I've Been Taking Too Many Econ Classes

I had a plan. It was foolproof.

Do enough homework to not have any one night of the week. I would even go so far as to be pleased to not be swimming in piles of textbooks--a sea filled with choppy waters and papercuts.
Just have one night of freedom, of my choosing, when I wasn't concerned about term papers, daily readings, or studying for some pop quiz that may or may not even happen tomorrow in discussion section.

I would do so by simply working harder every other night by a small fraction (a half hour, let's say) and see where the results took me.  Increase my total homework efficiency per night and my time supply would increase. Like I said; Foolproof. 


Due to an exam--which means no homework--I got that night. It was beautiful...for ten minutes.
Now what do I do? How do you spend free time, again? I've forgotten.

I'm bored.

Close Encounters of the Aussie Kind.

So there I was. Just doing some homework when I remembered I had stolen a box of chocolates from my home while "shopping" for the basics of stocking one's college apartment. (Mom was never going to eat them, she said they were from last Christmas. That, in my eyes, makes them open game.) Flipped the lid off to find that there were only three chocolates left.
All milk chocolate. Decided that even though I'm not a monsterous fan of plain, I'd take it anyway and ate all three without even sitting back down. When I went to throw the box away, however, I heard a rustling beneath the plastic insert. Lo and behold, there was a second layer of chocolate I had almost mistakenly thrown away!

I looked up at my water-damaged ceiling and thanked the Lord for the extra chocolate that He had chosen to bestow upon me.

Then I realized I had just audibly spoken to my empty apartment over chocolate and realized it was time to figure out why I was feeling the need to eat an entire box of newfound chocolates instead of just eating the entire box of chocolates.

The first option, I've found, is much more difficult and much less tasty.

I told you that story to tell you this story.

I urge you all to read edenland. For around a year now she has inspired me in ways I never expected. Eden is the type of writer that examines the grits of life. And believe me, she has seen the grittiest of the gritty. Stared at it straight in the face and walked away--being the better (wo)man, and all that.

It's theraputic. When I'm reading her stuff, it's like she's reached--Indiana Jones Temple of Doom style--and ripped out something from inside herself that was still beating and pulsating. And that thing is dark, twisted, and wrong and we expect her to recoil and drop it out of disgust.

But she doesn't.

She stands with it in her hand and examines it. Prodding and poking at the mass of something she has just torn from herself until she is no longer appalled by it. That's not to say that she's desensitized, but rather, grew to accept it for what it is. Then, and only then, does she throw it into the garbage without a second thought.

Since following her site, I have had two moments where I thought to myself, "I MUST speak to this woman." One was a crazy coincidence where we both happened to get our hair cut, blogged about it, and felt awesome. Small world where two people can get haircuts in the same week, I know. But really this bad boy is the activation energy that drew me into Eden.

How do I explain this without giving  my life story? Her post "Imma die with my boots on." made me cry. Which is crazy, because there's not a whole lot to be said about it.

It just struck a nerve deep down inside me when she spoke about clomping around cancer wards (her husband had a recent strife with cancer.) as the Angry Cowgirl. I laughed because this was in a time where I, too, was running out of university classes to go clomp around chemotherapy wards.

"I am an angry cowgirl," I told her, "who ironically doesn't own boots." I explained that our family struggles with this stupid thing called cancer, seemingly at every turn. And really her post reminded me of my dad's favorite song by Joe Diffie: Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox. Stupid, I know, leave it alone, we're a bunch of hicks.

But the line, "Lord, I wanna go to heaven, but I don't wanna go tonight. Fill my boots up with sand and put a stiff drink in my hand." Resounded in my head as I read her post. It made me want to buy a pair of boots and clomp around the cancer ward and scream, "CANCER, IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?!? I am the ANGRY COWGIRL! And you can't have THESE BOOTS!"

But that would be impolite, albeit a stress relief. (Eden dealt with this by going into a hospital like a renegade and hanging up her own art in place of the cruddy decco they claim. Also a great post for those of you interested.)

I was terrified to write her. She's a blogging celebrity--I felt like I was e-mailing Ghandi to prove how good I was at fasting. But she's better than Ghandi.  She wanted me to e-mail her with a picture of when I get my cowboy boots, because I will someday and I will feel so tough.

So I don't know if that's my problem, repressing angry thoughts like pushing a crazy thrashing beachball underwater, but I'm hoping she's right and when I get my boots I will be so tough, not just for myself but for everyone who is forced to clomp around a hospital.

I will be tough for the members of the Angry Cowgirl Club.

Speak of your Gratitude

 From top to bottom. I saw a statue of a girl, with a bunch of sayings on them while shopping with my mom one day and immediately said, "WANT." Unfortunately, being of sound mind and slim wallet, I chose to not buy it. Can you get not-buyer's remorse? I was so bummed that I made one for myself. It turned out alright. Wasn't made of metal and painted well since I only had markers, magazines, and some old cardboard I'd found outside in our recyclables--but I dug the message.

"Embrace Change. Yours starts here...today. Discover your flexibility. Challange yourself to grow. Rethink precisely what you want. Focus on Life. Play attention. Wear Red Shoes."

I told my old art teacher about it and unbeknownst to me, from my cruddy description, "Yeah, it was really cool with some sayings and a girl. Looked kind of rustic." she found me one. I like her message even more.

"Honor your intuition. Unleash your joy. Speak of your gratitude. Embrace vulnerability. Do the things you didn't think you could. Find beauty in the small. Wear red shoes. (That's an Important. Remember that.) Let it Go. Surrender your fear. Be Silly. Be Wild. Take the journey back to yourself."

I am going to base a room in my future awesome house from this right here. Possibly a bathroom.

I'm Feelin' Good

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life. For me. And I'm feeling good."

So check it out, new blog look! Really that's what this post is all about right now and was not originally intended to be so. I did not, however, intend on spending nearly four hours revamping (heh, that's a pun because I was watching Dracula--Francis Coppola's version--while editing) my blog tonight before posting.

Work on that, Blogger. Oh well, always have a back-up plan and here's mine short and sweet:

Welcome to my new "designed on a dime" blog.

Now I need some sleep before classes tomorrow.

The Times, They are a-Changin'.

I like to imagine that I have hundreds of little writers set out in nice square little cubicles in my head scurrying to and fro, sending out memos and reminders, sharpening pencils, making coffee, fixing printer jams, all together keeping my thoughts in a well-to-do manner so they can come forth from my mouth or finger tips for the rest of the world.

If I like to use that metaphor than right now all of those ficticiuos writers, with their sleek pencil skirts and  cornflower blue Winsor-knotted paisely ties are striking and picketing in an uproar. "Increased wages for increased work hours!"

They are demanding it now, rioting and flipping over desks. Stealing my little imaginary office supplies and flipping little imaginary birds at my little imaginary supervisors. And those little supervisors are looking out to me, shaking their heads in surprised disappointment at all the nothing they are able to do in order to control my very much out of control white-collar workers.

Inwardly, this is my thought-process.
Outwardly, the only think I can do is rub my eyes and continue working. Making myself another cup of tea, even after we've run out of the good stuff to drink and all that is left is peach. Blech.

Yet, here I sit. Typing up a blog post. My inner little efficiency committee is looking down at their little clipboards and assessing my work ethic. They are not checking the box for "Uses time wisely."

"But I need this time," I plea to them. "You don't understand.This is how I relax and restore myself."

Can one grow dependent on an idea? This blog is a compilation of all of mine, and I have grown rather fond of it. As of late, I have realized I've grown out of my German experience. There's not much German to experience here in Ann Arbor, but I keep updating. Less and less with any intention of it being about my re-entry shock. But I'll keep updating because I've made a discovery of how powerful my computer can be and I would like to keep that relationship with my computer, with myself, and sometimes with others, going.

I get it now why one of the first steps in a recovery program (any program, go ahead and find out) is to write out all of your life history. One big hefty paper of Who You Are. It works.

My moral today, beacuse I really need to stop procrastinating my economics homework, is that I will continue to blog on this blog--even with the name dasdetuscheerlebnis, mostly because I don't know how to change it, but also because that's how it all began. But I am no longer restricting myself to my travel adventures.

But  I think we all knew that one already though, right?

So I guess I'm open for new blog titles suggestions, comments, complaints, okay?

Moves Like Jagger

Some times I wish I were a guy. Their biggest fashion question seems to be: Does a brown belt match black shoes? And they think, "Eh, no one will care." Where women twilly around how to match coral eye shadow to their light catrice nail polish. We are hypersesitive in that ideal.

So I may have mentioned that I am in a dance class. Well, crazily enough: We dance. Fun fact: Rebecca can't dance, which may bring you to the very obvious question of, "Then why would you take a dance class?" To which I have no clear or plausible answer. After some point in your life, answering, "Becaaause." just doesn't cut it. I passed that point.

Regardless, the routine we're working on for the final is to the pop sensation Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5. For those of your born without a taste in music or love for caricature-faced celebrities may not have heard of Mick Jagger. Short bio: He owns rock and roll.

In one of the first days of class, our instructor stops the music, and walks over to me.
"Rebecca," she says, at which point I'm terrified because no teacher should know your name by the first week unless you are especially terrible,
"You have the steps down, right?"
I nod. Making little sped-up miniature air mimes of the last few counts.
"But you realize you have no confidence in yourself, right."
 Wow Coach, thanks for the pep talk. Exactly what I needed. No, I had not realized I was crippelingly hiding in the back of the class avoiding attention for THIS VERY REASON.

She proceeds to explain how I need to be more like Mick Jagger and put a little swagger in my step.

Swagger. What does that even mean? Mick Jagger has more confidence than me when he's tracking around in this get-up than I've managed to accumulate my entire life.

So I've gotta look like THIS GUY?

I think we can all agree that what Micki here has and what I lack is not looks. Self-assuredness and an "I-own-this-joint"  attitude are probably what gives him some swagger.

Not the hat.Although it helps.

Mulling this over after classes one day, I just made up my mind to go and find me some swagger. Right then and there. Like deciding to quest for the Loch ness monster or Big Foot.

To the nearest cheapest hair studio (after doing a bit more research than my last haircut.) I ran, because gosh darn it, my self confidence does exist!  Made an appointment for the next day. Right then. Right there. Quick massage, hair styling, and many compliments later I walked out of the studio feeling a little puff-chested. Heavens me, is this what swagger feels like?

Perhaps it is. On the way home Moves Like Jagger came on the radio and I practiced my best Mick Jagger/Steven Tyler stage face. And somehow I feel like I learned a valuable lesson.: "When you look good, you feel good"? No, too vain. Maybe a little more, "You have to love yourself before you can others".

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend.

I wasn't going to do this. Ten years ago, I was ten and just chilling out in grade school. I came home and watched the news with the family--an odd occurrence, albeit--and everything was normal. The only reverberating thought I would have had that night was I was coloring and I wanted to show the picture to my mom and she shoo-ed me away, saying, "Not now." I felt hurt that she didn't want to see my picture, seeing as how diligently I had been working on it.

It was a genie coming out of a lamp. The odd details we remember so distinctly. 

So I wasn't going to do this. I was lucky as to not have been touched by it. But after receiving an e-mail from Niklas, a German, an outsider with a huge and philosophical heart, who has all the reasons in the world to not need be involved, I guess I am doing this.

He wrote me:


"Today is ten years after 9/11 and there were ceremonies around the world.

I didn't think off it much but then in the news, the German embassedor in the USA--who had hist first day on 9/11/2001--talked about how important solidarity was to the people affected. How important it was that the USA knew that they don't have to be world-police all alone anymore because they can't do that anyway, because they can be hit hard, too.

And then I remembered how depressing it was to hear that most people in Michigan didn't know how much support and grief they got from all around the world. Many still don't know... All they see is people celebrating in Iraq and Afganistan that night. They would ask, "Does all the world really hate us that much?"

But did you know that nowhere in the world, not even in the USA, did so many people gather as they did at the Brandenburger gate in Berlin, Germany? The same place where almost 40 years ago the beloved American president said the he, and the US, empathizes with Berlin and understands their fears and is there to support the City in its struggle to reunite.

Just like on 9/11 when the Berliner people got out to stand together and show that they feel with NY and with the USA, with the Union of NATO...

It is sad that the news of celebrating extremist over weighted the news of millions gathering in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin... But we can hope that a few Americans did get the news from their Allies and that they know that they have friends and that they have unconventional support in the defence against the brutal destruction of terror!

...

 But if you could pass on the word that the USA still has many strong allies in the world you would do a good deed..."

Nick wrote this to me on the 11th, saying he was feeling sentimental and that, "If I would have a blog, this is what I would have written today." That is like pressing the Okay to consent button in my list. 

PitE the Fool

Went to my first class of the year and I won't lie; It was jazz dance.

C'mon now, everyone needs a creative expressions class and who says I can't try and dance my way there? Plus, on a seventeen credit course load I am allowed one fun class.

(So true story...What I really wanted to take was pottery but I didn't have the schedule nor the money to make that work, so I rolled with the punches and took dance. I should have just coughed up the two hundred for the pottery.)

After finding the dance studio, which proved to be impressivly complicated, I sat on the floor and scoped everyone out. Should have stuck with the pottery class. I walked in with my "Save the Ta-tas!" Breast cancer awareness shirt and a pair of jogging shorts. Must have missed the memo about bringing your own leotard and leggings.

Primed and bred for dancing, those girls. Judging me up and down. Up and down.

And our first assignment was to create a piece of art that represented you as a person. I was scrambling. Honestly, can't we just bust out the jazz hands and top hats?

I think I'd be much more comfortable if everyone was wearing a top hat even in a judgmental dance class in one of the snootiest universities in Michigan. The dreaded day in my first German university class was better than that, at least there I couldn't completely understand their disdain for me. (And I got ice cream after.)

Major catastrophies, however, were adverted that morning, and pumped by how great I did NOT breaking any major bones I declared my second major in the afternoon. I am now a German/Program in the Environment major. Even got a sticker. It's official.

And walking out of the environmental offices I felt like all the Leotard-Strutting Girls and Bill Gate Jrs could keep judging.  Because I have found a bit of my place now, as an elite major of PitE and I'm starting to feel like I belong here.

As I was showing it off, I was elated.( "Invasive species got nothing on me!") until a friend of mine looked at it and chuckled. "Huh, PitE. You're a 'pity' major. Way to go." 



...Crap.

Labor of Love

Labor day. 
Such a ambiguous name. Because it's called Labor day, was originally started by unions for every man to celebrate their every opportinity to work BUT no one is supposed to work on Labor day because it's... labor day? Just take the day off to appreciate your labor done. Or something. I really don't know. Anyone want to google that? Because it seems like everyone works anyway.
At any rate, it's a big cunundrum, so I like to think of it by a more fitting description. Let's celebrate the ability to bring a child to term. Yaay, double meanings!

Twenty-six,-- check that, man, I'm old,-- twenty-six years ago my brother was born on Labor day. And around our area that means he was born near the Mama Ruth Picnic. A big hundred year long shindig for the people of the town to get together, bust their tukus' to put on a monsterous chicken dinner, and then relax and enjoy a beer tent all night. My mom was/is sort of the event lady at this dinner and so she's been there every year. Including one with a big ol' swollen belly the night she went into labor with Eric.
Boy, did Mom fool them.

No one believed Dad the next day as he went about talking about his first son. Apparently people joke about that more than I imagined. So no one believed her until she paraded that swaddled ball of baby that was tiny Eric. Years go by, Eric works every year at the picnic, brakes his foot/ankle? at the setting up and celebrates his birthday on crutches and I swindled (I say swindled because no matter how much I try the securitiy guards will let in anyone but me) my way into the beer tent to say, "Happy birthday, you gump. How'd you manage that?" and so is life. Labor day has always been Eric's time.

Now more so than ever.

I'll start by just saying they fooled me too. The first time in twelve years I needed to skip the clean-up portion of the picnic to drive back to school. And they let me! Suckers...

I was packing up my stuff when I get a call from my mom telling me to come up to the picnic "Just because."  And off I go thinking, "Great, 'just because' you need more help and I'm going to be working out in the cold of the first real day of fall when I should be driving down to Ann Arbor." Grumble, grumble. If only someone could read my mind.

That was until they showed me the ring.

And I scream and jumped and hugged, and then turned and punched Eric. "Why didn't you TELL ME!?" And I want to look at him and Alex and say, "How did you manage that, you gump?"

 Mom says he's just like dad was. Doesn't know his own strength. Big gump and always the life of the party. "He used to terrorize you girls." She says. But for me, he was my protector. Clark Kent turned Superman. Suppose that's just the luck of the sibling draw being the youngest girl.

In the end I didn't have to clean up after all, and I began my drive down to school with a smile on my face. It was a happy day. Eric's day, like always. I was even half way to Ann Arbor before I realized I had forgotten to put socks on.

The weather didn't seem to feel the same way as I did though. Grey and spitting rain at my windshield, I just felt like yelling at it and telling it to lighten up. Get warm. Let a ray of sunshine come through and bring a little warmth, man. Doesn't it know what happened today??

And then I laughed.

Maybe it was so cold today because Hell froze over.

An Ode To Summer

 How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my Soul when Your feeling of sand and grass beneath my toes is out of reach.
I love thee to the level of every day's most leisurely book read by most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as we drive with windows rolled down.
I love thee purely, as the windmills outside of town.
I love thee with the passion put into every beach volleyball game or in my old griefs knowing that band camp is still the same.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with every coming educational reason. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, and all my heart; and, if God choose, I shall love thee better next season.

Oh, my aching heart, how doth you handle this onslaught of fall semester? With agony and sorrow fit to spoil my last days, set to perish in the depths of sadistic Statistics homework. Or do you flutter before the prospect of education like a moth to the flame? Only to be scorched by the inferno.

Or you could possibly just draw up this wimpy blog post instead of actually doing the homework.

...But class doesn't start until Tuuuuesday....