"What the Eff is a Spade Mashie?"

There are many things my favorite cousin Naomi and I have in common: Poor navigational skills when it comes to locating the grocery store five minutes from our grandmother's old house in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a simultaneous revulsion of/magnetism to crossword puzzles; remarkably similar senses of humor; and birthdays six days apart.
 
Naomi is a senior at Whitman College in Walla Walla--a mere 4.5-hour drive from the booming metropolis of Woodinville. This year for the weekend between our birthdays, I loaded up my dad's blue Toyota Matrix (Lloyd) with every item of inclement weather garb in my closet, Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods burned onto five CDs, and a banana and embarked on the cross-state journey to the city so nice they named it twice.

We'd received generous monetary donations from various members of our family to treat ourselves to a nice birthday dinner. This birthday dinner received so much funding, however, that we were also able to indulge in pre-dinner birthday drinks at Jimgerman Bar in Waitsburg, birthday chocolates at Petits Noir Chocolate Boutique in Milton Freewater, Oregon, birthday gelato at the Walla Walla Patisserie, and a delicious birthday brunch at T. Maccarone's.

Monstrous eggs and veggies

Monstrous french toast

Needless to say, we did a lot of eating. In between meals we could be found strolling through the quaint, sleepy Walla Walla streets or shouting various profanities at one or more of three  crossword puzzles that consumed both our time and our sanity. Other activities of note included visiting the Pioneer Park Aviary and befriending its winged residents, conversing with Mr. Patel, the delightfully chatty Indian employee of the Walla Walla Travelodge, and discussing the strangeness of trees.


This here is probably our finest accomplishment of the weekend: A "finished" Friday NY Times Daily Crossword featuring such infuriatingly cryptic clues as "Ice cream eponym" (edy), "Glycerides, e.g." (esters), "Loud horn" (klaxon), "___ cat" (manx), "Prefix with biology" (exo), and "Spade mashie" (six iron), the last of which prompted the oft-shouted, "What the eff is a spade mashie?!" at such inopportune moments as during mealtimes, treks across campus, and immediately upon waking up in the morning. We were also displeased by the clue "Cooler" which we knew  began with a P and was followed by two blanks. On the right side of the paper you can see my not-so-extensive list of potential three-letter words. Note that the only word missing--"pen"--was, of course, the answer. I'm sorry, but how is a cooler a pen?

We also shouldered the distinct burden of attempting a NY Magazine crossword whose clues were written by our 42nd president--the one and only Bill Clinton. Enraged by our inability to decipher the hints, we coined one of our most common battle cries of the weekend: "Screw you, Bill Clinton!" (The more subdued exclamation of frustration being, "Who voted for this guy?"  

Overall, a wonderful weekend. I am so lucky to have a cousin who couldn't be more perfect if I had hand-picked her. I can't wait to see her again in March, and again after that in May when she graduates. Thank you for the perfect birthday, Cous Cous! I love you!

My Best Options

Thank you, Craigslist, for alerting me to the fact that while I have a generally upbeat spirit and a college degree, I'm really only valuable because of my anatomy. (That, or I'll have to become a dentist.) It looks like I'll be sacrificing my dreams of travel writing for the following offerings from this fantastically heartening list:

1. YOUNG WOMAN WITH JEWISH HERITAGE URGENTLY NEEDED $8,000. Maybe it's just me, but whenever a statement can be read as either a job listing or an obituary headline, a little red flag goes way up. Plus I'm only half Jewish. And probably infertile (thanks to an incident in high school involving a backward-moving chair with me behind it).

2. Egg Donors and Surrogates. On the bright side, as of three days ago I officially meet the age requirement for carrying someone else's child. Question: Does anyone actually use Craigslist for services like this?

3. Native Castilian Spanish speakers needed for voice recordings. I knew my extensive knowledge of the "One Semester of Spanish" Spanish Love Song would come in handy in my professional life. (And would you believe that I actually do live in a casa roja?)

4. Swedish speaking Baby Sitter Needed. No sweat--I've been to Ikea. (I just have to say how much I love that all this listing is really looking for is a toddler who can speak and sit and who identifies as Swedish.)

5. Sad? Only because this is my best chance at a job.

6. IF YOU LOIVE TO CLEAN, THIS IS THE JOB FOR YOU. According to Urban Dictionary, "loive" is "a nebulous word. It's a rather interesting cross between like and love... After all, quite a few relationships develop slowly, and once one surpasses the realm of like, it is naturally inhibitory to continue to use the same word to describe a deeper feeling." I'm not sure if I loive to clean, but I definitely loive that this post asks for someone with "good English skills."

7. Lead Parking Attendant/Lot Enforcement. I saw The Parking Lot Movie. That's right. This is what unemployment does to me; it makes watching a documentary on parking lot attendants in Charlottesville, Virginia sound like the most reasonable and appealing way to spend two hours of my life.

8. Hopeless? I'm sensing a theme...

And there you have it, folks: eight reasons why I will be driven to an early grave. Goodbye, travel writing dreams. Hello, surrogacy.

Why Yes, I AM in Kindergarten

Yesterday I spent a lovely morning and afternoon with my dear friend Ellen. We made orange cranberry scones (and by "we," I mean I made scones while Ellen created Superbowl and Valentines Day ensembles for my brother's Obama action figure). 

Note the Stars of David

Valentines Day/my birthday Bama

49ers Superbowl Bama

We then trekked to Target for supplies and headed to the Lyon's Den--a cafe near Ellen's aparment--where we drank chai and made Valentines. I'm pretty sure all the baristas and customers were judging us for our piles of construction paper and cardstock, our markers and colored pencils and crayons, our scalloped scissors and glitter glue, our packs of stickers and uproarious cackling whenever we  came up with a pun like "I 'bear'ly tolerate you, although you can occasionally be 'fur'ly nice."

It was like we were cemented to those chairs. We didn't move for hours. Acting like chocolate-giddy children among tables of college students writing term papers and middle-aged women discussing garden produce is quite an exciting experience. There were hearts and paper scraps everywhere, and enough awful jokes to make even the punniest of punners physically ill. Why the greeting card industry hasn't hired us is beyond comprehension. How could you deny the genius of such lines as:

"You're wheely great!"
"You're 'speck'tacular!" (next to a turtle exclaiming, "Look! A speck! Hooray!")
"I think you're a'door'able"
"Ro-bots about it, I love you!"
"I love ewe!"

And these gems:

 

 (This last one on the right is a nod to one of our favorite episodes of House.) 

As you can no doubt see, we were on fire. Lesson of the day: Never underestimate the power of two comically stunted twenty-somethings in possession of glitter paper.

The Cover Letter I Wish I Could Send

Dear Future Employer,

My name is Olivia. I don't know what time I was born because my parents neglected to look at the clock, nevermind that they took a picture of it when my brother was born. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, a collection of fruit and vegetable stickers, and a cat who eats sweet pickles and bits of tofurky. Among my most impressive accomplishments are the following:

1) A nomination for the C.P. Johnson Humanitarian Award in sixth grade (which I did not get, probably because one time I glared at the new kid for sharpening his pencil when I was brainstorming a synonym for "vacation").
2) Offering a commendable degree of moral support when the fan on my friend's computer stopped working in a train station in Oslo, Norway and she had to fix it using nothing but a pair of tweezers and a Band Aid wrapper.
3) My memorization of just enough U.S. presidents that when the Monday crossword asks for Grant's successor I can smugly write HAYES into the blank squares and then lean back, delighted with myself, until someone walks by and comments that aside from the name of the 19th president, the puzzle is entirely empty.

I feel I am qualified for this position because I have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of House and can recall the precise instant of my teenage years when I understood that milk, when left in a thermos in one's locker over Christmas vacation, has all the aromatic integrity of a rodent corpse. I have scored higher than all my Facebook friends in Pathwords. I know how to pronounce (and spell!) "Ljubljana," the capital of Slovenia. At the age of five I discovered that I was the only human on earth who could correctly predict when an Olympic ice skater was about to execute a jump. I am an ace with scissors. I can thread a prehistoric Singer sewing machine like no one's business. I hold a household record for most crunches performed on a daily basis (as well as simultaneous household records for most extensive knowledge of female Australian political figures and most complete definition of "synecdoche"). I am also extremely modest.

I am available for an interview over the phone or in person, though be aware that punctuality cannot be guaranteed when my "car" has two wheels and as a general rule goes no faster than seven miles per hour.

I look forward to hearing from you, and thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Olivia

So That Happened

I realize that a space shuttle could have conceivable circled the earth seven times since my last So That Happened post. For this I apologize. In my defense, I have had nothing remotely noteworthy to report. I figured it would be a waste of your time to read about how the high point of my week was vanquishing a gigantic mud stain on my friend's carpet while we watched House, so I've been waiting for a substantial momentous occasion to occur before I aired my latest stupidity. Now that such stupidity has been achieved, I can air it.

It has been a long time since I've had an active library account. The last time I borrowed a book was probably 15 years ago. This recently changed, though, since my New Year's Resolution is to read every National Book Award winner for fiction and I unfortunately do not own every National Book Award winner for fiction. 

So a couple weeks ago I went to the library, reactivated my account and received a snazzy new card for my keyring. (My last card was about the size of a billboard, and on it I had written "LIVVY" in a scrawl so illegible that I was forced to realize that I was not, in fact, right-handed. I had previously been convinced otherwise.) I checked out two books, read one, and went to return it. If you have not returned a book to the Bothell Public Library recently, I encourage you to drag along a friend for emotional support. What was once a self-explanatory drop-box--you opened the handled door, slid your book down the chute, and closed the door--is now an automated book depository that requires you to push a button to open a slot, place your book beneath the red scanner, wait for the scanner to turn green, then slide the book through the slot. Gone are the days of the .02-second returns. Now you're asked so many questions--"Would you like assistance?" "Are you finished?" "Would you like a receipt?"--that it's like you're filling out a personal profile on Match.com. I was so perplexed by the simple process of bringing a book back to the library that before I knew it a line of anxious book-returners had formed behind me. It was like that scene in Elf when Buddy doesn't know how to ride an escalator. When I got home, I announced to my mother that "Those new book return slots are crazy!" "New?" she asked. "Try at least five years old."

So many fails.

Happy Australia Day!

Sure, it's a national holiday commemorating the day in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived on Australian turf and commenced bloody annihilation of the indigenous populations. Sure, it's known by many whoever wrote the Wikipedia page as Invasion Day. Sure, I do not consider our equivalent, Columbus Day, a holiday for the sole reason that as a college student I was never given the day off from classes. But let's face it: We humans are a conquering people. We think highly of our accomplishments, particularly when such accomplishments include founding a country and using it as a playground prison for British convicts. 

We were shown this image numerous times throughout the course of my Australia Now class, the homework for which I would frequently put off  by stating, "Australia not now! Australia later!"

And so, in honor of Australia Day (which is celebrated on January 26 and it just so happens to be January 26 in Australia right this very second!), I have compiled a list of 15 Australian things for which I'm eternally thankful:

1. Tim Tams
2. Chai from Shanti Bhagvan Chai Temple at Melbourne Uni
3. Missy Higgins and every song she has ever written, particularly "Steer"
4. Jesse Spencer
5. McCleod's Daughters, most notably the stupendous opening credits
6. Hang Up, Don't Hang Up and basically every single thing Rove McManus could ever do or say
7. The 14-meter bronze and steel koala statue in Dadswells Bridge
8. Kangaroos
9. Dr. Michael Cathcart, my tutor for Australia Now
10. MAHONI'S FROZEN YOGHURT (I mean, come on: They have their own theme song with the lyrics, "Good for my tummy, good for my body, frozen yooooghurt, yummy yummy yummy yummy!" Clearly this is the best franchise that ever could exist.)
11. The ACCENT
12. The middle-aged man in the tea room in Hamelin, Western Australia who told us that we couldn't park our campervan where we 'd parked it because "sure as shit" a paying customer was going to want that spot.
13. Little Cupcakes
14. Starburst Babies, particularly Starburst Squirts Crazy Babies--gummy Buddha-looking babies with fruity liquid entrails. It's hard not to think of it as amniotic fluid, but it's delicious amniotic fluid. (Thank you to my dear friend Jessica for reminding me about these!)
15. The entire country in general 

And that's a wrap. From President Obama and everyone on this side of the equator, happy Australia Day!

"My Heart is a Flower"

Amos Lee is one of the two people in this world (the other being Tina Fey) who can do absolutely no wrong. He is programmed with the breathtaking ability to say exactly the right things, look exactly the right way, and create exactly the right music. I would have been jealous last night, staring at a person touched by every miracle in the universe, if I hadn't been so busy staring into his eyes, my mouth agape, trying to burrow my way into his soul. I went with my friend Hilary, and I don't think we stopped beaming the entire concert, including the opener--an adorable middle-aged South African man named Vusi Mahlasela to whom my dad, who works at the theater, referred as "my friend Bodi." Hilary and I were literally squirming with delight from the first note all the way through the last song: Amos Lee's impeccable--and unexpected--cover of "Fat-Bottomed Girls."

Here we are several minutes before Amos came on, running through our pre-concert checklist: 1) Are we standing? 2) Are we singing along? 3) At what point will it be acceptable for us to propose marriage?

It needs to be explained that I have the worst track record in the galaxy when it comes to correctly guessing what the opening song will be. You can pretty much assume that whatever song I decide will absolutely be the opener will absolutely not be the opener. After Hilary and I used air-tight logic to rule out anything from his new album (which hasn't been released yet and so we were positive he wouldn't start with something no one knew) and all the super slow songs like "Black River" and "Soul Suckers," we decided on four songs we felt confident about. We even did math to figure out the odds of us being right. Aside from being some of the youngest people there, I have no doubt we were the only ones mathematically calculating the chance that Amos would open with "Shout Out Loud." With what, you may ask, did he open? A song from his new album. I'm telling you, I have a gift.

But the night wasn't all perfection. Remember way back, oh, two weeks ago, when I demonstrated that after four months of riding public transportation every morning I was still incapable of knowing when not to get on a bus that was clearly not mine? Well I didn't quite do that again, but I think it's safe to say that I should not ride the bus without adult supervision. Here's the deal:

Hilary and I had planned to meet at her house in the U-District for dinner before the show. I chose to take the bus in because my dad was working that night and I could get a ride home with him after the concert. This is an obscenely long story, but the uber abridged version is that apparently I don't know the difference between the directions NE and NW. This is how the events of that night unfolded after I realized I was 30 minutes from her house when I was supposed to be there in three:

1. I finally--again, long story--arrived at Hilary's house.
2. Unbeknownst to me, we had a bus to catch at 6:29 to get downtown. 
3. We scarfed down food in less than seven minutes and raced out the door.
4. We missed the bus by about a minute.
5. By the time we arrived downtown, Hilary had developed a splitting headache.
6. As we practically ran through the city to get to the theater (it was now 7:10), we stopped at a Bartell's so Hilary could get some Advil. 
7. Showtime was 7:30. We were in our seats at precisely 7:28. 
8. After the show ended and we were waiting for my dad to finish, his coworker told me how unfair he thought it was that my dad should have to work on his anniversary. My hand flew to my mouth. Craaaaaap.
9. I texted my brother, demanding to know why he hadn't reminded me. His response: "Ahahaha. Whoops."

So. The concert was incredible, I lay in bed last night smiling as I quietly sang "Flower" to my cat (who was visibly irked that I was keeping her from her precious sleep), and I can officially say that I've made eye contact with the man I'm going to marry. The moral of my story: I am the worst rider of King County Metro you could possibly find.

P.S. I forgot to mention the part about me and Hilary trying to speak solely in Amos Lee song titles while on the bus. Most noteworthy attempt: Hilary pointing out the window into the darkness and saying, "It started to rain."