Lost

I don’t have very many things that I consider precious; my grandmother’s diamond earrings, the ring Scott gave me only a month after we had been together, my camera, maybe a few other things, but not many. However, Friday night I lost one of those things and I am heartbroken about it.

January 17, 2005. I was at Scott’s apartment and we were watching a movie. All of a sudden he disappears upstairs then comes back down and hands me a note. It is the first clue to a scavenger hunt. I thought it was the greatest thing on Earth. He had me running around the apartment searching for the other clues, it was so funny. When I got to the last clue I knew exactly where the end was and I ran to find it. There was a note there, smaller than all the other ones. It read, “Are you falling in love with me, too?” I really couldn’t believe it, how special was this? I was so excited I ran downstairs and kissed him.

“Did you get it?” he says.

“I got the clue,” I told him.

“No, go back up”

Needless to say, I went back upstairs and where the clue was a tiny ring was hanging. And it was beautiful.

Fast forward.

May 12, 2006. It was a fun, drunken night. Extremely rare for me, seeing as how I rarely go out and rarely drink. It was so much fun. There are details, I am sure, but I don’t remember them. What I do remember, despite the Worst Hangover of my Life, is that I woke up and did not have the ring on. We searched and searched every single inch of this apartment. I made Scott take apart the sink pipes and everything. We still haven’t found it.

It’s really not the ring that I miss, and despite the loneliness that my finger feels, I miss that I could look down at my finger and see the ring and think back to that night. I miss that I would instantly be reminded that someone loves me enough to give me this ring. And I lost it. It just kills me because I don’t remember a damn thing that happened or what I could have possibly done with it. This really wouldn’t have ever happened if I were sober, or not nearly as intoxicated.

Now, when I look down at my finger I am just heartbroken. I don’t care, you can say that I am overreacting but I cannot tell you how much the ring means to me. The search will continue– I refuse to surrender another item to the Place Where the Lost Things Go.

The story

On Friday evening five (somewhat) eager and (definitely) weary college students came together on the UConn campus to form the team formerly known as The Life Savers. The idea first started in the head of a Ms. Danyel and was passed on to Ms. Jacqueline who then recruited me to the team. I, in turn, recruited Scott (because he is my bitch) and Ms. D and Ms. J recruited a fine fellow by the name of Brendan. It was an exciting idea, one that none of us had done before. And while we were excited, not one of us could predict what the night would hold. Many hours were spent by most of the team raising money, buying provisions to last us through the 18 hour walk, and scrutinizing what exactly would go down Friday evening.

Scott and I got to UConn around 5, the time that the Relay was supposed to start. However, as it turns out, it actually didn’t start until 7. This was a good thing because it gave us time to set up our campsite and get to know the area. Scott and I had to make an unexpected run to Wal Mart (ick!) to buy a tent because the tent Ms. J borrowed from Jakub’s parents turned out to be broken. But that was okay because we bought the coolest tent, which is actually 3 tents all joined together.

After setting everything up and unpacking it was soon 7 and the walk was about to start. It was a great feeling and very sad knowing that we were going to be making this huge demonstration of fighting cancer. For the first few hours our whole team walked together telling jokes and laughing and just doing things to pass the time. However, after the 4 hour mark passed things started to take an unexpected turn. Since no one really wanted to delegate shifts on who gets to walk at what time people started to burn out very rapidly. Now, to do Relay for Life with just a 5 person team is a HUGE feat! Normally the teams are made up of 10-12 people. I didn’t know that until after. And, let me tell you, it would have been very helpful to know!

Scott and I walked until 2am and as we were going back into the tent to see if Ms. J and Ms. D were still sleeping I kneeled on something really sharp. At this point I burst into tears because I couldn’t take it anymore, I was hungry (I got literally the LAST piece of pizza a few hours before), tired, and I had at least 3 blisters on the bottom of my feet. I know what you’re thinking. What a wimp. I know, I know. People who have cancer are fighting every single day, rain or shine. Oh, I forgot to mention that the weather was cold and rainy and miserable. So anyway, at this point I just crawled to my pillow and slept. Slept way past my alarm for 3am and woke up at 4am.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the Relay for Life didn’t go quite as we had expected. We ended up packing up our things around 5am because we were all cold and tired and definitely hungry and our feet were a’hurtin!!! I do feel really badly about quitting halfway through, but I do feel good knowing that I did the most important part– I raised almost $400 for the American Cancer Society. To me, that is more important in fighting cancer than me and three other people walking around on a sidewalk for 18 hours. Right? Hopefully.

The funniest part about this story was that, according to UConn sources, the Relay for Life got broken up by the cops around 9am due to excessive noise. Pretty funny, eh? I think so.

In any case, I want to thank all of the people that donated and sponsored me and the Life Savers. You all helped us to raise a lot of money that went directly to the ACS and is helping to fight and, hopefully, eliminate cancer. Thank you!

All things considered, it was a good time. I walked for 7 hours and came out feeling good (for the most part) about myself and my team. So, thank you team formerly known as The Life Savers! Hopefully next year we can rally more people to have a bigger team and actually walk for the entire time.

I think there’s nothing wrong with that.

New dating service: Our job is to get you laid

I just got an email with that as the subject. Fucking hillarious. No thanks, though. 

Anyway, over the weekend I got to relive one of the either greatest or most horrible experiences of a person's life. For me it was the greatest. Apparently I missed out on this when I was 16 like all other normal people but last weekend I had so much fun doing something I want to keep doing over and over again: driving. But not just any driving, because I already know how to drive (duh!), driving STICK!

I think driving stick is one of life's great unrealized pleasures. You know the kind, like going to the grocery store and seeing tons of American food and so many choices. Oh, the choices! I suppose some of you don't know what I'm talking about but this is something I learned to appreciate when I lived overseas. Believe me, appreciate it!

On Sunday Scott and my dad went golfing. I hear they had a lovely time; such a lovely time that it merited at least an hour of conversation on our drive home. During the time that they were golfing I did some laundry and watched a lot of #1 Single. But then! My mom came home from church and we headed off to have some fun. We didn't know what kind of fun this would be yet, however, but we knew it would just be fun. We were going to go to Costco, but decided against it because we would never make it back in one hour to see the UConn-whoever else game (sorry UConn!).

"You need a driving lesson," my mom said.

"But I already know how to drive, silly," I said.

And that's when it started: all the great fun of me learning to drive a stick shift. And boy oh boy am I good at it. It started with me trying to drive up a hill and my mom explaining the basics to me. That went okay. I made it up but then got nervous because after the hill was the road. I decided I wasn't ready to take on the open road yet, which I think was a smart decision. We then went to the parking lot of a near-by elementary school. Luckily it was Sunday and there were no kids around because, let me tell you, I was a hazard. But, still, I was good. You know, for a beginner.

After trolling around the parking lot for about 20 minutes and lots of my mom screaming "CLUTCH!!" and listening to the engine come thiiis close to dying and giving my mom whiplash I finally got it. Everything suddenly all clicked and I was able to make smooth shifts. I was SO excited. I am a natural at this! I mean, I always thought I was a good driver but this? This was excellent! I was ready to brave the open road.

Luckily there isn't much traffic on 6A in March so I wasn't THAT much of a hazard, especially after just mastering the trick for smooth shifting. I estimate that I didn't drive on the open road for more than 1 mile to my house, but it was the best mile of my life! Even better than first getting behind the wheel and driving a regular, old, boring car. 

Thanks, Mom! I hope you're able to take off the neck brace soon. 

Watch out, Cassie, I can drive the Mini now!

When a pact is broken

This semester I’m taking a junior writing class, one of the required core classes for psychology. Basically we just write papers about meaningless cognitive psychology crap and our teacher plays mind games with us. I’m pretty sure that most of you are familiar with the concept of peer review. If, by chance you’ve missed the memo, peer review or editing is when you get in small groups and edit other peoples papers. Yeah, it’s a good time.

Today was not like any other day I’ve experienced in my entire history of peer editing. Today a pact was broken and it’s going to be something that takes me many hours and dollars in therapy to get over.

There is this, how shall I put it correctly, Man-Student in my particular section of junior writing. He can only be described as having some type of slow personality mental disorder in combination with a fatal dose of monotonality (yes, I believe I just made that word up). When the teacher asks a simple question, like “How do you site this source?” the Man-Student will proceed to give you so much detail as actually counting out how many spaces between each word and how many spaces the second line should be indented, and so on. He’ll tell you what letters need to be capitalized and turn what should be a simple answer into the longest, most drawn-out explanation in the history of citations. In short, it’s bad to have to listen to it. And he does it for everything. Sadly, it’s not unlikely that the class will secretly snicker as the Man-Student tries to sound intelligent to his younger counterparts.

Now, I feel bad for the Man-Student as much as the next guy because he obviously has issues. This is all fine and dandy as long as there’s a good distance of space between us, you know, an appropriate distance that is allowed by the restraining order I filed against him because I’m scared for my life.

Anyway, back to peer editing. Normally when this time comes around we students like to stick to groups that we’ve previously been in; it’s just sort of an unwritten rule. The last peer review group I had was with three other cool people. In our group we made a pact: it will always be the same people. Really simple, not hard to understand or anything. Everyone agreed. And today, let me just say it was different.

One of the guys that was in the original group deserted the 3 of us. Left us high and dry. Left us to suffer. And so, you guessed it, we got stuck with Man-Student who somehow found a way to sneak into our tightly pressed-together desks and join our group. You’re thinking “Who cares?” or “So what?” right? Well, no! It was a big deal. This guys paper was nothing of what it should have been; it was practically twice the length of the requirement and really had nothing to do with cognitive psychology and when it was finished being read left me seriously saying “What?” out loud.

All the things you think would be impossible to be included in a paper about cognitive psychology Man-Student somehow found a way to include. Like what? Like Adam and Eve, like going in-depth talking about some painting. The assignment was to explain a phenomenon that occurs in cognitive psychology. Sounds simple, right? It should be simple. But, somehow Man-Student’s paper made me even more confused about top-down or bottom-up whateveryoucallit processing than when I started (and I knew nothing about it to start).

What Man-Student couldn’t comprehend about PEER EDITING is that in the group, the other people are supposed to comment and show constructive criticism to make the paper better. Yeah, he didn’t get that. One of my friends in the group, I’ll call him Fred, tried to make a suggestion that maybe this paper was a tad too long and a bit confusing. Man-Student didn’t accept that. It was probably the worst demonstration of insecurity I have ever seen. There was an argument; a big one. At one point, everyone in the class had stopped what they were doing to witness this heated debate about whether Man-Student’s paper was written in size 10 or 12 font Times New Roman. Knives were whipped out, daggers were thrown. I think Man-Student even killed a kid with a trident.

There are two morals to this story: first, don’t mess with man-students. And second, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS respect the pact made in peer editing groups.

Prepare Yourself for Friday’s Words of Wisdom

Some may say that I am not a “stellar” student. I admit it, it’s no secret. I think it’s funny that we’ve reached a point in my family where no one ever really asks me how school is going or what my GPA was for last semester or what I want to be when I grow up. I think they got tired of hearing mediocre answers and they got tired of being disappointed when I refused to make Dean’s List or something crazy like that. But I say, It’s. All. Good.

I do admit that there are definitely a ton of other things that I would rather be doing with my time than going to class, say, like sacrificing animals or going to a pet store to play with all the fish (cringe). However, even though I think that coming to college is way overrated, I do my work. I get things done. I wake up at 6:40 every other morning (7:30 on the other days), get ready and drag my sorry ass to campus. I swear I do. And as for my nasty old habit of skipping lots of classes, I’m proud to say I’ve only skipped 3 so far!

The way I see it is like this: if I got in a horrible situation where I, God forbid, didn’t get to see the light of day ever again, would I rather remember my time sitting at the library staring at books, comparing who has the coolest highlighter pens, while being all jacked up on caffeine wishing I was somewhere else? Or, would I rather be out living my life and spending time with people I care about? I choose the latter. Hands down.

You can’t tell me that my opinion is wrong, because it’s just merely an opinion. And hey, if you’re one of those people who lives to study then Good Luck, you should be proud that you have such a “thirst for knowledge” as my dad would say when he described my sister. Don’t you ever wonder what else you could be doing? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating failing out of all your classes to spend time with your boyfriend (been there, done that– not fun) but don’t study your way through college so much that when graduation time comes around you wish you could have a do-over and have more fun. It doesn’t work like that.

All I’m saying is that life doesn’t involve around a GPA, because after college it’s not going to matter; and I’m pretty sure God doesn’t weed people out of Heaven based on who has the best grades or who graduated magna cum laude.

By the way, let’s all give a wild round of applause to Scott who graduated cum laude. Who needs the “magna” anyway?

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Speech, Interrupted

On Monday I am going to do something I never have before: I am going to ask my boss for a raise. While I am somewhat of a virgin asking someone to “Please, nice lesbian, pay me more money so I don’t end up working as an exotic dancer” I’m not really that nervous. I deserve $5 more an hour since I have accommodated their every want/need in the entire 6 months I have been working for them. And nowadays I think that $10 an hour for 2 kids is nothing. I hope that I never have to experience this feeling of “college days broke” when sometimes I have less than $100 in my bank account. And this is without excessive spending. I know– or rather I hope– that later on times are going to get easier so until that happens I am just going to keep on keeping on and do my best. And that is enough for me.

I once told my dad I got a job at Hooters. He laughed and said “Nice”. At least I always have a backup.

A Festival for the Rest of Us

I have never believed in soul mates. However, two people can fit together and ‘work’ as a couple more than other people. It is my belief that two people need to work very hard to make a relationship work. Give and take, that’s just how it goes. Compromise. Understanding. Love. And friendship, most importantly. Luckily I have found all that in one person and my life could not be more complete. As much as I would love to gush and brag about how fabulous he is, that is not the point of this post.

Now, I know that most people (like myself) think that this day is a Hallmark holiday, which it very well may be. However, I think that maybe the Hallmark people got something right. Aside from wanting to make money on card, chocolate, and teddy bear sales, the idea of taking time to show the people you love how much you love them is a good one.

If you love someone, one day is simply not enough to show them that. Show them every day. To me, it’s always the little things rather than the big things that mean the most; little things that happen day-to-day. Opening doors, carrying the grocery bags, cleaning up, making dinner, etc. Those are the things that are important.

Now, I’m not looking to preach, just take the opportunity to think about someone other than yourself during the day to show people how much you mean to them. Not just a lover, but members of your family and friends, or anyone who means anything to you for that matter. Tell your parents how much you appreciate them; tell your sister how much you value her friendship; your friends how awesome they are.

And so here it is, my ‘thank you’ to all of you on this day of love. Thank you for always being there for me and for your constant and unconditional love. And putting up with more than your share of sass. I love you all.

The Best Birth Control

I have worked with kids for eight years. Close to seven of those years have been good. For the past six months I have been working as an au pair for 2 families, each with 2 kids. Both sets of kids are between the ages of 6 and 10. This means that for 12 hours each week I deal with whining, helping with homework, giving stair time-outs when they won’t stop throwing balls at each other, asking them 5 times what they want for dinner, cleaning up their shit, and trying to get them to listen to me. Meanwhile I do my best to keep my shit together and not tell them to “shut the fuck up.” So far, I have been quite successful.

All the health classes teach abstinence as the best birth control. And before working with these children it was my belief that somewhere between abstinence, condoms, and Ortho TriCyclen that the young people of today would be able to keep themselves out of ‘trouble.’ However, it is my new-found belief that you should stick all middle and high schoolers with four 6-10 year olds for a couple of hours and there would be a lot less teenage pregnancy.

Sorry Ortho.