Saint Didacus

Saint Didacus of Alcalá, (Latin: Sanctus Didacus Complutensis), Saint Diego: the patron saint and namesake of San Diego, CA; he was a lay brother of the Order of Friars Minor who died at Alcala de Henares, Spain, November 12, 1463.

It started with a chicken pot pie and a side of col slaw, then there was a fish taco with green chili sauce, a strawberry milkshake and fries at In-and-Out, a fish sandwich on the pier, a home-made spam sandwich and a large green salad with from-scratch Italian dressing, and of course, we fed the ducks at the lake and I ate ripe tomatoes and zesty green beans from the vine too. I'd like to say the eating (and the tummy aches from over-stuffing myself) ended eventually while I was visiting my grandparents in San Diego, but it never did. Here now, weeks later, I think I am still full. Honesty. As my step-dad said, "we won't have to eat for a year at the very least."

I could write gobs and gobs about San Diego and all that I hold in my heart about the place I proudly call my birth home. It's a city that fills me up, in every sense of the word. And this visit produced no different a feeling than it always does. Here are a couple of antidotes you might enjoy.

The sun was setting, all the windows open, letting the whisk of warm air float in on a glow of orange. My grandma, a petite woman about 5' 2" with a perky step, flipped on the kitchen light and flushed the orange away with a florescent clear. She asked her enduring question, "can I get you anything to eat." I sunk down into a padded bar chair and shook my head no...at first. Then, on a whim, "Wait! actually, would YOU like ME to fix YOU something?" She hesitated. Then asked what I was planning to fix. I told her about my sister's invention. "It's to die for!" (note that my grandmother and I act like two teenage girls in the fifties when we get together, it's a hoot). The invention consists of vanilla ice cream (which my step-dad kept weeping on and on about how you can't just eat it plain) + milk (just a little bit) + and Ovaltine. Insistently, my grandmother declined. "Uck," made with a funny face, "Ovaltine and ice cream, no thanks." Shocked, I asked her why she didn't like Ovaltine. Her story: her mom "made" (oh dear god!) her and her siblings drink it all the time when they were little and she didn't care for it. okay, so then my step-dad and I gave her a hard time. "So, you're saying you haven;t had it since you were 7 or eight years old. How do you remember what it tastes like?" "It's JUST chocolate milk, who doesn't like chocolate milk?" "MADE you drink chocolate milk?! Oh you poor thing." She was a good sport and took our ribbing...but still didn't eat my concoction, even though I swore I saw her eye it.

Okay okay, so then we went to the lake one afternoon to ooggle all the fancy RV's and feed the ducks. We bought some corn feed and plopped down on a shady gazebo step. I started tossing feed. My first toss was a paltry handful, then I added a little more, gradually building the amount of yellow meal in my hand until, my grandpa said so matter-of-fact-ly, "Just throw the whole lot! They're not proud." I giggled. That's right. If there is one creature on earth that doesn't mind scrambling around like crazy folk to squabble and peck-to-the-death for food, it would indeed be residential pond ducks.

It was late at night and the sky was a solid shade of deep ocean blue. No stars. Just dim city lights glowing in the far off distance. This made the entire block pitch-black except for a yellow orb of light emanating from our open garage door. Inside are walls lined with wood working tools and garden-planting seeds, a single overhead light hung above a smooth slab of polished-cold pavement. The cars had been parked in the driveway earlier and the tennis ball on it's tattered string that my grandparents use to gauge their park job swung like a decapitated head. Flickers of bugs flying past the light, seizing in the warm night's air, made everything seem like a disco. Heaven, actually. I put on my skates, laced them tight, and crossed over circle after circle, feeling the self-generated wind whip past. An old boyfriend's pair of basketball short and a tank top, listening to the faint cry of modest mouse dribble from the radio, skating skating, skating. Oh, it was glorious. p.s. I visited Sin City Skates and bought new top stops!

okay, I must confess, I've been sitting here trying to find the words to describe it, but I can't. I fail. So my advice to you is...by a plan ticket to southern California and wake up at 5 or 6am in the morning just to watch the sun rise, turn the sky into a sorbet of a million flavors, hear the hidden birds tirp and see the people slowly emerge from their sleepy homes. Mornings in California are one of my favorite experiences.

p.p.s. hey look! it's a mini car motor, it works and everything!







hey look again! I wish my middle name were "hot wheels." we also visited this nursery/classic car museum combo!



and then there's always the zoo.

If it weren't for the unbearable traffic and high cost of living, I'd return to live.

tersely

tersely: brief and to the point; effectively concise

hmm, wish I could do things tersely. but no.

I’d rather not talk about moving to Boise. Too stressful. So, let’s give "tersely" a shot and leave it at, I ate a really delicious salad from hotel room service and I, for the first time in my life, experienced two thoughts at once.

oh. no. I feel a loquacious ramble coming on...

That being said, I am safe and soundly moved into a house and am working my old job at Albertsons until I find a better paying position with a more consistent schedule.

Dun dun dun. I got a phone call from the Lt. at McCord Air Force base today. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but I’ve got options. So, pretty much he told me that I am a strong candidate, except for my AFOQT scores are a little low and that I am a little young to have been selected. He let me know that with only a 9% selection rate, candidates who get selected are usually in their mid to late twenties and already have some managerial experience. So needless to say, I was not selected for this year’s officer training board.

This, although disappointing, does not mean the end of the world. The application process alone has made me reconsider, and to some extent solidify, my values. I’ve realized that I need and want a career in uniform (not necessarily military, but along the same lines) and that I am young and should seek more life-experience and world travel with a purpose. So as for my options, I can retake the AFOQT and reapply in any of the coming years. But, I think my game plan has shifted now. It’s not necessarily plan B…more like plan ½ of A. I am moving to Boise and starting graduate school in the fall and will use the next two to three years to earn my MLIS, gain managerial/leadership experience, and well, shenanigan-around and about. I’ve been so driven the last few years that I think it’s high time to take more unexpected opportunities. When I informed my sister of this, she said, “Please don’t get pregnant.” Don’t worry, I have no plans of pregnancy (at least not until I am well into my 30’s and maybe even indefinitely- don’t tell my mother). And that’s not what I mean anyway. What I mean is that I need time to dick around. I need to skate derby, sit on the roof with a lawn chair and fireworks, knit-bomb*, giggle at my siblings when they’ve had too many twisted-teas, have absurd conversations with my niece about anything and everything, bake cookies at one am in the morning and burn the char that has been building up like black guck on the sides of my brain these past few years. I know that an earlier version of my-self would have panicked at the thought of this; they would have cowered in defeat at the apparent stagnant-ization of progress.

I’m 22 and sometimes, most times actually, I think I’m 40 and in the middle of a quarter-life crisis, and other times I feel blue and like life sucks balls. But truth is, it doesn’t, and even if it does there are things about it, good and bad, that make that blue turn grey turn white, and make things oddly peace in all the chaos. This, this is what I need. I need time to remember what’s like to be spunky, to be curious, to be okay…with everything. In fact, I need time to just exist. I’ll work, I’ll go to school, I’ll have my goals, I’ll still be tenacious and driven and dramatic, but lighthearted this go-around. I do indeed want to accomplish all my goals, but later rather than sooner. Take my time and ensure that I’ll make it, spunky as ever, to my 40^th and then 80^th and then 100^th year, one of those grandmas that plays bingo and wears the giant plastic sunglasses and curly-q visors and gobs of fake jewelry and power walks with her pals, one of those that still has a glow to her face and a zest in all she does.

*for more on knit-bombing see earlier post...

oh and...as for the two thoughts at once...I normally have a lot of back burners on in my mind. How I think is like a rapid fire gun, I grab, grab, grab thoughts from a giant floating cloud. But I never really think two thoughts at the same exact time. Never have I heard my brain's voice speak two words simultaneously, that is until I was driving and thought, AT THE SAME TIME, "i've never been tot hat rest stop before" and "I've never been to that Mexican restaurant before." This is silly, but I thought it was profound at the time and will probably continue to condition my brain to think like this, or maybe not. Thinking get's me into trouble sometimes. The brain, what a crazy thing it is.

yarn bombing

yarn bombing: also know as knit-tagging, Yarn bombing, yarnbombing, yarnstorming, guerrilla knitting, or graffiti knitting is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted cloth rather than paint or chalk; my new obsession.

I'm in San Diego as I type, visiting my grand parents. Today I have learned, from none-other-than my grandmother, how to CROCHET! I'm excited. She gave me all here needles, 9 mm even. and we bought some yarn and a pattern book. This makes me even more nerdy, didn't know it was possible, but it is. oh, it really is!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/fashion/creating-graffiti-with-yarn.html

leitmotif

leitmotif: a dominant and recurring theme; in music drama, a marked melodic phrase or short passage which always accompanies the reappearance of a certain person, situation, abstract idea, or allusion in the course of the play; a sort of musical label.

I was thinking...and I tend to get in trouble when I think...but, upon reflecting on my recent graduation (and receiving my last semester's grades. they weren't bad, instead, a simple reminder of my troubles), I have decided to vent. Despite such a wonderful accomplishment, I am a tad disgruntled with higher education. Don't get me wrong. I am grateful to have been allotted such a catalytic experience. And to have realized that I have and always will be a life-longer learner, inquisitive and curious in every regard. AND grant it, higher education has become a conventional necessity in today's economic market. But still I am peeved. I suppose it's because I now recognize that I could have gotten my BA in far less time and for far less money (especially if I had fleshed out my running start classes in high school and chosen a different university). And again, I'm tankful for all the opportunities Lewis & Clark College has provided me, as well as all the amazing (and at times astonishing) people I have met. However, with greatness comes pretentiousness and politics. Throughout college, I have struggled to reconcile my strong sense of work (or what some have entitled the "blue-collar gene") with the quirks of academia. For example, I like competition, but not of the academic flavor. When the competition exists between those you hold little to no respect for, or worse...between you and yourself, it can become maddening. Essentially, you start to degrade your motivation over simply receiving a B due to personal professor bias and end up exhausted, with no fire left to fight. During these past two years, feeling burned out and well-beyond ready to move forward, I have butted heads with aloof and insincere professors and sunk into a well of apathy. Despite the struggles, I have managed to graduate with honors...but I certainly don't want to ever feel this again. I vow, as always, to do everything with intention and the fullest of effort...but this time I will concede if there exists no passion, no respect, or no pride in what I do. I hate to disclose this, but academia is a joke; higher education is overpriced. I boldly believe that individuals should be cultivating their own knowledge through new technological and creatively collaborative means instead. I also believe that every individual should commit to some form of self-sacrifice. Although I may not fully endorse altruism, I still think there lies an exponential amount of merit in service to an entity that feeds your soul and benefits those you most cherish and respect. I suppose this avowal (although, again, I do not believe in absolute truths) is testament to my future goals and is intended to squash all that has bogged down my motivation these past few years. To heck with this, do what you love and do it with the utmost effort, care, and sincerity.

commencement

commencement: A beginning or start.

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that the name for graduation (or the completion of study) is "to begin?" Oh bother.

I am also bothered by the fact that my graduation robe looks a little like a trash bag. And what are all these cords for? Why are there so many and what do all the colors mean?

Well, I'll tell you. So I got a green cord for graduating with Latin honors (cum laude 3.7 GPA), and a gold pin for being initiated into the honors fraternity Phi Betta Kappa, and multi-colored ribbons for studying abroad in Ecuador, and a hot pink ribbon just for being awesome. Woah. Way to be vain, monique. I apologize, but a little bragging was necessary. Here are some picture form my college graduation:

I drew this

wanna talk outside my van?

library worker's senior dinner...makes me sound old

phi beta kappa ceremony

apparently it was my goal to look as creepy as possible while packing

let's just say...

let's just say, "we're just getting comfortable feeling one another up, and then we'll hit that"...out of context, this would be dirty had I not heard it during roller derby practice. I am going to miss skating with Rose City. but now it's on to TVR!

and

I just picked up 22 pairs of shoes of the floor of my room. Despite being a bit of a neat freak, I have a bad habit of taking my shoes off and not putting them away :P

let's just say...

anybody want to play?

comic from toothpastefordinner.com

I'm quitting life to skate and jump around on inanimate objects in pursuit of the best game of the Floor in Made of Lava ever and exponential happiness. Who wants to join me?

sometimes, as Tupac put it, "you can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened...or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on."

I had so many problems, and then I got me a Walkman

I had so many problems, and then I got me a Walkman: lyric from Black Francis' I Heard Ramona Sing. never were there truer words.

It's amazing to me how simply listen to a song can alter the human mood. Ahh, the science of musicology.

anyway. damn does J Masics know his way around a distortion pedal or two.


Nick and I went to see J. Mascis (lead singer of Dino Jr) at Dante's on the 30th. I only ever have the most glowing of things to say about the adventures of Nick and myself. So, I'll keep it to a simple "Nick found us a creative and amazing parking spot, and we were sad that we didn't run into the drunkard that offered to buy me a sandwich with his food-stamps while we were getting our tickets from the box office." pant, pant, now take a breath. Okay, as for the music...The Blackheart Procession opened. At first, I couldn't tell if I hated or loved their music. They started their set with a depressing love ballad- clad with simple piano and the musical saw (yes the music saw). but the by the third or fourth song I leaned over to Nick and said in his ear, "I'm pretty sure this is one of those bands that could start and end with the same song and no one would notice." and boy did they play a long set. But, alas! J Masics came on and he was ah-mazing. As always. This man is a legend in my eyes...awkward...but still a legend. After the show, Nick and I hung around and the roady gave us each a guitar pick. Mine's pictured below.