Ruth, the Cookie Connoisseur

Last weekend I went to my grandmother’s memorial service. Many members of my family shared touching stories about her, and many of them centered on her love of baking. This is a hobby that has been passed down from my grandma to my mom to me. However, I honestly think that grandma’s love of baking was second to her love of eating said baked goods.

She had the biggest sweet tooth out of anyone I know. When my brothers and I sold boxes of chocolates for fundraisers, we didn’t even have to leave the house. Grandma would buy the chocolates, one or two boxes at a time, until they were all gone.

I wasn’t Grandma’s favorite grandchild, but I was appreciated when I would bake, which I did quite often when we lived in the same house in Eureka. Every time I started baking I would wonder, How long until Grandma comes into the kitchen? It was usually no longer than thirty minutes.

“What are you making, Abby?”

“Oh, I love chocolate…”

“Am I allowed to have one?”

Many times Grandma would be too full to eat more than a few bites of her dinner, but would leave the kitchen with two or three cookies.

As everyone knows, the best time for baking or anyone who loves sweets is the holiday season. Every year when I came home from college for Christmas Break I would spend the entire week leading up to Christmas baking.

Grandma loved this. She would circle around the island in the kitchen a few times, eying the plates and plates full of cookies and other baked goods. Last Christmas was perhaps the greatest of all for Grandma. My mom had already made three different kinds of cookies, and I made four more different kinds as well as little dog biscuits for Reese and Tandy.

So eight huge plates of cookies—molasses, mint chocolate chip, sugar, and more—filled the kitchen when Grandma made her way out from her room. I was still busy baking as she circled around, not even saying hi to my dad and little brother. Cookies were the important thing right now.

After a few minutes she asked, “What are these ones here?”, pointing to the dog biscuits.

“Oh, don’t eat those ones, grandma. Those are dog biscuits,” I told her, although I knew my brother and dad would have preferred that I didn’t tell her.

“Oh, you’re kidding!” she said.

“No, grandma. I’m not kidding. They are dog biscuits,” I said as she picked one up.

And lifted it toward her mouth.

My dad, my brother, and I all looked at each other… Is she going to do it?!

Grandma took a bite.

Carl, Dad, and I immediately ran outside because we couldn’t control our laughter.

“I told her they were dog biscuits! Twice!”

Out of all the plates of amazing cookies, Grandma had chosen a rock-hard little dog treat.

Later that day Carl, who was Grandma’s favorite even though he loved to taunt her, went into her room and asked how the cookie was.

“Oh, it was okay,” she replied. “But it was a little bit dry.”

My grandma was a pretty picky eater. She wasn’t afraid to say that my dad’s pizza wasn’t as good as Pizza Hut or that my mom’s salmon made her gag. But after the dog biscuit incident, every time my grandma complained about their cooking, my dad had to resist the urge to say, “Well, what do you know? You eat dog food.”

"Grandma, why are you eating my cookies?"

She Doesn't Even Go Here!

I graduated from college in May.  I was so ready to be done with that place and start the next chapter in my life.

But somehow come August I found myself on campus again... sleeping in my old roommate's bed in her on-campus apartment right across from our old apartment.  So much for moving on with my life.

The first day of classes I showed up in all of my old professors' offices and even went to a couple of their classes.  Everyone who saw me was confused... "Wait, didn't you graduate?"  "Abby, what are you doing here?"  "Shouldn't you be working or something?"

A devoted Mean Girls fan, one line kept ringing in my head--"She doesn't even go here!"

I stayed at Point Loma Nazarene University for the first week and a half of the fall semester.  After I had thoroughly worn out my welcome, it was finally time to move on.  On to Ann Arbor, where I would finally be getting a job and being an "adult."

So I moved into my new where I live primarily with University of Michigan graduate students.  "What are you going to school for?" a couple of them asked me when we met.  "Umm... I'm not actually in school right now..."

I got a job at a cafe on the UM campus, which also just happens to be two blocks from my house.  Since my work is on campus, I even have a UM ID card.

Every single person I meet automatically assumes I am a UM student.  I wear my Michigan shirt, hang out with students, go to the bars that students frequent... and basically do everything I can to make it seem like I am a student.

Every single time someone asks me what I'm majoring in or what year I am, the same thing pops into my head--"She doesn't even go here!"

Fortunately Tina Fey has yet to show up and kick me out.  Maybe someday I'll stop pretending I'm still in college, but until then I'm just trying to bake my cake full of rainbows and smiles, hoping we can all eat and be happy.

At a UM football game in the student section with my housemate Andrew, a real UM student

Why Michigan? Why not?

Go Blue...

During my senior year of college I had regular meetings with my unofficial life coach. My future, which had once seemed so clear and straight-forward, was now completely open-ended, and I just needed someone to talk things through with.

“What do you want to do?” he would ask me.

“Well, I think I want to edit books… in the long run…”

“Well, what is your number one concern?”

“I don’t want to move back to Eureka.”

This was my biggest fear. That I would get stuck. Don’t get me wrong; I love my hometown. I just think it would be a dead end for me. Not saying it’s that way for everyone; I have plenty of friends with great jobs and great lives in Eureka… I just don’t think I could really thrive there.

And so I applied to dozens of publishing jobs during my last semester of college. They were all over the place – New York, Boston, Chicago, Oregon, Florida, and I think I even applied to a couple in England and Australia.

My good friend Julianne and I had a dream of moving to New York together (okay, we still do). It was a simple plan, really:

1. Get jobs in New York.

2. Find an apartment.

3. Go out every weekend and mingle with wealthy businessmen.

I even looked at apartments in New York. “Let’s live near Central Park!” she suggested. It was a plan.

It was about March when, after not being contacted by a single company I had applied to (aside from the occasional “we have received your application” email), that I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was technically qualified for all the jobs I applied to, but honestly, I didn’t have a chance with Simon & Schuster, Random House, McGraw Hill, Hearst Magazines… I was reaching for the stars, which is a good thing, but I had no real backup plan.

So May came, and it was time for graduation. When people asked me what I was doing with my life, I had to tell them the truth, which I had finally come to accept: “I’m moving back to Eureka for probably just a year. Going to work, save some money, then get a job, move somewhere…”

I put it off for as long as I could. After graduation I stayed in San Diego for another week. Then I stayed with Julianne in San Jose for a week and a half. Then after going to Eureka for a few days I went back to the Bay Area. I just didn’t want to admit to myself that I lived there now. I applied to a few jobs in Eureka, but I was spending so much time elsewhere that I didn’t invest much time into the job search.

A little over a month after my college graduation I was sitting at home with my friend Hannah, who was going to the University of Michigan for grad school in the fall. Half-jokingly, one of us said something about me looking for jobs in Ann Arbor. My laptop was right there, so I went onto a couple job boards and applied to a couple of editorial jobs.

The next day I left for Africa, and it was while on that mission trip that I really decided that I needed to move away from Eureka. I love new people and new places, and that is precisely what I cannot find in my hometown. So, on the drive back from the San Francisco airport, I told my parents: “I think I’m going to move to Michigan.”

A week later I had a room in a house. I signed the lease and began searching for jobs. Before I arrived in Michigan, I had three job interviews lined up. The first one, at a café a few blocks away from my house, was less than 12 hours after I arrived in Ann Arbor.

So now I have a new home. I’m in a house with new roommates, in a city with new faces, and I work at a café with people who have become my new friends. It’s an adventure. It may not be my typical adventure, but it’s still new and exciting… and I really think that life isn’t about your circumstances—whether you live in San Diego or Ann Arbor, whether you’re an editorial assistant for Random House or a barista at Glass House Café, you get out of life whatever you put into it.

Stop Watching Me Pee: My Recurring Dream

Everyone has a recurring dream, right?  Your teeth are all falling out, you are being chased, you're falling, you show up to school naked...  They all have meanings; I've seen them in dream dictionaries and online.

However, I have never been able to find my recurring dream, and I just had it again last night.  Here it is:

I am going to the bathroom and someone is watching me.

It sounds unpleasant, but sometimes I don't really mind.  Last night I was in a public restroom stall, and there was no wall in between my stall and the one next to it, so my neighbor and I were having a conversation.  As a matter of fact, the person sitting on the toilet next to me just happened to be an attractive young man, and we were actually flirting while using the restroom.  I was having a great time, but I guess I got a little nervous because I unrolled the toilet paper all over the place.

It's not always an attractive male watching, though.  I remember one other time it was, but he was peeping through a hole at me, so I didn't really like that.  Other spectators have included my mother, a creepy old man, and a cute little girl.  Usually the location is a public restroom, but others have included a locker room, my own bathroom, and bathrooms at various houses.

Recently I had a dream that I was using a public restroom at a park and no one else was in the bathroom except for a seagull.  "At least the seagull isn't looking at me," I thought to myself.  Right then, the seagull cocked its head and looked straight into my eyes.

None of my friends are professional dream interpreters, but some have speculated that my recurring dream may mean that I have a lack of privacy in my life.  The closest dream in a dream dictionary I have been able to find is the public nudity dream, which supposedly means that the dreamer is hiding something and is afraid of being exposed...

I know I already used this picture on this blog, but it seemed fitting.

My African Husband

Foreign men love American girls.  I know this is a bit of a generalization, but it's something I have experienced over and over again with Mexican men, French men, Asian men, German men, Indian men, Norwegian men... and, most recently, Ghanaian men.

I recently returned from a mission trip to Ghana, and one thing I noticed was how enamored the people were of our light skin, American accents, and especially of those of us girls who have blonde hair.

One day I was in the marketplace in Tamale, the city where we were staying, when a man who owned one of the shops asked me my name and where I was from.

"It was very nice to meet you, Abby," he said.  "You should come back to my shop sometime; I would love to see you."

"Yeah!"  I said.  Yeah right.

The next day my brother and Tomi, another girl who came on the trip to Ghana, were walking down the main road in Tamale a man stopped them.  It was the same man from the day before, and he had recognized my brother.  I guess it makes sense; it is probably pretty rare to see a 6'6" white man in Ghana.

"Where is the girl you were with yesterday?" he asked Syd.  "Debbie?  I think her name was Debbie?"

"Oh," said Tomi.  "Abby?"

"Yes, Abby!"

"That's his sister," she said, pointing to Syd.

"Oh!" the man said to Syd.  "I want to be your brother!"

The rest of their conversation consisted of the man trying to convince Syd to bring me by his shop, as he intended to marry me.  He offered to give Syd things in exchange for bringing me to him.

Finally Syd agreed so that the man would stop pestering him.  "Okay, I will bring her to your shop tomorrow."

"But what time?"

"What time do you get there?  8 or 9?  Okay, I will bring her at 10."

Great, my brother sold me to a Ghanaian.  He doesn't even know what the man offered him; he says he couldn't understand.

"Okay," the man said.  "And if she doesn't come, I'll know the answer was 'no'."

Who knows what that man was thinking the next day when I didn't show up.  Perhaps he had already moved on to the next blonde tourist.  Or maybe I still have a husband just waiting for me in his little shop in Tamale, Ghana.

Accident-prone

"Why did you fall?" the nurse asked me.  I guess just telling her I hit my head on a concrete wall wasn't enough information.

"Well, I had been drinking..."

"Okay.  Was this in any way related to domestic violence?  Did someone push you?"

"Nope.  I just fell."

Less than three weeks after college graduation and I was in Urgent Care in Novato.

"Do you drink a lot?" the doctor asked me when he came in.

"No, not a lot... I mean, I had a lot that night..."

I can understand why the doctor at Novato Urgent Care would think I drink a lot, though.  Less than three months earlier I had been in this same Urgent Care, this same room even, with another drinking-related injury.  The first day of Spring Break I had come into Urgent Care on my way to my aunt's beach house just to make sure I hadn't broken my foot when I fell in a parking lot the night before.  A few quick x-rays determined that there was no break; I had just torn some ligaments.

I was lucky this time, too.  The doctor told me I did not have a concussion, which was a relief.  That might be the reason Novato has my favorite Urgent Care: they always give me good news, and it never takes more than half an hour.

Last time I went to Urgent Care in San Diego, though... wow.  I guess the San Diego Urgent Care wasn't too bad; it was really the Emergency Room that kept me waiting.

The week of my 21st birthday I was having some serious trouble breathing, so my friend Julianne took me to the Urgent Care.  They didn't have the equipment to run the necessary tests, so he redirected me to the Emergency Room.  Six hours in the ER revealed that I did not have a pulmonary embolism (thank God!), but just had some swelling around my lungs.

Three trips to Urgent Care may seem like a lot, but this is something I have done my whole life.  The first trip I remember was to the Urgent Care in Sonora when I was 11 after I had gone off a water slide into a 3" rusty nail.  I remember grabbing my foot and pulling out what I thought was a twig.  After an emergency tetanus shot and walking on the side of my foot for a few days, though, I was fine.

My trips to the Urgent Care started before I was even a year old, my mom tells me.  I have been to Urgent Care facilities in Lodi, Sonora, Eureka, San Diego, and Novato.

A couple years ago I was sitting in a doctor's office after I had fallen at a park in Eureka (not drinking related) and the doctor was taking a look at my medical history.  "Are you accident-prone?" he asked me.

I laughed.  Accident-prone.  I guess you could say that.

Pre-tequila shots and pre-hitting my head. With Julianne, who has gone with me to Urgent Care twice.

Packages, Nuts, Balls, and Big Ones

After I graduated from college, I didn't want to go back home to Eureka right away.  I couch surfed for a little over two weeks, but then finally decided it was time to spend some time with my family.  I met up with my mom and we spent the night at my aunt's house in San Rafael before heading up to Humboldt County.

We ended up talking about what I am going to do now, where I should apply for jobs, and then I remembered my student loans.

"Don't worry about it," my Mom said.  "You really don't have to pay back that much."  Then she started talking about my brother, who goes to the school I just graduated from.  Apparently he will have even more debt than I do when he finishes college in two years.

"But he just got a letter about financial aid.  I'm not sure how much he's getting, though; I want to see his package!"

Within seconds we were cracking up.  This isn't the first time my mom has said something that could have been interpreted in more than one way, either.

Once my mom was grocery shopping and confronted a worker in one of the aisles and asked him a question.  "Excuse me, sir, where are your nuts?"

But "like mother, like daughter" the saying goes.  I have had many accidental inappropriate utterances of my own.

Once I was playing bingo at a campground with a few friends.  Any serious bingo player knows that many different formations are used to make the game more interesting.  Instead of just a line, sometimes players aim to mark all four corners, an X, or many other shapes. 

This particular game we were trying to make the shape of a field goal.  In addition to the field goal shape, we needed to have one space marked to look like a football going through the goal. 

There are six spaces that will work for the football, so it's really not that hard to get, but when I marked one of the spaces I was excited nonetheless.  "I have a ball!" I told my friends.  They didn't share my enthusiasm, but when the next number called was another one of those six spaces inside of the field goal, I got even more excited.

"I have two balls!"  I yelled.  My friends looked away and acted like they didn't know me.

Another story along these lines, perhaps my favorite, occurred a couple months ago at a McDonald's.  I was there with two guy friends and two girl friends.  Both of the guys got french fries, and I don't really like fast food so I didn't buy anything. 

Of course, though, when my friend was sitting across from me eating his small fry, I stole some.  After we had been sitting there talking and eating for a while, my other guy friend pulled his fries out of his bag, which is when I saw that he had bought a large fry.

"Why have I been eating his when you have a big one?!" I exclaimed.  And immediately realized I shouldn't have said that to two college guys.

I guess these things are just inevitable these days.  "Package didn't mean that back in the day," my mom told me on our drive back to Eureka yesterday.  One of the interesting things about modern English, I realized, is that almost any word can be interpreted as either phallic or a yonic.  And mostly phallic, since we do live in a phallocracy (thanks, Lit Theory).

So I don't think that I say these things is really my fault.  It's really the fault of our language.  Maybe I should start talking a little bit more quietly, though...

Had a Nice Trip... I'll Miss You Next Fall

My last college class ever. Earth Science is my only Friday class, and we are a little upset that Dr. Nichols is making us watch a movie.

"What a weird end to our college career," I whisper to Kimi and Ciera.

After class we walk down Caf Lane, a little disappointed at how anticlimactic this last day of college classes turned out to be. Dr. Nichols left class after he put in the VHS about Supernovas. He never came back.

I get into line in front of the Cafeteria with Katrin and my brother. The Caf gets worse and worse as the year dwindles down. Especially for a vegetarian, there are few options, so I grab a veggie burger from the Grill and some potatoes and green beans from the Classics line.

I get a glass of water and make my way to the silverware as I spot my roommate Abby at a nearby table. I step in front of the silverware table, but there is something on the ground. It's wet, and I begin to slip. It's like slow motion. Had I not been holding my water glass in my right hand and my plate and phone in my left, I would have easily been able to grab the table and catch my balance.

No such luck. My feet slip completely out from under me. In an attempt to not fall completely on my butt, I put my left hand out behind me. This means everything I was holding in my left hand goes flying onto the floor. My plate shatters.

I am sitting on the ground next to shards of plate interspersed with veggie burger, mashed potatoes, green beans, and my phone right in the middle of the pile.

I look up at the Dining Hall to see hundreds of faces turn toward me. Not two seconds later, the entire Cafeteria is clapping.

I've been dreading this moment my entire college career. Every time someone drops something in the Cafeteria, there is some sort of applause. I am pretty clumsy, so I was pretty surprised that up until this point I had never had one of these Caf accidents.

Well, this last day of school made up for my four years of never dropping a plate. The worst part is that I have to go back in and get more food. I see my brother in line at the Grill and ask if he heard my applause.

"That was you?" he asks. But he isn't surprised.

After lunch I am still sitting at a table with Abby. Syd and Katrin come over to laugh at me.

"Wait," Katrin asks me. "Did you fall right there?" She points to the silverware.

"Yeah."

"Was there something on the ground?"

"Yeah, there was water or something."

Katrin turns to Syd. "It was you!"

It turns out Syd had spilled just a little bit of lemonade as he grabbed his silverware.  When Katrin heard the crash, she wondered if it had been Syd's fault.  Of course, the one time I fall in my entire four years at this school, it is my brother's fault. 

For the rest of the day, people come up to me and ask if I'm okay. Or say, "Hey, I saw you in the Caf..." Or they just point and laugh.

Thank you, Nicholson Dining Commons, for an eventful four years.  I'm not sure I can say you will be missed, but you will at least be remembered.

Remembering Dale

“Have you voted yet, Abby?” Dale asked as I walked into class on Election Day.

I told him I hadn’t and gave him my excuses, but he shook his head in disappointment. He wasn’t as disappointed as he made himself out to be, though. Dale was never completely serious. Every Tuesday and Thursday night when the 20 or so students straggled into our 6:00pm Editing class, Dale made as many jokes as he could, all at our expense. However, none of us minded being teased by Dale; he was almost like a father figure.

At the end of the night, as we all packed up to leave a little before 7:15 (Dale usually let us out a little bit early. He once told me it was just for me: he wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any of Glee.), Dale addressed me as I walked out the side door.

“Abby, there’s still time for you to hit the polls!”

Being college students, we, of course, all heard “poles” rather than “polls.” What was Dale suggesting I spend my Tuesday night doing? A couple friends and I glanced at each other, trying to figure out what our professor was insinuating.

“Oh!” I realized after a minute. “The election polls!”

Another day, it just happened to be Brenda’s birthday, the phone rang in the middle of class.

“All the years I’ve taught in this classroom, the phone has never rung once,” Dale said as he walked to the back of the room.

“Hello?” we heard him say as he picked up the phone.

“No, Brenda cannot come out and play.”

“I’m sorry; we’re in class right now. Good bye.”

We were all very confused, Brenda probably the most. We asked Dale who had just called, and he wouldn’t tell us for a minute. After more prodding, though, he finally told us what had happened.

“There was no one there; it was a dial tone.”

I guess it’s fitting that a professor of Editing would always keep us on our toes. As we sat in class editing stories, he would sneak up behind us. At times I would be glued to the computer screen, feel a presence behind me, and turn to see Dale’s face right over my shoulder. He made Kimi scream a few times.

There are so many more stories I could tell about Dale. Every day we spent with him, he was an endless source of entertainment. Except for the last day of class.

I was rushing to class because I was about five minutes late. Dale wouldn’t care, but I still felt bad. I was late because my roommate had just done my hair so that I had a braid starting in the back of my head and looping around behind my ear. I was surprised when I reached the classroom and found the entire class standing outside. Dale was always there before us.

A student with an iPhone checked to see if he had sent an email; he hadn’t. We waited for probably another ten minutes. There is a rule that students are allowed to leave if a professor is a certain number of minutes late, but none of us would want to miss out on Dale’s class.

He finally walked into the building. He looked weak and pale.

“Nice hair,” he said to me as he let us into the classroom. He then said he had to go to the bathroom. We all stared at each other, wondering what was wrong. My seat was closest to the door, and five minutes later when he came back, I saw him attempt to open the door, but then stop for a minute. He looked dizzy and lightheaded. The door was heavy, but he had never had a problem with it before.

That day he taught us with a straight face. There was no chatter among the students. We couldn’t really pay attention, though. We were all on Google Chat, messaging each other:

“What is wrong with Dale?”

“=(”

“Look, he is wearing a hospital bracelet.”

Dale didn’t make any jokes as we all said goodbye.

We found out later that he had had a blood clot in his heart. The next week, which was our finals week, he had a quintuple bypass surgery.

The last email Dale sent us, on the morning of that last class period, said:

“Tis sad…but tonight is our last class before the final. So bring crying towels in addition to your TOYS story.”

Little did we know that we really would need crying towels, but not until the next month when we went to his memorial service.

I think of Dale Fetherling every time I use my AP Stylebook or see a Welsh Corgi (my favorite dog, and also the breed of Dale’s dog, Wink). As I pursue a career in editing, I know that no one has helped me as much as Dale, and I just hope I can be as fun and quirky of an editor as he was.

Where to Meet Guys: Fashion Nail

Every girl needs to get her nails done every once in a while.  Especially in the middle of the semester, when everything gets really crazy, it's good to take some "me" time every once in a while.

So last week Katrin, Alicia, and I decided to go down to Fashion Nails, our favorite nail salon on Rosecrans.  It is, of course, run by cute little Asian ladies.  And they only charge $19.99 for a Mani Pedi!

We went in at about 6:30, picked out our colors, and were each assigned to a cute little Asian lady.  As usual, I picked out the brightest, most obnoxious pink I could find.  When I get my nails done, I like people to notice.

I was the first to get my nails painted and was sent to the driers at the front of the salon while Katrin and Alicia got their nails painted in the back.  I stuck my hands in the hand drier and my toes in the toe drier and sat gazing out the window at Rosecrans Street.  It wasn't very exciting, but my nails were wet, so I didn't dare open People Magazine to find out what Carrie Underwood had to teach me about style. (Too bad, too, I would have really liked to find some jeans to fit my body and budget.)

I glanced at the magazine cover from time to time, but mostly just stared blankly into the darkness of the street.  A few people walked by, but not too many because by this time it was about 7:30.  However, as I stared out the window, a face suddenly appeared.  A rather attractive man of about 30 stood with his face inches away from the window, smiling at me.

I am generally a friendly person, so I smiled back.  He and his friend walked past the open door about ten feet away from me and he yelled in, "Hey!  What's up?"

"Hi..." I replied, a little hesitantly.  He and his friend then walked across the street to Jack in the Box.  I giggled to myself and glanced at Carrie Underwood again.

Ten minutes later I looked up to see the two guys walking back across the street.  Instead of just walking past the window again, the guy who had smiled and said hi earlier walked in the front door of Fashion Nails.

"Hey!  How's it going?" he asked enthusiastically.

"Pretty good..." I replied, smiling.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, you know... just got my nails done."

"Oh yeah?  How much did that cost?"

I have never met a guy who was so interested in nails.

"So, what's that thing your hands are in?"

"It dries them..."

"Oh, so it just blows on them?  I could do that for you."

We made small talk for another couple minutes before we said our goodbyes.

"We always see girls sitting there staring out the window," my new friend told me.  "It was really nice of you to smile back and say hi; usually they just stare back like 'huh?'."

Katrin and Alicia finished up in the back, and we all walked out to Alicia's car.

"Did you see my friend?" I asked.

"Yeah!" Alicia said.  "Did you know him?"

I told her the story, and she laughed and said something like that would happen to me.

"Yeah, I do have some random stories," I agreed.  "But I never thought I would get hit on at Fashion Nail."

Lost in the Woods

One beautiful day in Eureka the Hills family was visiting from San Diego.  It must have been summer because it was so sunny and warm; I think they were on their way to visit some family in Idaho or Oregon.

I decided to take the girls (Maggie, who was about my age, and Dakota, her little sister) on a walk.  I live on a little lane with just a couple other houses, and at the end of the lane is a gate that leads to the woods.

I have never been afraid of the woods.  Maybe it's because I have grown up surrounded by trees.  As long as I remember I have gone for walks on trails in the woods, and apparently I've always made it out alright.  My good friend Nina and I used to go walk in the woods.  We never knew where we were going, but we always popped out somewhere familiar before too long.  The trails always lead out, so what is there to fear?  And besides, I have an excellent sense of direction.

So at about 5:00pm the two out-of-towners and I began our trek in the woods.  It started out as the exact same walk I had taken many times before.  The beginning is always familiar, but we take slightly different routes every time we go.  Once Nina and I had to cross a pretty big stream.  Another time we walked through an overgrown field for twenty minutes.  We hit neither of these landmarks, so after a little while everything on this walk was new.

We walked along the trails in the woods for about an hour before I thought I recognized where we were.

"I know where we are," I told my friends.  "I'm pretty sure we're really close to my friend Kyle's house."  So I led them along these trails, which I was sure I had been on before.

Half an hour later we were still on those same familiar trails.  When we passed the same tire for the third time we decided to take the fork there that went the other way.  But somehow this trail ended up leading us back to the same place.

Now we were starting to get a little bit worried.  It was starting to get dark, none of us had a cell phone with us, and I had finally admitted that I had no idea where we were going.

We continued to take different forks in the trails, but somehow they all led back to the same place.  We were lost.

It's funny how much scarier being lost is once the sun starts setting.  I hadn't been concerned at all when our paths were still brightly lit, but now that all was getting darker, I was starting to doubt my navigational skills more and more.

But we kept going.  We are not the type to give up.

All of a sudden Dakota screamed.  Three figures ran toward us from behind.  I turned around.

"Kyle!"  It was my friend running shirtless with his two dogs.  One of the dogs is black and quite large, so apparently Dakota had mistaken it for a bear.  But I had never been so excited to see Kyle. 

"What are you doing here?" he asked us, so we told him the whole story.  "You just turn right here, then right again," he pointed and instructed us.

Surely enough, we had been really close to Kyle's house in Lundbar Hills, just as I had thought.  We had approached the correct fork in the trail multiple times, but I guess we had always turned the wrong way.

Kyle gave us a ride back to my parents' house, and by the time we got there it was around 8:00, and they had just begun to wonder where we were.

"We just got lost in the woods," we told them.

"Oh, okay," they replied.  "Well, I guess you made it."

The Touching Game

Yesterday Abby, Kri, and I were standing in line for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland at around 1:00.

As I talked to them, out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing the two guys behind us doing weird things. The guy in the aviator hat leaned over the railing and touched a plant. The guy with a beard jumped up and hit a sign. They kept making eye contact with each other as they were apparently taking turns touching things. Then I thought I saw the guy in the aviator hat poke Abby’s backpack and then look at his friend.

I continued to ignore them until the guy with the beard intentionally, and very obviously, dropped a bottle cap right next to Kri’s foot and bent down to pick it up.

We all looked at the guys.

“Are you playing a game or something?” I asked.

“Yeah,” they told us without hesitation. “It’s the touching game.”

“So…you just touch people and things?”

“Yeah,” they said. “It’s really good to play in crowded places like amusement parks.”

As the guys continued to touch people and things in line, they told us all about the touching game. Apparently it’s a game they play in amusement parks, in church, in museums, and anywhere else where there are a lot of people.

We apparently had no choice in the matter; we were now a part of the touching game. As we all waited for the ride, we tried to touch one another and other people without being noticed.

As the game continued, we began making small talk with our new friends. Abby and I told them where we were from, and the bearded guy told us they were from Ohio. Minutes later, however, he showed us his California license.

“You’re not from Ohio…”

“No, we’re not,” aviator hat guy told us. He seemed like the more reliable of the two.

We talked with them until we finally boarded our submarine, where the guys were upset that there was not really much to touch.

“Pirates of the Caribbean is the best ride for the touching game,” they told us. “You can touch everything on that ride!”

However, they high fived me when I touched our submarine operator, who was standing right behind me.

After the ride we waved goodbye to our line friends.

“Unless you want to go on a couple more rides with us…”

“Where are you going?” I asked. “We’re heading to Space Mountain.”

And just like that, we headed over to Space Mountain with our new friends. We made a stop at the Jedi Training Academy and watched the show before getting in line for the ride.

And it was in the line for Space Mountain, about two hours after we had met these guys, that we realized that none of us knew one another’s names. We introduced ourselves and learned that the bearded guy’s name was Ates (pronounced ah-TESH, or TESH for short) and the guy in the aviator hat was named Albert.

“Are you Mormon?” Ates kept asking me as we waited in line.

“No!” I told him after the fourth time. “Why do you keep asking me if I’m Mormon?”

“Are you Mormon?” Kri asked.

“Yes,” he said.

However, we soon learned from Albert that Ates is Catholic.

We ended up hanging out with these guys for the remainder of our time in Disneyland. By the end of the night there were jokes about Albert marrying and having children with all three of us girls. Ates even stopped lying to us. They came to dinner with us, where we had some surprisingly deep conversations, considering they were people who had been strangers just hours ago.

I am now Facebook friends with both of them and have Albert’s phone number. We also have tentative plans to meet up with them when we go to Disneyland again next month. It just goes to show that you never know when, where (or how!) you’ll meet cool people.

“Yeah,” Ates said after dinner before Abby, Kri, and I left for San Diego. “Usually when people catch us playing the touching game it means we need to run away. This was really cool.”



Ates, Albert, Abby, Kri, and me!  Yay for new friends!



Lil Wayne and Drake

Carlie and I woke up at our friend Lindsey’s house in La Mirada with no plans for the sunny November Saturday. Obviously, we had to do something exciting.

“Let’s go to China Town!” We decided. Within an hour or two we were in the car driving toward Los Angeles. We figured it would be easy to find; we had all been there before.

I guess we forgot that Los Angeles is a little bit bigger than our hometown of Eureka, because we drove around, down many one-way streets, through Little Tokyo, and past the Walt Disney Concert Hall about four times before we decided to stop at a Starbuck’s for coffee and directions.

“Down the block, turn left, and turn left again in two blocks,” the Starbuck’s worker told us. Almost positive we had already tried that, we followed his directions and, of course, drove into China Town minutes later.

The three of us were walking down the main street when Carlie and I spotted some little plastic aquariums on the tables of some of the street vendors.

“Oh my gosh!” we squealed. “Baby turtles! They’re so cute!”

“Wow,” I said to Carlie. “They’re only five dollars!”

“Do you want to get them?”

“Yes! Do you?”

“Yes!”

A Chinese woman approached us. “You want to buy?”

“Yes!”

“Five dollars for two turtles, and one dollar for food.” She handed me a bag of little brown pellets. Within 30 seconds of spotting the little creatures, Carlie and I were the owners of two baby red-eared sliders (which, we later discovered, were too small to be sold legally).

“What are you going to name them?” Lindsey asked.

“Lindsey,” I said, a little bit condescendingly. “We’re going to have to think about it for a while... Mine’s Lil Wayne!”

Apparently Carlie had thought for long enough, too. “Mine’s Drake!”

That evening we showed up at our friend Dillon’s dorm room with our new babies.

“Why did you buy those?”

“Dillon! They’re so cute!”

Dillon seemed to think it was ridiculous that we bought Lil Wayne and Drake after so little consideration. We maintained that it was a good decision because—hello!—they are so cute.

Then we realized that aquariums are kind of expensive. And that the turtles wouldn’t eat the “food” the Chinese lady had sold us. And that they needed a lamp and an island.

Our $5 turtles ended up costing us about $70 that week. But the bottom line is that we have baby turtles now. Maybe we don’t always think things through, but the outcome is almost always amazing.

Drake in the front and Lil Wayne in the back.  (This is the container we bought them in.  Their new home is MUCH bigger and nicer.)  Just look at them!  They are so cute!

No, a Fence

“Cross country is more fun,” I explained to Mike at track practice one day. “But track is safer. One time in a cross country race…”

“What?” he asked. “Did you run into a tree?”

“No, a fence.”

Mike was confused for a few seconds before he got it. “Oh, a fence! I was wondering what you could have run into that would offend me!”

It is true that I sometimes have a lack of depth perception. My sophomore year of high school I was running in a race that was at a campground and turned a corner too tight, ramming half my body into a fence. I was fine, I didn’t fall or anything, but it was a little bit embarrassing.

A couple years later, though, I ran into another fence. We met for cross country practice on the steps behind the gym. We then ran around the tennis courts and onto the street. There was a gate next to the tennis court, but about three feet of space between that gate and the fence surrounding the tennis court made it easy to get through.

Unless the person trying to get through is me. We set off on our run and I apparently misjudged how far I was away from the small gate and ran into it. My shorts got caught on the fence, so they now had a huge hole on the left side. It hurt a little bit, but I just laughed it off and kept running with my friends.

After about a mile of running I looked down and saw blood through the hole in my shorts.

“Oh my gosh, you guys! Look, I’m bleeding!” But I kept running, of course. No need to stop, it was just a little scrape.

After another half-mile the whole team stopped at the park for further instruction from Morris, our coach. Morris was standing facing most of the team, and a couple other girls and I were standing behind him.

“Oh my god! Look at Abby!” Ryan pointed and yelled in the middle of Morris’s talk. Everyone looked. And I actually looked at it for the first time. Not only were my shorts ripped and my leg bleeding, but the cut was a couple inches deep.

“Ooh, you’re going to need stitches on that,” Morris said after brief examination.

I finished the workout with blood running down my leg, then returned to school and examined the gate, which had a huge bolt sticking out the side that I had run into.  I went into the gym and asked the volleyball coach for a first-aid kit. She helped me fix my leg up with some butterfly bandages and I was once again told that I should probably get stitches.

But there was a race the next day. If I got stitches, I wouldn’t be able to compete.

So the next day, instead of getting stitches, I went to the cross country meet (which just happened to be at the same campground where I had run into a fence two years prior) with butterfly bandages, gauze, a huge band-aid, and medical tape all over my left leg.

I ran the race and didn’t run into anything. I later told a friend that I “don’t believe in stitches.” While that’s not true, I do think that because I didn’t get stitches, I have a much cooler scar.

After the attack!  Thanks for the picture, Holly!

Love Hurts...Well, So Does Friendship

Being friends with me can be a health risk.  In Kindergarten I broke Zach Cornberg's arm by jumping on him.  At a track meet in high school my forceful headbutt to Bret's sternum almost send him to the hospital.  These things are almost always accidental, but I still think it takes a brave person to be my friend.

In high school I loved to give hugs.  I still do, but in high school my hugs were very aggressive in nature.  If I spotted a good friend down the hall or across the street, I would run up to her and squeeze her until she yelled out in pain.

One spring day at Eureka High School I was walking out of the science building after class.  As soon as I stepped out of the double doors, I looked to my right and saw Jenna standing in "The Row," our usual hangout between the main and science building that consisted of grass and some benches.  Jenna had recently become a very good friend of mine.  I was only 15 and a sophomore, so I felt really cool hanging out with a senior (with a car!), especially someone as cool as Jenna.

When I spotted Jenna, of course I had to go hug her immediately.  I dropped my bags where I was standing and broke into a sprint toward Jenna.  Jenna had fallen victim to many an Abby hug before, so she knew what she was in for.  Or so she thought.

She stepped backwards to brace herself, but what she didn't know is that Dillon Adams's skateboard was right behind her.  She stepped on the skateboard at the same time as I made contact with her, sending us both flying through the air.

The next thing I knew, I was on the cement on top of Jenna.  Once we figured out what had happened and got up, I saw that Jenna's jeans were ripped.

"I am so sorry!"

"Oh, don't worry about it."  Jenna was always too nice to me.

But I wasn't very worried about the jeans when I saw Jenna limping to her 5th period English class with Ashley's help.  I apologized more, but Jenna said she was fine.

That Saturday was Jenna's senior prom.  I went and saw Jenna, who was on crutches.  She had gone to the Emergency Room after her class, and it turns out she had sprained her knee and her ankle. 

Well, I guess I had sprained her knee and her ankle.  I felt immensely guilty for making Jenna attend her senior prom with crutches and couldn't stop apologizing.

"Oh, it's okay," Jenna said.  "I don't like dancing, anyway."

Jenna and I still hang out almost every time I am in Eureka.  She doesn't let me drive and is probably a little bit more careful whenever I go to hug her, but somehow Jenna still wants to be my friend.

Me and Jenna: Still friends, but I try not to hurt her anymore

Let Me See Your Thong

My roommate is dating my brother.

"Wow, isn't that awkward?"  I get the same response almost every time I tell someone this.  But the truth is, it's fun to tell each other the weird things he says and talk about the possibility of being sisters-in-law someday.  Katrin and I never really feel weird about her boyfriend being my older brother.  However, I think Syd sometimes feels awkward about his sister and his girlfriend living together and constantly talking about him.

Syd just transferred to my school, so now he comes over to our apartment a lot.  One day Katrin and Syd were hanging out in our room in between classes.  Katrin was sitting at her desk typing something up and heard Syd pacing back and forth behind her.

"Ooh!" Katrin heard Syd making ogling noises and turned to see him holding up a pink thong he had found next to our dirty laundry hampers.

Her jaw dropped.  She just stared at him and couldn't even say anything.

"Please tell me these are yours," Syd said, a little bit worried by his girlfriend's silence.

Katrin burst into laughter.

Syd picked up the pair of jeans that were lying where he had found the thong.  After looking at them for a second, he dropped both the pants and the thong onto the floor.

"I have to go," he said and walked out the door.

The next day Syd, Katrin, and I were in line at the Cafeteria together.  I saw a dime on the ground and, since I always pick up change, bent over to get it.

"Abby," Syd said when my underwear peeked out of my jeans.  "You shouldn't bend over."

"Why?" I said, giggling a little bit.  "I thought you like to look at my underwear."

Me, Syd, and Katrin.  Apparently the only picture I have of the three of us is from 2009 and includes Elvis the Elk.

Making Way for Ducklings

 

When I was in preschool my dad brought home ducklings. My brother and I were, as any four- and six-year old would be, very excited. And so Wild, Peeper, Speedy, and Mighty Duck (my personal favorite) became part of our family. They were Mallards, so they were the cutest little balls of black and yellow fluff I had ever seen. We cuddled them and played with them, and they followed us around like we were their mother duck.

The ducklings soon grew out of the cute, cuddly phase. And teenage ducks are not too pretty. They simultaneously lost their baby down feathers and grew new, adult feathers. By the next spring, though, they were full-grown ducks. Wild, our only boy duck, had a beautiful green head and the females all had a purple stripe running across their wings.

I was overjoyed when, in first grade, Mrs. Nelson told us that we would be hatching ducklings in class. We put eggs in an incubator, watched them hatch, and got to play with them just as I had played with my ducks when they were babies. I still chased my ducks around the yard in order to catch them and cuddle, and I still brought them bugs I found for special treats, but baby ducks are just so much cuter and more fun than grown-up ducks.

The next spring my best friend Holly and I had a great idea. We knew that eggs usually needed to be sat on by their mothers to stay warm enough to hatch, but we also knew that there were other ways of keeping the eggs warm (as we had observed in our first grade classroom with the incubator). What else is warm? We asked ourselves.

Our beds! Of course! We would keep the eggs under our pillows while we slept! What an ingenious idea to come from the minds of second graders!

And so we each took a few eggs from the little hutch in my backyard. Holly walked the three blocks to her house, swinging a little cloth bag of eggs as she went. The eggs cracked from being swung about in this way, but thankfully there were plenty more where those came from.

I think it was two or three days before one of the eggs broke in my bed. I didn’t say anything to my parents for a long time, but it was hard to deny when my mom went to wash my sheets. The other eggs never hatched, and we learned after some research that duck nests and incubators are a lot warmer than beds.

With age comes knowledge. We had failed once, but by third grade we really knew what we were doing. Nesting ducks get really mad when you take their eggs away, so my mom had begun boiling and replacing eggs so that the female ducks still had something to protect and keep warm in their nests. To keep track of which eggs were which, my mom marked the boiled eggs with an X in red nail polish.

So one day Holly and I went out to the hutch in the backyard and grabbed the eggs out of Peeper’s nest, marking each with a red nail polish X.

All we had to do now was wait. We didn’t have to worry about keeping the eggs warm or cracking them. Our work was done; it was all up to Peeper now. She continued to guard her eggs like a good mother. My mom thought she had outsmarted the duck, but Holly and I giggled as we anxiously waited for the new ducklings to hatch. We were the smart ones, now.

My mom had no idea what Holly and I had done until one spring day when little beaks began to poke their way out of the blue-green eggs in the backyard.

Butt Buddy

My friend Alicia and I love to exchange “awkward Caf stories.” As I have said before, things I say are often overheard and taken out of context. Also, our school Cafeteria is pretty small, and the close quarters cause inevitable bumping and brushing. A couple weeks ago I was dancing over to the vegetarian line and almost smashed into my World Civilizations professor. People are seldom paying attention to where they are going, so I have been stepped on and run into more times than I remember.

My favorite awkward Caf story, however, was completely my fault.

I walked into the Cafeteria and headed straight toward the vegetarian line. I’m not a real vegetarian; I’ve actually just been a pescetarian for a few months. But anyway, out of the questionable array of choices my school’s Cafeteria offers, the vegetarian options tend to be the safest.

As I reached the line, the girl in front of me went up to the counter to grab a plate. She walked back to the line and headed toward where the line ended, right behind me. I had seen her in line in front of me, and really I didn’t think that grabbing a plate merited losing a place in line.

“Go ahead,” I said as I motioned with both hands extended in front of me. But apparently I hadn’t been paying much attention, because there was a guy standing in line right in front of me. Each one of my hands, extended in front of me, perfectly cupped each one of his butt cheeks. As soon as I realized what had just happened, I immediately retracted my hands.

“Oh my gosh! Sorry!”

“Oh,” he said, seemingly unfazed by my groping. “It’s cool.”

The worst thing (or maybe the best thing) is that I go to a very small school of about 3,000. I see this guy, whom my friends and I refer to as my “butt buddy” or the “butt guy,” almost every day. I wonder if he sees me and says to his friends, “That’s the girl who grabbed my butt in the Caf.”

Butt buddy, if you ever read this, I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable that day. I hope our interaction was as entertaining for you as it has been for me and my friends, and I hope that this story is one that you tell when someone brings up the topic of “awkward Caf stories.”

Thoroughly Em-bare-assed

My roommates and friends constantly ask me how it is that I never get embarrassed. I am one of the loudest people I know, and as my stories progress my voice gets louder and louder. This means that the stranger in the restaurant, the person passing by on the street, or the professor in class hears only the very end of the story, which can often sound pretty scandalous when taken out of context.

There was the guy at Denny's who only heard me say "vagina." He looked up, smiled, gave me the nod, and said, "What's up?" He hit on me because he heard me say a part of the female anatomy. I was talking about The Vagina Monologues.

Then there was the guy who, walking past me on campus, heard me say to my friends, "I didn't realize she was naked until after I had taken the picture!"

He stopped in his tracks, turned around, and looked straight at me. "Now that is a very interesting statement!"

There was no use even trying to explain. I had been telling my friends about a parade I saw while I was studying abroad in London. I had been taking pictures of all the great costumes when I looked up from my camera and realized that the lady dressed as a cat, whom I had just snapped a picture of, was not dressed as a cat at all—she was painted as a cat.

It comes as a surprise to many of my friends that situations like this rarely make me blush. I find them funny more than anything else. It takes a little bit more than words to get me embarrassed. But it has happened.

One summer my best friend Carlie and I spent a week with my family at our cabin in Twain Harte. One day we were out at Pinecrest Lake and decided to rent a kayak. We paid $15 and were led to our boat, which we were allotted an hour to use. We were pretty ambitious and decided to kayak all the way across the lake and back in an hour.

We paddled for a little while, maybe ten minutes, but got tired and decided to rest for a few minutes. We sat in the kayak, gossiped, and took in the beauty of the lake, the bright blue sky, and the trees all around us. We continued this cycle of rowing and resting until we reached the other side of the lake.

We basked in the sun for a few minutes on the far side of the lake before heading back to the opposite shore. That's when I looked at my watch and realized it had been almost 45 minutes since we rented the kayak.

"It's okay," we joked. "We're cute girls. If they try to make us pay extra, we can just flash them."

Still, though, we decided we had better book it and try to get back in time. We began paddling back, but this time we had a system. We sang upbeat Taylor Swift songs to keep our rowing in sync.

I hate    that    stupid old    pickup truck    you never let    me drive...

Completely out of breath after singing the whole way across the lake, we pulled the boat up to the dock a little over 20 minutes later. We were late, but not too late.

The cute guy who was working at the lake this summer came over and held the kayak to the side of the dock, steadying the boat so we could get out without falling. He was crouched down right in front of where Carlie was getting out and right behind where I struggled to get both feet onto the dock.

I finally got all the way up and was in the most awkward squatting position right in front of this cute guy, who was in the same squatting position right behind me. This means that his face was directly behind, and mere inches away from, my butt.

I guess a string had come untied while I was crawling onto the dock, because right then my swimsuit bottom fell off completely.

"Oh, we're just trying to flash you to get a discount!" Carlie told him in what I think was an attempt to make me feel less embarrassed.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," he laughed. "Sorry, you've got to flash me before you pay."

Whenever my dad talks about stories of his nudity, he likes to use one of his favorite puns and say that he was very em-bare-assed. I can definitely say that in more than one way, this incident was quite em-bare-ass-ing.

Me, Carlie, and the swimsuit that contributed to my wardrobe malfunction

Ballin!

"I wish I was good at basketball," my roommate Katie said as we watched the Butler vs. Virginia Commonwealth Final Four game.

This sparked a discussion about how none of us were ever very good at basketball.  We have friends who play, we like to watch it, but none of us are very talented when it comes to this sport.

I did play basketball for two years, though.  Third and fourth grade I was on a team with one of my best friends.  Hannah's dad and my dad coached our team of nine- and ten-year-old girls, and it was really only because of this setup that I played at all.  I probably would have done anything Hannah did.

Saying that I wasn't very good at basketball may be an understatement.  I was pretty terrible.  I usually didn't even attempt to steal the ball from anyone.  I was abnormally short and skinny, so I guess I was pretty intimidated by the girls who, like my friend Hannah, stood above five feet tall.  I was pretty fast and never ran out of energy, but all I ever did was run from basket to basket, following the ball and hoping to catch a rebound, which I would then pass to Hannah so she could go score.

My dad made constant bribes to try to get me to play more aggressively.  I remember him offering to take me and Hannah to McDonald's if I scored a basket.  Eventually his standards were lowered and I was offered ice cream just to shoot.  The next year when my dad coached my Little League team, he paid me just to swing at the third pitch, but that's another story.

Like I said, I was terrible at basketball.  But Hannah was pretty good.  Actually, I think we had quite a few talented girls on our team.  I'm pretty sure we won a lot of games (not that I paid much attention to the scores).  While I was running around aimlessly, Hannah was scoring, passing, even fouling!

One particular game Hannah fouled out.  I could tell she was really upset sitting on that bench, so I decided I would foul out too.  The only reason I played was to hang out with Hannah, anyway, so I would rather sit on the bench with her than run around on the court without her.

So as a member of the opposing team ran toward the basket, instead of waiting for a rebound I ran straight toward her.  Instead of trying to block her pass, I just grabbed the ball, which was still in her hands.  My first foul.

"Good job, Abby!" my dad yelled ecstatically.  The opposing side must have thought he was crazy.  Most coaches would have been upset about a pointless foul like this, but my dad was happy.  And the fouls kept coming.

I needed one more foul before I could join Hannah on the bench, and the other team had the ball.  I ran and met the girl in possession at the half-court line, where I grabbed for the ball.  This girl wasn't having it.  She grabbed it and pulled back.  I pulled harder.  I may have been small, but I guess I was pretty strong because the girl ended up on the floor.  And she still didn't let go of the ball!  So neither did I.  I grabbed the ball, trying to pry it out of her hands and dragged this poor girl about three feet across the court before I finally heeded the ref's whistle-blowing.

I had fouled out.  I don't think my dad had ever been so proud of me.  I walked, smiling, over to the bench and joined Hannah.  Two years I was on that team, but I think that ten minutes was the most basketball I have ever played.

My Favorite Toilet

One of the highlights of driving up Highway 101 north of the Bay Area is Laytonville.  Not many people live there (the population is about 1,300), and not much happens there.  But on the side of the highway that runs through the five mile stretch of primarily farmland is a toilet sitting in a field.

Yes, I just said that one of the highlights of northern California is a toilet.  I can't even count how many times I've stopped there.  You just can't see a toilet on the side of the road and not want to sit on it.  The ground is usually wet, so we get mud all over our shoes and cars, but the pictures of us pretending to use this stinky, mold-growing toilet are worth it.

Across the road from the toilet is a barn bearing a huge sign that says, "Don't Forget the Magic!"  On days we didn't stop at the toilet because it was raining or we were in a hurry, we would still always read the sign out loud.  It's a great message, but I never thought it had any connection with the toilet across the street.

In December three of my roommates and I were driving up to my hometown, Eureka.  One of my roommates is also from Eureka, but for the other two, this was their first adventure into the far corners of northern California.  When we entered Laytonville, I told them that we needed to make a stop soon.

They were just as fascinated as I had hoped when we pulled over to see the toilet.  We hopped across a stream of muddy water and took turns photographing each other on the toilet (actually, in front of the toilet...it was wet).

As we were taking pictures, a man stuck his head out of the barn across the street—the "Don't Forget the Magic!" barn—and yelled something to us.  None of us understood what he said, so we laughed and hesitantly said, "okay..."

As we pulled back onto the highway, the man waved his arms, beckoning us to come back to his barn.  Four girls in no hurry, we loved the randomness of the situation and turned around the first chance we got.

We parked and approached the barn, but the man wasn't out in front anymore.  The door was open, so we peeked in.  "Hello?"  We took a few steps in, passing a box full of walnuts and a single orange ping pong ball.  A rocking chair hung from the rafters above a giant gumball machine.

"Oh, you came back!"  The man jumped up from where he sat poking a hot metal rod through some sort of metal box.  "You need to sign my toilet journal!"

He led us to a big, high table where he gave us two journals, one to sign and one full journal to look through.

"Do you girls want anything?  A beer?  A smoke?  A soda?"

"No thanks," we laughed.

"Well, here.  At least take some candy for the road."

He introduced himself as John and told us that he loved talking to everyone who stopped at the toilet.  He asks that they sign the journal with their names and where they are from and always keeps refreshments handy to share with travelers.

Some entries in the journal were one or two lines.  Some addressed John by name or referred to him as "Toilet Guy."  He told us about his grandchildren and his daughter-in-law, who started a website so that he could keep track of even more Laytonville toilet enthusiasts and even get their pictures.

It wasn't until I visited the website that I found out that John McCaffrey, the man in the barn, is actually responsible for the toilet.  Since he retired, his daughter-in-law writes on the website, John has been doing lots of strange things like this to entertain the folks of Laytonville and those passing through.  She mentions a "doorknob tree" and birds made out of old shovels.

A friend who asked John what the sign on his barn means says that he replied, "It means don't forget the magic in your life, whatever it is."

Well, thanks for a little more magic, John.

Mendocino County's Finest Rest Area

Magic

I was on the plaza in a wedding dress at midnight. I know, it sounds a little bit like Cinderella. And no, I hadn’t just run out on my own wedding. Where the story actually starts is a little bit embarrassing, but here we go:

Kelsey was over at my house one summer night because, well, there isn’t much else to do in Eureka. We never plan on watching TV, especially not TLC wedding shows, but it somehow happened. So there we were, watching Say Yes to the Dress, giddily comparing the dresses on the screen to our visions of our own ideal wedding gown.

When the show ended I turned to my mom, who had been passing in and out of the living room and our wedding conversations. “Mom, would your wedding dress fit me?”

Within minutes I was wearing my mother’s homemade wedding dress. I felt like a little girl in mommy’s high heels. This opportunity was too good to waste, so I told Kelsey we were going out. We were 19 and it was 11pm, so “going out” was really limited to donuts or pizza. We ransacked my closet looking for something suitable for Kelsey to wear and eventually decided on a tutu I had made the previous summer.

We drove to Don’s Donuts in Arcata, one of our only late-night options. We walked in, Kelsey in the tutu and I in the wedding dress, and were greeted with enthusiasm.

“Did you girls just get married?” one girl asked us. No judgment in her voice; judgment is rarely passed in Arcata. As we stood in line, the radio began playing: Going to the chapel and we’re going to get married… No way, I thought. This is too perfect.

To make matters even more perfect, we just happened to be catching the very end of National Donut Day. Hungry stoners filled the donut shop even more than a normal Friday night, so we took our donuts and milk to the plaza, which is just down the block.

We sat on a park bench and finished our midnight snack as we saw a homeless man approaching us. This is pretty common in Arcata. He probably just wants some money or a cigarette, we assumed.

“Did you just get married?” he asked me. No, I told him, I was just wearing a wedding dress for fun.

“Oh,” he said. “I was going to ask if I could take off your garter if your husband hadn’t already done it.”

Nervous giggle. “Nope, no garter.”

“I’m Magic,” he said and stuck out his hand. Kelsey and I introduced ourselves, and I struggled for words to fill the silence that followed.

“I like your necklace,” I told him. It was your average hemp necklace, but with a dolphin charm hanging in the middle.

“You like that? You like dolphins?” he asked. “Here, I think I have something for you.” He began rummaging through his pockets and produced a similar dolphin charm, which he then handed to me. “I want you to keep that and think of me every time you see it.” Oh trust me, Magic, there is no way I was going to forget this night.

He then turned to Kelsey. “Here, I have something for you, too.” He handed her a marble. Not the kind you play marbles with, but the flat kind that you put in the bottom of fish tanks. We thanked him for his gifts. They weren’t much, but neither of us could remember the last time a homeless man had offered us anything besides weed.

“Okay, I have to ask,” Magic said. “Is there any chance you girls would take a homeless guy home and give him a shower?”

“No, sorry…” We may not follow the not talking to strangers rule, but we seldom let them into our cars and never let them into our parents’ houses.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, it was great to meet you girls. If you ever need anything—weed, shrooms, LSD, whatever—come find me. I’ll give you a good deal.”

We thanked him, he walked off into the night, and we went home. Who gets into situations like this? I often wonder, looking back. It’s not true that there is nothing to do back where I come from, it’s just different. And I’ll never forget the Magic.

This is the dolphin Magic gave me.  It's now part of a collage on the wall in my dorm room.

And, by request, here is a picture of the beginning of our night.

New Blog!

My life coach said that I needed a blog, so here it is!  I never thought of myself as a blogger, so I feel a little weird about this situation.  But I hope you enjoy what I have to say!  I write to entertain (myself and others), so I hope I can make you laugh through whatever I may post.  I hope to have a few posts up in the next week.  Please follow me!