Ode to Melody.

I have an ode to write.

We'll call it Ode to Melody.

Melody is my cousin, friend and ex-roommate. She also holds more obscure interpersonal titles, such as person I regularly get lost with, roommate who gets coerced into watching BBC/Korean TV and 80's movies with me, and geek who actually gets excited about grammar with me.

I'm sort of fond of her.

Melody is also one of the only people I regularly text. I'm not a huge phone person at all. I got chastised yesterday by someone who had been trying to get a hold of me for three weeks, during which period it had been lost and out of battery... and I just hadn't really cared.

So the fact that I text Melody is huge. It means she is hilarious, comforting, and uses punctuation. What more could you really ask from someone?

I've typed up some of our texts because I didn't want my phone to erase them from existence and I'm putting them here because I think they say really good things about both of us. Or possibly just really weird things.

Thus.

Mel: (on break at job) I've had the misfortune to run into someone I briefly worked with at Pizza Hut. He keeps giving me communicative looks and expects me to, like, talk to him or something. Yuck. Talking.
Me: Options: 1) Change your name so you can plausibly deny knowledge of his existence. 2) Improbably deny knowledge of his existence. 3) Quit. 4) Work under your desk until you quit. 5) Say hi.

Mel: I'm in a state of hyper activism. My parent took me into public. This does not bode well for the general consumers of Winco. I ALSO have the hiccups.
Me: Ah, poor general consumers of Winco. I do worry about them. Are you coming home at some point?
Mel: Yes! Because I have pineapple! We can practice communism! I get some pineapple, you get some pineapple, and the world is a little happier.
Mel: Well, that's a lie. We're a little happier, not sure about the rest of the world.

Me: (when I forgot we were going to the International Cinema) Sorry, Love, my phone was in my shoe again. We could go Friday or Saturday.
Mel: Why was your...? Never mind. Right. Friday or Saturday should work. Comunist pineapple and unnderrated movies.
Mel: I'm sorry, I'm still trying to understand.
Mel: WHY?
Mel: I do adore you.

Mel: Beans are like the kid in the class who eats whole wads of paper and makes spit bubbles and the teacher finally just puts him in a corner because they can't kick him out.

Me: Ohmgosh. STRIPPED OF AN ORGAN? Who does that?

Me: I will be going tomorrow. You may have to lock me in the closet for significant periods of time at some point this weekend.
Mel: I'm pretty strong and I grew up with 6 brothers. I can wrestle you into a closet and lock you in no problem. What are friends for?

Like A Disease, or Way of Kissing People

I have yet to really get back into the habit of quoting, but this is what I have for you, in honor of the end of the semester. I don't know what these quotes say to you, but I think it's fairly clear from them that 1) I go to a church school, 2) I am an English major, and 3) I have really weird friends.

"If he ever came to date my daughter, I would remove him. From the earth."

"Your bodily functions are stupid."
"Your face--"
"Your mom--"
"Your mom's face--"
"--The maturity points in this room just went down."

"I wonder what it would feel like to wake up looking like Brad Pitt?"

"Who knew Death would be so stinkin' adorable?"

"Were you like this with your boys?"
"No. The problem with girls is, they date guys. Dad's know about guys."

"A good way to receive answers to prayer is through farm animals."

"I stole a staple the other day."
"Judgement gonna be hard on you."

"Why are we sitting on potatoes?"

"I want to have a marriage like that, except for all the bad grammar and infidelity."

"It's like pregnancy, but with your mouth."

"I'm not trying to be suspicious, I'm trying to save turtles."

"It sounds like a disease or a way of kissing people."

"Faith is never ABC, it's A 7 green, with a little bit of ice cream."

"I don't feel comfortable having a crush on someone who actually exists."

"If they're going to be stupid they might as well be smart about it."

"I'm not going to have kids for a while. I like my car. I might get a dog."

"Who invited Darth Vadar to yoga? Whaat?"

"I do have great cheek bones. I'm practically Voldemort."

A Post About Photos With A Surprising Lack of Photos

I'm sitting on the floor in my bedroom. (I read, recently, that doing things other than actually sleeping in bed makes it hard to actually sleep in bed. Thus the floor.) My hair is wet and I'm listening to Mumford & Sons, which is my favorite band tonight. My window is open. Praises be for open windows.

I believe it's spring here, but, not being very practiced in seasons, it's difficult for me to be sure. In any case, I have plans on riding my bike to school some day soon and possibly playing soccer. Except probably not the soccer thing.

Today I went and got pictures developed off a disposable camera that I bought on impulse a month and a half ago. Also on impulse, and possibly in consequence of the first impulse, my friends and I started a photoblog.

I've never been a photographer, friends. As in, never. I am a reader, writer, biker, cooker, sister, and many other kinds of -ers, but I've never been a photographer. In spite of this I now have a photoblog.

Here's why: Most of my friends are leaving. And when I say most, I mean mostly all. They're all leaving on missions--to Spain, Germany, Japan, New Jersey, and many other awesome places.

I'm staying in Utah, and I'm preemptively lonely. Not so much this week. Last week was pretty bad, but this week my loneliness has been relocated and is regulated to an obscure part of my heart. In any case, my impulse when battling negative emotions is to curl up on my bed (which I'm not even allowed to do anymore, otherwise insomnia), which is actually a really bad idea. So instead I made a photoblog.

In my head, this makes sense.

You see, I have friends that are going to cities all over the world. The thought is, maybe they can take pictures of it and send it back to me and I can put it on the blog. The advantage here is threefold: (1) I stay in contact with my friends. (2) When they get back they'll have a record of their missions. (3) I don't spend a lot of time curled up on my bed and not sleeping. At least in theory.

Crushes on Characters and Social Scripts

If people are defined by their relationship to the world then I may have some very serious problems.

Me and the world don't exactly hit it off. We have communication issues. And possibly a personality clash. That's OK. I see it as a sign that both me and the world have personalities. Which is good. I guess.

I just felt like telling you because I've been feeling minorly anti-social lately. Not majorly! Just minorly. I think I'll marathon three seasons of In Plain Sight, wrapped in my ugliest hoodie and most comfortable blanket, feeding my crushes on fictional characters, and making muffins on a Friday night minorly. See. Nothing to worry about.

You think I have problems now, huh? Yeah, so does my peer mentor.

I should probably stop typing now. What is really scary is that I probably won't.

Maybe this is why I have crushes on fictional characters. They don't judge me. They never think I'm weird for having crushes on them. That must be why I love them. Well, that and they totally rock. No real guy has anything on Rory Williams, because they'll never be endearingly dorky in the same way, or wait for their girl for two thousand years. No real guy has anything on Marshall Mann, who knows random facts about the invention of danishes and would take a bullet for his best friend.

How can a real guy hope to measure up? The only advantage he has is that he's, you know... real.

My friends are going through boy drama right now. She likes the guy and he doesn't like her back (probably?), the guy likes her and she doesn't like him back, or she can't decide which guy she likes. Or some combination of all of the above. I'm sitting on the sidelines enjoying the show. But, I admit, every once in a while I wonder if I'm supposed to be participating. It's like someone handed out the social script before I got here and now I'm twiddling my thumbs, wondering if I'm missing my lines.

I was talking to one of my cousins about this, relating my friends' dramas and talking about how I'm enjoying it. We were in the car and she turned around to look at me. "Marissa," she said, "you are not supposed to be watching. You're supposed to be doing." One of the guys I'd been talking about passed and I pointed him out to here. "He's cute," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "He's a really nice guy."

"No. He's cute." Then she tried to set me up on a blind date.

Dear person who hands out social scripts. I don't appear to be on your email list. Please rectify the matter before I do something truly terrible, or omit to do something terribly important.

P.S.

Moanings and Groanings

WARNING: Look at the title. Good, now you've been warned.

Everyone within a hundred mile radius of me is going to a football game tonight. I see them streaming under my window, a stream of blue shirts. Everyone except one of me and one of my roommates. She is sleeping in the bunk above me right now, utterly exhausted after six and a half hours of serving up pizza. I'm sitting at my desk and not doing homework, going shopping, or doing laundry.

I remember one of my religion teachers telling me once that not a whole lot changes after you die. You don't magically become a good person, strap on angel wings, skim around the stars singing praises. The idea is to be a good person when you go. But somehow we think that big changes in life (like, for example, life ending) make us different. We're usually waiting for them to fix everything.

I hadn't ever really thought about what I would be like after death before. I'm a teenager. I still think I'm invincible. But I do remember thinking that when I got to college everything would magically right itself. In my head there was a whole group of people waiting for me. People who were like me, but not so much like me that it was annoying. People I could call up at any time and say, Hey, I'm bored. People who were cool but not too cool to be my friends.

Kindred spirits is the term. I thought there would be seven or eight soul siblings just waiting on my front porch when I turned up with my suitcases. Unfortunately, as it turns out, I don't have a front porch and I seem to have missed the kindred spirit opening social. Everyone told me I would make life long friends in college, and I kind of feel like I'm missing the boat.

How do you catch a boat? Do you hail it like a cab? I have never successfully hailed a cab. (has anyone else ever noticed how many double letters there are in successfully? it's really fun to type.)

I know it's only three weeks in, and my parents and various other adult relatives assure me that there are lots of other people just like me. We're all insecure teenagers, sitting in our apartments, craving love and affection, doing homework and watching Doctor Who. And while I'm sure they're right (except for tonight when, as previously stated, everyone and their goldfish is going to the big game) I don't find it very comforting. If everyone is just like me then we'll never get anywhere.

Besides, that isn't what I see outside my window. People are jogging together, going to lakes together, getting in their badly parked cars and turning the ignition with a purpose together. They go to each other's apartments and magically have each other's phone number.

That's the part that really confuses me. Where, when, and how are these people getting each other's numbers? It's like it all happens under the table, some black market trade I know nothing about. I turn my back and they all pull out their phones.

I was never popular. I never had a ton of friends. I was that girl everyone waved to in the hall, but no one ever thought of when they were thinking of doing something. And that was fine. I always had a few great friends, the kind that always make things better. I'm turning into that girl again--the wave in the hall girl who no one dislikes, but no one particularly likes either. Except this time I'm missing my soul siblings.

What I really would like is a Laurie. I want a best guy friend/older brother. I never had a big brother and I think it's about time I got one. The whole (failed) romantic line of that Little Woman's story isn't what interests me right now. I want a buddy.

And I have no idea how to get one. It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing you put an add in the paper about (laurie wanted. must be funny, fun, mildly annoying, smart (preferably good at explaining astronomy), and extremely comforting. bow tie optional).

...Now I really want to put an add in the paper.

I'm so much cooler in my head. Really.

OK, pity party over. Thanks for listening. Tune in next week.