to put up with me yelling at other drivers for cutting me off/tailing me, or pleading with them to let me merge, and asking where these additional lanes kept coming from. She's a good friend.

Evanston is lovely. No wonder Mean Girls takes place there.

We loved meeting all of Jenny's friends in the SLP program at Northwestern. I think Jen is exactly where she needs to be. I love it. and her. and Robyn.

I don't love the Pilot station that I stopped at on the way home that overfilled my gas tank, or the disapproving stares we got on the L-train for singing Journey with the drunk bum.

(or the disapproving stares we got for drinking beer out of mittens.)



Aren't people in the Chi used to seeing this?

Don't Worry About this Heart of Mine.

I'm in the process of letting go of someone.

The worst part isn't the realization that they won't be around any more, but that it seems they were never really there in the first place.

Did I imagine my own significance?

Why is it so hard for me to cut them off, but they don't miss me even a little bit?

I don't deal well with emotional mumbo jumbo. I think I get this from my Dad. Dave is very stoic. He ranges from pleased to irritated. He doesn't showcase his emotional spectrum, so I try not to.

When things start to get too ...heartfelt, I am the person that makes the awkward joke or abrupt subject change.

I don't like being vulnerable. Vulnerable means I'm weak, vulnerable means I'm foolish, vulnerable means I'm inadequate.

I love the way Scottish people says words like "ground"... "around"... "sound".

Love who you love

So let me tell you a little story about friendship.

(I will preface it by telling you all that I frequently find myself with financial woes, due to poor planning and frivolousness.)

So anyway...

This morning I left for work at about 7:50 AM. I needed to be there by 8:20, and it usually takes me about 20 minutes to drive from my house to work. I got onto 196 with little difficulty. As I merged in between a semi and a Volvo I looked down at my gas gauge. The orange needle wavered around an eighth of a tank.

"Oh Fabulous" I think to myself, as I pass the exit for 28th street (the only exit near a gas station until Fuller, a good eight miles away).

But I don't obsess too much about it, because A. I have $0.09 in my checking account anyway, so I couldn't really stop to get gas, and B. I decided that I could probably make it the ten miles to work on what I had sloshing around in my gas tank.

So I shot up a quick prayer anyway, just to be on the safe side, and continued on my merry way.

Until I got to the morning traffic jam on the freeway. Traffic was at a standstill. I looked down at my clock, 8:15. Its okay though, because my clock is five minutes fast, so really I had ten minutes to get to work.

I idle for a couple miles. I inch past the Chicago Drive exit, past the market ave exit.

I look down again. 8:21.

I look at my gas tank. Isn't idling bad for gas mileage? It must be, because my fuel light came on. I began to panic a bit. I hadn't run out of gas since I worked at Party City, five years ago. I could not be that car that dies on the freeway.

How humiliating!

People would drive by me. The nice ones would look at me in my little Alero, and flash their sympathetic eyes at me. The mean ones would swerve around me and honk and yell things. Plus I was wearing sweet little flannel pointy toed flats. Not the best footwear for a hike to the nearest gas station, where I couldn't buy gas anyway because I only have $0.09.

My panic progresses. Especially as time flies by. Seriously. I had four minutes to get to work. Didn't I just have ten? I was late two days last week too. Shoot.

So I grab my phone and call my boss's office.

"Please don't answer, please don't answer, please don't answer" I plead. Its much easier to leave a voice mail about this kind of thing.

One ring and she answers.

She tells me not to worry, other people called due to the traffic jam, "Try not to get too frustrated" she tells me.

One thing taken care of. I am still idling forward. My fuel light continues to blaze brighter than the "check engine" light that's been on since September.

We're barely moving. I realize that if I don't put gas in J.C. Chasez soon, we will be in the humiliating scenario I described.

I'm approaching the Lake Michigan drive exit. I think about Michelle. She lives just off of the exit. Less than a mile away. I call her.

"Can you do me a huge favor?" I ask her.

Long story short, the only person that has been in my life longer than my immediate family gave me $12 and pointed me in the direction of the closest gas station (Seriously, we played with wooden blocks in the church nursery together).

It was only by the grace of God that Michelle was home at that moment, awake, functioning, and carrying cash she could part with.

Love that girl.



Age nine.

Hot girl in a good mood...

Mustache dispensers should be mandatory in all establishments.

Other things that are funny:

Fundies.

And Shake Face.

Google both.

Stopping the loving, getting in,,,

I need to be careful.

I've been talking pretty candidly about my eventual flight from Michigan. And while it is in my head that this will happen before November, there is still the chance that it won't. Money...job...school...place to live, all are variables that could make my exodus a no-go.

Those are big variables. But, I think my sheer will and desperation for a change of pace can overpower them.

I've been thinking a lot about this and am slowly realizing that its not the people I want to leave behind, its not the city, and no, its not the four months of cloudy skies and lake effect blizzards.

Its me.

I want to leave myself behind. Last night I kept myself awake, replaying the four years I spent at JHS over in my mind. As long as I stay here, in this same spot, I will feel like the awkward, fat, pimply 17 year old girl with mismatched shoes and bad jeans.



Me, circa 2004. Also pictured, Ann's Van.

This girl had weird taste in music, as that was the year I developed an unhealthy obsession with Disney and Good Charlotte. She believed that Old Navy was the only store worth shopping, and fantasized about a home-schooled boy with a receding hairline. Eyebrow plucking was something she never considered and she colored her hair with a cap and a box. (She also carried a duct taped box of crayolas with her to each class).

If this had been your history, you would have trouble sleeping at night as well.

I've outgrown most of those habits, however I still sing along when "Just Around the Riverbend" pops up on my ipod, and as I type this I am wearing leggings from Old Navy.

But anyway. Five years later and I still feel the exact same way I felt when I was 17. Not a good thing for a girl embarking on the end of her college career. Its hard to find a high powered position when you feel like a sniveling pimply high school junior.

I know I don't look like that girl anymore. I keep my craziness under wraps, and I know how to handle myself in most social situations, but that girl is always in the mirror. She's always in the back of my mind. I need to leave her here for a while. That's why I want to go.

I want to meet all new people who don't know the girl who unsuccessfully ran for student council, stayed in choir beyond her prime, served as the publicist for the Thespian troupe, and worked at Party City.

This is where it gets good, right?

She's got you high...

I was reading the paper this morning over my bowl of Corn Chex and coffee. (I like to read the editorials and letters to the press. Grand Rapids is full of elderly embittered Dutchmen who hate all new things coming to the city. They voice their distaste by writing to the editor.)

Anyway... Mr. Rob Bliss was featured as a guest columnist today. He is definitely a music student, not a writer, but he expressed fantastic sentiment and said what I've been saying for years about my city.



I love Grand Rapids. I love that everything is becoming a little landmark. I love that it is being turned over to my generation. I love that people my age want to better this city. I'm excited to see where the city goes, as the community embraces the arts and becomes a medical mecca for the state.



The last few years have been tough on Michigan. My state was once a manufacturing powerhouse. I drive by empty assembly plants every day on my way to work. They are now the skeletal remains of what was once our claim to fame. Thousands of people lost their jobs and their homes as our industrial state disintegrated.

We didn't prepare ourselves for this inevitable shift.

I don't want to sound cold, or insensitive, but this change is going to be cathartic. Michigan is no longer tethered to the automotive industry. We are in a position to diversify the state. There is so much here to see, love, and explore. Its almost like we get to start over.



Grand Rapids is in the forefront of that. We have the fabulous GRAM, wonderful restaurants, the medical mile, a developing nightlife, ArtPrize, $1 beer nights at the Griffins Games, and so many places designed to be the area's best kept secrets.



I wish I could take Grand Rapids with me when I go.