NaNoWriMo

I know it's still 6 months away, but I figure blogging here on occasion and writing daily at 750words will hopefully train me for NaNoWriMo.

For those of you who don't feel like clicking on the link, you lazy individuals, it is a month long contest in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. You may be wondering how many words one must write a day to keep a pace that will help them finish in time. The answer is 1,666.67. I know that seems like a lot, but I bust out the 750 daily in an average time of 12 minutes, so doubling that will be equal to about half an hour. In theory, that should be easy. I don't have any novel ideas in mind at the moment, but I've got half a year to brainstorm. 

I was wanting to run a marathon this year but Boyfriend told me that those are things people train many, many months for, sometimes even a year. And I'm still new to this whole running thing. So in an effort to accomplish a significant feat in 2011, since a marathon is not in my feasible realm of accomplishments, I have signed up for NaNoWriMo and will be putting my literary skills to the test this November. 

Besides, mental exercises require far less physical output to master than physical feats :P

...deeply solidified in cement made of gumption

I've been writing this blog for a little over three months now. Yay, commitment! Granted, April has proven to be the  most productive of those three, with nearly half of my postings occurring in this month alone. But it definitely takes a while, especially for someone who procrastinates as much as I do, for habits to be formed and then deeply solidified in cement made of gumption. 

I find that if things don't have deadlines, I'm pretty much thoroughly incapable of completing them in a timely manner. Even when things do have deadlines, I am hard pressed to finish them on time. I'm thankful that for the most part, my life has no deadlines at the moment. I set deadlines for myself, but I usually give in to them and just do whatever I want anyway. Haha. I'm really bad at telling myself I'm going to do something and coming through with the wherewithal to make it happen. I don't think I've ever used wherewithal in a written sentence. I'm not even sure if I used it correctly there. 

I think I've finally gotten over my hesitation to post anything if it didn't explicitly have to do with Chicago. Although the original intention of this blog was to document this new adventure in my life, I think now I will permit myself to post things that are completely unrelated to my move/life in the Mid West. In all actuality, the people who read this are probably the ones who would listen to anything I have to tell them, regardless of whether it was related to Chicago or not :P 

So from here on out, I will no longer be afraid to post blogs that are "off-topic" because as leader and ruler of this blog, I do hereby declare that anything goes! :)

However, in an effort to slowly wean myself off solely Chicago related posts, here is a picture of my drive home tonight. The skyline gets me every time.

It is, Brother. It truly is.

This post isn't at all Chicago related, but it's something that made me laugh. And think. And I maybe can find a few places to squeeze in references to Chicago :P

My little (I guess 22 isn't so "little" anymore) sister, who I usually refer to as Brother, and I have a unique relationship. We can talk without talking. We find many of the same things amusing. We share a ton of similarities (though we clearly have our differences) in an almost twin-like way. 

Growing up I kind of morphed into this older sister/third parent role. I'm not quite sure why I evolved into a  kid who responded to the word, "Mom" but I did and as a result I have always felt a lot older than Brother, even though we're only 4 years, 3 months, and 1 day apart. It may be a result of our personalities, or maybe we babied her growing up. But one thing is for certain, no one can make us laugh like each other. 

Brother is girly-er than me and often experiments with various makeup and hair products so when I ran out of curl cream this morning, I knew just who to call. She recommended one and gave me a few tips on how to handle the few strands of hair I have that are refusing to be wavy like the others. Normally, I would encourage such behavior out of my hair. However, I have discovered that in Chicago, the old saying "April showers bring May flowers" holds true and as a result I have refused to straighten my hair for the past three weeks or so because I can't justify doing all that work just to have it frizz up the moment I walk out the door. It's definitely helpful to have someone who shares my DNA and can assist me and relate to my lifelong battle against wild Hungarian Jew-fro hair. 

I then proceeded to tell her how the girls I nanny for bought this product today: 

Specifically in this design:

And this is the part of my story that is probably only funny to us. I said to her, "It reminded me exactly of that dehydrated baton we have." And she knew precisely what I was talking about. We then went back and forth about how visually appealing and enjoyable that dehydrated baton was. 

The dehydrated baton wasn't always so dehydrated. In its prime, the baton was a beauty. It was the same length as a standard baton, but instead of being made of a solid material, its center was filled with water that was home to the most pleasing glitter you'll ever lay eyes on. We literally spent hours (Cumulatively, not consecutively. We weren't that weird.) staring at the baton, turning it over and watching the glitter gather together in clumps as it floated down from one end to the other. I don't remember exactly when this wondrous toy came into our possession, but I know it was mine and it probably appeared earlier than my 10th birthday. I also know I never used the baton for actual baton-ing purposes. It was always only used for gawking and staring. 

On the phone as I referenced the dehydrated baton that was now full of clumpy glitter, Brother just made some half-words and noises that completely spoke to me and made sense. We didn't have to really talk about the baton because we both knew what the baton meant. We both knew how majestic it was. We recently saw the baton when I was packing my things to move here and we sat and looked upon it in awe, just as we did when we were kids. I remember asking her if I should throw it away, since half its water had inexplicably evaporated even though the rubber ends of the baton are impossible to remove. We looked at each other and without speaking, knew that there was no way we could ever willingly part with the baton. It was just...the best. It reminds me of my childhood and makes me happy whenever I think about the way the glitter would fall together, collecting more and more pieces as it descended to the bottom of the baton. 

Apparently Brother feels the same way, because shortly after we hung up, she posted this on my Facebook:

And the caption read, "It's beautiful."

It is, Brother. It truly is.

:)

Hah. Hahahahahahaha. Heeeee, hooooo. Haaaaaa

I hit a major milestone today. Well technically yesterday. I always get a little confused when it comes to discussing days because my life clock does not run on the same schedule as everyone else's. It's 1:43 (technically Friday) in the morning right now but I still consider this day to be the end of Thursday because I haven't gone to bed for the night from waking up on Thursday day. Does that make any sense at all? In actuality, the day of the week in no way impacts the happenings of my major milestone so all this blabber is really for no good reason. Hah.

Back to the original topic: My car hit the 100,000 mile marker! Well technically it hit 230,760, but to me that is 100,000 miles. It made me think about where I was in life 100,000 miles ago. Hah. Hahahahahahaha. Heeeee, hooooo. Haaaaaa. Ohhhh, man. If 100,000 miles ago, which was January 22, 2006 to be exact, you would have told me that this would be my life, I would never have believed you. 

Allow me to provide you with a brief list of attributes about where I was in life 100,000 miles ago. 

• I was a young, 21 year old spring chicken. I was just a month into my twenty-first year when I bought my car. My first non-embarrassing, non-smoke-pours-out-of-the-hood-when-I-stop-at-stoplights, non-geriatric, non-built-in-the-1980s car. 
• I was single. Very single. It was coming up on 2 years since I had last had a boyfriend. 
• I was working full time at a self storage company, making way more money than any 21 year old needs. 
• I was getting ready to finish my last semester at RCC before (hopefully) being accepted and transferring to Cal State San Marcos to pursue my B.A. in Liberal Studies.
• I had been a vegetarian for 3 months :P

For those of you who enjoy numbers, chew on these facts:

• I drove to and from San Marcos roughly 400 times for a total of approximately 21,000 miles.
• I drove to and from Huntington Beach roughly roughly 300 times for a total of approximately 18,000 miles.
• I drove to and from Las Vegas once for a total of 425 miles.
• I drove to and from San Antonio once for a total of (at least) 3,000 miles.
• I drove to, but not from, Chicago once for a total of 2,104 miles.

These are all low-ball estimates and alone they tally up to 44,500 miles, so you can see just how much I have driven in the past five years and four months.

The following is a list of some of the major events have occurred during the past 100,000 miles:

• I completed both my Bachelor's degree and my Multiple Subject Teaching Credential! :)
• I went through 7 different jobs. 
• I've moved 6 times.
• I met three of my four besties at CSUSM.
• I've taught over 100 students.
• I went over 4 years without eating meat.
• I took a whirlwind, 42 hour trip to The Windy City where, in a bar, I met and danced with the most gorgeous boy I've ever seen.
• I relocated from the only city I'd ever known in Southern California to Chicago, Illinois.
• I couldn't be happier :)

One hundred thousand miles ago, I could never have imagined that this is where I'd be and I pretty much still have one of those, "Wow, this is really my life?!" moments everyday. But in a good way. A very good way. 

Last Monday, I nearly pooped my pants

Last Monday, I nearly pooped my pants. For real. Not because of an inability to control my bowels, which is a reality I've faced more often than I'd like to admit, but because of the physical reactions that happen when my fight-or-flight response is triggered. I'll expand on that. 

If you know me, or have read any of my previous blogs, you know I suffer from Scelerophobia, which is a fear of robbers/bad men. Or more specifically in my case, a fear of robbers, rapists, basement monsters, murders, torturers, home invaders, slashers, sadists, etc. (I probably should have listed murders, who are real, before the most likely, non-existent basement monsters, but...meh.) At least 3-4 times a week, something happens here at the house (usually a scary noise or when the front porch light that is on a motion sensor turns on seemingly unprovoked at 1 in the morning) when I am alone that causes me to frantically text Boyfriend or call a family member, or in intense instances, both. Monday was definitely a "both" day.

I was in the kitchen, getting things ready to make dinner when all of a sudden I heard the back door, more specifically the storm door, fly open very loudly and then slam shut!!

A storm door, for my West Coast readers, is essentially a screen door made of glass that resembles this: 

(My storm door, however, was seemingly built during the Middle Ages and is decrepit and rickety and only has half of its indoor handle left and looks nothing like the above picture. )

So there I am in the kitchen, my sympathetic nervous system cranked into overdrive, heart pounding, adrenaline coursing through my body, breathing fast and shallow. And I am faced with a choice. Do I continue to stand there, frozen in the middle of the room, an easy target for my attacker to ambush at any moment? Or do I gather the seemingly-nonexistent-but most-likely-just-really-deeply-buried-courage from the dark abyss of my soul and defend myself? I realized I had a large and somewhat heavy plate in my hand that could be used as a weapon so I marched over to the kitchen door and looked through the window into the utility room that leads to the back door. 

But then I realized that the glare from the kitchen light was too bright and was preventing me from peering into the unlit utility room. There was only one solution: I'd have to turn off the lights and face my attacker in the dark. *Insert feeling of pants crapping here* It took me a few seconds, but I realized I was in a life or death situation and once I again I summoned that courage from the depths of my being. I flew over to the light switch, turned it off, and quickly returned to the kitchen window to get a visual my home intruder who was most likely ready to bash my skull in at any moment.

And out in the utility room I saw...

.

.

.

nothing...

Only the sight of the storm door, blowing in the wind. And I stood there and watched as it flew open and slammed shut once again, just as it had done when I thought I was for real being intruded upon this time. I tried to make the door latch, but as I mentioned, it's missing half of the inner door handle. So for the rest of the night I had to listen to the door crash and boom and bang and slam as it pranced about in the swift Chicago breeze. Boyfriend felt really bad that I got so scared and said we could buy new ones soon. Oh, the new fears the MidWest is inducing within me. Add "Phobia of Doors Blowing in the Wind" to my list :P