Anyway. All I’m trying to say is that I’ve watched about four billion movies; read countless articles; written approximately two bad poems; made wine-induced, unnecessary to-do lists; evaded tornadoes by writing poor parodies of pop songs; created ridiculous kitchen concoctions; and spent quality time with many, many dear friends.  But I need a little something more. So, dear Universe, hit me.

In the meantime, I will continue salivating over these damn cute cupcakes I successfully made 6 dozen of last week. (6 dozen? Are you kidding me? I told you I need a job.) Behold, graham cupcakes with lime cream cheese frosting.

Thank you, mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com.

• I went canoeing on the Kalamazoo on Friday. The water was wide. And shallow. Except for where we found the continental shelf.
• There is a larger spider on my ceiling right now and, despite my height, I am far too cozy to reach it.
• A 2 year-old I know loves “fiders.” He would love that thing on my ceiling right now.
• I lit a kitchen towel on fire last night at a friend’s house. Luckily, the situation was neither dangerous nor another exercise in what-not-to-do-to-a-grease-fire.
• I’m going to New Orleans soon, which is good because it’s been a long time.
• There is too much construction going on in the state of Michigan right now.
• I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna kill that spider.
• The Mountain Goats.
• The End.

• Sharing good music with a dear friend
• Folding and putting away three loads of clean laundry
• The munchpuppy falling asleep on my legs while I watched the Food Network
• Unearthing over $100 while cleaning my room
• Reading an entire book in [almost] one sitting
• Discovering the similarities between Robinson Crusoe and Home Alone
• Sharing an afternoon of coffee / tea  / work with a sister
• Warm cookies out of the oven
• Scattered adventures + discovery because of coupons
• Compartmentalizing happiness to save for later, as I really need it

They never put up a monument for a cynic or a statue of a hypocrite. Turn it up, turn it over, tune in and change your mind.

Life has been a whirlwind these past few months. Please generously allow me that trite cliche, and also that bit of redundancy. My writer’s mind seems to be hibernating behind new neural pathways full of medical editorial jargon and illustrations of brains. I have been working. I have been paying my bills. I have also avoided grocery shopping, and the heat stays set at a brisk 65*F. I’m not complaining; this is my life. I lamented aloud the other day about the fact that I have written but a handful of poems since submitting my thesis and final portfolio 7 months ago. I find a bit of peace, however, in the joy of knowing that I have poems in my mind, if not on the page. I’ve decided that the day my internal voice ceases to poeticize the world around me will be a day worth mourning. And until then, I’ll let my poetic self run the ticker tape around the bottom of my brain until my pen meets paper.

So that’s it, I suppose. I could write more but that would be too indulgent after such a long absence. My voice hurts.

I am doing well, thanks for asking. I am thankful for employment, thrilled at the idea of long-term employment with this editing job, and so grateful for all of the perks that come along with it. The work is new and exciting, and while it stretches my brain from editor to neurosurgeon-in-training and back again, I am finding the exercise exhilarating. Do you know the difference between an m-dash and an n-dash? Do you know how to write an operative dictation for a shunt replacement? I’m learning. Mostly learning the ins and outs of formatting and editing, but certainly dropping some knowledge about the neuro side of things, too. Neat.

In related news, I’m glad I have something to tell people when they ask what I’m doing these days. I graduated from college in May(ish…shhh). I moved out of my parents’s house a couple months ago. I am still working at Caribou (can’t deny that discount?), but I am also working as the editor for a small medical publishing company that has great potential for growth.

Growth. There it is again. I have very little to complain about. What a dramatic change that is from just a few months back. I am not bogged down in the day-to-day drudgery of college life, keeping up with everyone else’s totally justifiable histrionics. I am not bogged down in my own drudgery, in constant flux between mania and depression. I am growing. Stretching. Pulling my lines taut. Preparing for flight.

It is migratory season, after all.

Quiet. That is what has been missing from my life in recent times. The internal beat of my days has been off, ticking frantically under the collapsing weight of imposed responsibility, fear. But as of late, I’m finding myself busy but happy, tired but fulfilled. I’m reading, writing, editing, painting, re-learning linear equations and polysyllabic words. I’m walking miles, pushing a stroller and reclaiming my internal rhythm, beat. I am embracing form.

And it’s working.  I am significantly happier than I was back in May.  I have taken time to breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth.  I have embraced the fragmented vision of now.  And really, I’m learning that I can’t ask for much more.  Perhaps I’m full of trite revelations better suited for a Lifetime Original Movie, but I am quite pleased with the summer skin I have donned.  I certainly did not plan for things to happen as they have, but I have fully embraced the mysterious qualities of my unknown.

In a couple weeks I am moving out, pretending like the idea of a mini-writer’s commune will be everything we dream of.  I am employed twice-over right now, with the promise of significant babysitting gigs still taking hold.  Life is pretty damn good, yo.  Perhaps this is just the calm before the storm–hurricane season has been quiet so far this year–but I do believe this calm has adequately prepared me for whatever is next.  And I like that.

Oh, and I miss you.  All of you.

I am not home at this address.  I find it strange.  To say that I’ve slept in many beds in the past year is a dramatic overstatement, full of all the wrong kinds of suggestions.  But it’s mostly true: I don’t know where to lay my head at night.  I tend to pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere–the movie theatre in Kentucky during Tomb Raider, an air mattress perched atop a cot in New Orleans, in an open field under the stars up north–but I’m learning that there is a difference between sleep and rest.  And I’m feeling quite restless.

In two days I will embark on a trek, meandering across and up the state of Michigan, through the UP and on to Wisconsin for the summer.  In the coming days I will lay my head in 5 different places, the last of which will become another semblence of a home.  But before this happens I have to force my way through piles of clothing, tearing apart my childhood room which has been overtopped with vestiges of the past 4 years of my college life.  It’s the compartmentalizing that gets me every time.  Half of my stuff needs to go in bags for donations.  The other half of my stuff needs to be divided between what goes with me and what stays.  And again I find myself–and my stuff–hanging in the airspace between here and there, yesterday and tomorrow.   I don’t know where to begin.

I don’t know where to end, either.  I am frantically applying for jobs, hoping to earn employment come August.  The uncertainty of what happens after this idyllic summer leaves me restless.  In this restless state, the best I can do is keep moving in a feigned forward motion.  I smile through the congratulations and the questions, banking cautiously on the fact that with so many options, something will work out.

“You could make up a list of the things you want–could be anything.  When you’ve crossed them all off and there’s nothing left, just start again.” – Gomez

It’s been too long.  This semester.  This last semester.  Describe it in five words: exhillerating, exhausting, unexpected, nauseating, some-kind-of-wonderful.  Okay, I cheated.  I am not sure what I expected coming into this semester.  I think about how it started: after a whilrwind road trip from New Orleans.  We left at five in the morning (or something like that), payed our toll to get across the mighty Mississippi, bid farewell to the East where I lived last summer, and cruised across the border as daylight overcame us.  A snowstorm through the northern states, and too many pit-stops for a car full of young women swept up in the spirit of New Orleans.  We made it to Michigan by midnight, managed to get into our homes, dug the campus safety van out of the snow, and fell asleep with a beer in hand.

Who knew where it would go from there?  My last semester.  I better make it count.  And here I am, a mere two weeks away  from my graduation and I’m caught in a mysterious mental limbo.  I have had the time of my life here.  My Albion, dear Albion, much of who I am is indebted to you.  I hate to get all nostalgic now, as I sit in the KC on a Saturday night opting for furious paper writing instead of drunken debauchery.  My head is spinning as I look out on campus from the fourth floor window.  There is so much history here, and when I walk across that stage in two weeks, I will leave behind my stories.  It’s one of those feelings of being part of something so much bigger than myself; but I am just me.  Teeny-tiny, lil ol’ me.

I’ll move on.  I’m excited for the summer.  I’m heading straight down to New Orleans (sounds like a familiar theme, eh?) right after graduation, hoping that all of my worldly posessions can fit in the family vehicle headed back to GP.  I’ll spend a week or two down there, then head back to Michigan.  Thankfully, I’ll have some time home in GP for a couple weeks and then I’m heading on a grand adventure up through Northern Michigan to get Ashley and then over to Wisconsin to work at a camp for eight weeks.  Sounds like a pretty solid summer, basking in the inevitable joy of summer camp.

In unrelated news, my mother informed me on Thursday that she is retiring at the end of this year.  I’m not sure how I feel about having two retired parents.  I mean, good for them.  And I suppose it encourages me to get moving on my own future plans, which as of yet are unsettled.  I’m torn between Louisiana and Michigan come fall, and I honestly don’t know where I’ll end up.  The merits of living at home and working at the coffee shop and babysitting are pretty high.  I mean, I’ll bank a ton of cash and I can work on studying for the GRE and applying to grad schools.  But then, going to Louisiana and working also sounds pretty primo.  We’ll see.  One day at a time, and for now I need to focus on the retroactive (read: late) papers that I need to complete before the weekend is over.  I’m hoping to get to the end of this night in time to share a six-pack of beer with close friends.

Okay, sorry my oh-so-avid readers that this post was not more thrilling.  It’s scattered.  I’m scattered.  That should be enough insight for tonight.

Here’s why it’s hard: I had never felt so prepared for an interview in my life.  I had never felt so qualified for a position, as if my skill set was meant for the program.  I had never invested so much into researching a position and being absolutely sure that it was what I wanted to do.  And my mother, so adamantly against this, has gotten her way.  Not that I’ve told my parents yet that I wasn’t accepted.  Because it feels like every last thing I keep lamenting about this program feels like my mom saying, “I told you so.”

I can’t bring myself to tell my parents that I didn’t get this job.  Not that they have been sitting around waiting for the news.  But my mom just has taken such distinct pleasure in trying to make me feel like shit when I mentioned anything about TFA.  I don’t want her grinning from ear to ear when she tells her colleagues at lunch or the women in choir that I didn’t get the job.  I don’t want her nagging me about what else I should be doing.  And yet, simultaneously, I can’t stand the thought of letting her and my dad down.  Because, despite how she feels about TFA, I know she would be able to muster up some pride in the fact that one of her kids made it through college, got a degree, and was employed shortly thereafter.

It just kills me that my older sister turns 27 tomorrow and is still unemployed, immature, and bitter.  My parents have depleted their savings paying for her over the past nine years.  My younger brother dropped out of college after his first semester.  He told my mom as he dropped her off at the airport.  Smooth move.  So he’s back living at home and working at Kroger.  Perhaps my perception is all fucked up, but I feel an enormous weight on my shoulders to be successful, and soon.  I can’t imagine that my parents have the stamina to maintain the life of me, too.

Anyway.  This is quite a bit of processing a situation that still has my eyes welling up with tears when I think about it.  And that’s big for an emotionless creature like me.  It just feels like I had been strung along since last May by recruiters who affirmed my abilities to be an ideal candidate for the job.  So then i got excited about it, did my research, honed my skills, and wound up for a stellar final interview.  And what killed the most was the six week break between the final interview and the final letdown.  And those were six weeks in which I had to perform at social functions back home, smile through clenched teeth when people asked about what I’d be doing after graduation.  I needed to be dropped on my head sooner than the first day of classes.

Oh well.  At least I’m excited for my classes this semester.  And at least my bottom-feeders are back from abroad.  Bless them, really.  We’ve spent the past six nights ten shades of not sober, catching up on bygone days and sharpening our wit.  And last night when I shut myself off in a fit of uncharacteristic mourning, they showed up at my front door like, as Strangalang put it, “The mother fucking fourwise-men!”  Caroline handed me two chocolate bars.  Strangalang handed me a half-gallon of ice cream.  Anne pulled a six-pack of Bell’s Amber out of her bag.  And Petey tossed me a pack of Marb Lights and a very patriotic lighter.

“Somewhere there’s a place where your intellect means more than your degree.  But this life is temporary.  What matters in the end are smiles and laughter, sharing the good times with all your friends.”