A Cast of Characters

I know I promised to write a cast of characters, but then I realized that I won't really be seeing any of the most important people for 3 months, so it wouldn't make too much sense right now. While in Italia, if I am reminded of any stories featuring important people, I will give background information then. Also, I'm pretty sure the only ones reading this blog already know each other, so it's probably not necessary.

So instead of a list of friends and family, I will now describe what it's like to be at home for a month longer than any of your friends. I'm sure you're all thinking, "I know exactly what you're going to say, it's awesome!" Surprisingly, you would be wrong. To say that it's terrible is what we in the English major would call an "understatement." I spend my days running errands with my mother, who for some reason thinks that her obsessive need to know what I'm thinking/doing and who I'm talking to/what they're saying is normal. She also doesn't understand why I could possibly not want to tell her exactly what I'm saying to my friends or why I won't let her see every one of my pictures on Facebook. It's never anything particularly horrible, but she doesn't have the same sense of humor as a 21-year-old college student and might get the wrong idea.

Then my father comes home from work and proceeds to make lists of things for me to do because he can't stand the fact that I'm on vacation and don't have anything to do all day. He tacks these lists on top of the ones that he's made while at work and ones that he has emailed me while at work. I'm pretty sure he does nothing all day but make up things for my brother and me to do. It's usually stuff like go to AT&T and check to see what kind of roaming plan I have on my phone even though he already asked them when I upgraded my phone 3 weeks ago. Really urgent, important things.

At 6 we watch Jeopardy, then we cook dinner while watching Seinfeld, then we watch more TV until my father goes to bed at around 10:30. While cooking we start drinking wine which my mother and I continue to do until about 1 a.m. when my father comes downstairs and yells at us for being to loud. The weekends are basically the same, except my father is home all day so instead of making lists, he just tells me what to do. Occasionally, they'll both be gone and I sit in my room smoking cigarettes out the window in a paranoid panic, because that's pretty much the only time I can smoke.

Basically, I'm about to pull my hair out. I was really excited about studying abroad, but now I'm really just looking forward to getting out of this house. Please, pray for me, I might lose it.

Yeah, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree...

Dedicated to my favorite ginger, Peg Holland
GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS!!

I'm a blogger?

Until a few months ago, I would have said the chances of me becoming a blogger were about as good as me becoming a high school teacher: laughable at best. Now, here I am researching teaching certificates and pondering a Master's degree in English education while writing my brand new blog. What happened to me?

The blog is the fault of my friends Sarah and Kathryn. Sarah decided she needed one because she was sick of the judgmental looks she kept getting from all of the other Journalism majors when they asked what the name of her blog was and she replied that she didn't have one. Kathryn got one supposedly to keep up with me while I am on the other side of the globe, but I think it's really to have yet another means of procrastination. Anyway, they got blogs so of course I got one too. What can I say, I'm what's called a "follower." There's nothing I love more than a good band wagon to jump on.

The teaching thing I really still can't figure out. Mostly I just can't think of anything else to do and I thought it would be fun to live out the cliche of being the young hipster who just uses teaching as a day job until I finish my novel. Plus, it's supposedly a recession proof job and my grades aren't exactly "good", so I can't really be expected to get any other sort of competitive job in this market.

That's enough for the distant future, let's talk about the near future and recent past. In 4 days I will be embarking upon my journey to 'Za Heaven, or Italy as I've heard some call it. All I have to say is this semester better be damned amazing after all of the guilt-tripping I've received from my friends and parents and the extra 3 weeks I had to spend at home after everyone else had already gone back to school. If you've never spent 3 weeks at the age of 21 with no friends or school or job to escape to with your parents, consider yourself blessed. Holy God in Heaven, I am about to rip my eyes out of my head. I won't go into detail, but it has been painful to say the least.

I'll be going now, maybe next time I'll give you a detailed outline of some of the people that are sure to appear in this blog more than once. You know, just so you're not confused.