A Tale of Two Kitties.

So I've been meaning to write something here, to keep up my blog and just to write. Practice makes perfect, so I hear. The thing is, I've been so distracted with life that I haven't really had the chance to think of anything to write about. So I'm going to write about my woes.

Back in February my boyfriend bought me a kitten for Valentines Day. I was thrilled! Seriously, ever since I moved down to Carbondale I wanted a pet. I grew up with pets and even when I moved in with my big sister I adopted her pets as my own, so going three years in an animal empty house was just strange. So, enter Nautilus.

Nautilus IS a great cat. He was four months when we got him from the Humane Society, and he was a pretty sick little kitten. It took us months and multiple visits to the vet to heal the little guy up, but he did heal and he is part of our family. He is a wonderful little companion, and while he is still a cat which means he does not like having love lavished upon him whenever we please, Nautilus does let you know when he wants attention and then he can be very loving. Aside from his affectionate times he would pretty much follow me everywhere. I would even see his little paws under the bathroom door!

Well, because our schedules are about to fill up in the Fall we thought it might be a good idea to find Nautilus another kitten to keep him company. Everything I read said that two cats are better than one because they will keep each other company and keep each other from growing bored or listless. So, when my boyfriend and I stumbled upon free kittens at the Farmers Market we decided to take one home. Nautilus isn't even a year old yet, he used to live with other cats, so this should go smoothly right?

Wrong.

While the new kitten, Neptune, is a sweet cat, Nautilus doesn't really want anything to do with him. Sure, Nautilus will pat Neptune around from time to time, or chase him, but aside from that he totally ignores the new kitten. Even worse, Nautilus totally ignores me! He now sits and glares at anyone who tries to show him attention. He no longer follows me around or wants to sit in my lap. He used to cuddle up to my neck at night and lick my nose. Granted this was painful, but it showed that he felt like family. All that has stopped completely. Neptune is very affectionate, but I feel SO guilty giving him all of the attention he wants when my number one kitten, my Valentines kitten, sits in the corner and glares.

According to all of the research I've done it can take up to a year for a cat to become accustom to a new house mate. I am trying my best to be patient, to give attention to both, even if Nautilus just turns up his nose at my attempts. I've been bribing him with tuna just to get a few purrs out of him. I feel SO bad over this, but it's not like I can just return Neptune. He was a give away kitten at a Farmers Market! I don't even know the woman's name who gave him to me. So Neptune is here, and Nautilus is gray, and I feel so guilty for upsetting the peace in my little home.

Credit Where It's Due

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about literature. Partly because I'm an English major, but partly because I am a reader of contemporary pop fiction. I've stumbled upon a dilemma, well, not a dilemma so much as a question I suppose. Why can't I study the literature that I read for fun? What is the difference between literature and Literature, and why are we as scholars not looking at the popular stuff for hints at our own society?

The came to me during a discussion with my very wonderful and intelligent boyfriend. Jason was making breakfast and I was, well, watching him do so. The topic wandered onto the Noble Prize for Literature. I had just finished a class where I read several noble prize winners and I found that I wasn't too impressed with their works. Really, only one was enjoyable for me (Orhan Pamuk), and everyone else just seemed convoluted or purposefully obtuse. For example, I loved Jose Saramago's Blindness, and I thought the fact that he never separated dialog and his sentences went on forever was because everyone in the world was blind so they wouldn't know who was talking either. This was not the case, however, and as it turns out Saramago never ever separates his dialog, which makes his work very very hard to read. Also, I noticed that his narrator totally removes the reader from all possible action in the story. You rarely feel involved in what he is telling you because not only do you have a third person narrator, but that narrator is something of an ambiguous character himself, but not one with enough personally fleshed out so you can never attach to him. This is not good story telling, not if the reader finds themselves uninvolved. Aren't we suppose to attach to the characters? And yet he won a noble prize.

I found myself, in this conversation with Jason, sticking up for authors I love to read. My example at the time, because I was reading one of his books, was Stephen King. King has written a ton of different stories, and he has a pretty loyal following. King's stories, for me at least, feel like you are hearing them while sitting on the back porch, sipping lemonades, listening to some old vet telling you tales from his bizarre and frightening life. I am involved in these stories. Also, King's work isn't as superficial as most academics want us to believe. His stories are more than just monster stories, they are stories about human nature. King knows how a story is suppose to work. A good story is never about the monster or aliens or fantasy creatures, a story is about the human reaction to the world around them and to each other. King's human element examines human nature, both the good and dark sides of the human being, and that is what makes or breaks a story.

Basically all storytellers are sociologists in a way. We examine society, we examine individuals, and we try our best to capture what we see and translate that for the readers. The setting, the struggle, that is all a back drop for the human characters. King knows this. He gets us invested in the characters and then he puts them through Hell, and has us watch to see what parts of their nature gets revealed in the flames. Usually there is a character that someone can totally relate to, whose actions and feelings we can all read about and say, "Wow, would I react like that?" or "Man, that is totally me."

I could go on to argue that a lot of King's work actually references mythology and contains Biblical references as well (and the man KNOWS the Bible. Trust me, my parents are fundamentalist Christians, I attended a Christian high school [via home schooling] and went through Bible boot camp until I was 18. I can stop a Biblical reference when it crosses my path, and King's references aren't subtle.). And King's work has grown over the years. Anyone read Hearts in Atlantis? That wasn't a horror novel, that was definitely more artsy. What I'm saying is this, we as scholars can't ignore a literary figure like King. His made up words have made it into the dictionary! Pryokinesis, yeah, that was Stephen King folks. That word didn't exist before Fire Starter. He also appeals to everyone. I can read his stories and see the deeper Biblical and literary references, and Joe Snuffy can read them and see the humor and the horror and enjoy a good story. Shouldn't King be getting some credit? Shouldn't we want to study this if only to study the society that we live in now? These works are popular, don't we want to know why? Isn't King capturing some common fear here, some common thread or insight that keeps all of his fans interested? When should we study this?

Upon Finding My Old Xanga!

(This is what I left in my Xanga blog once I was reminded it was even there! [it's been four years since I even looked at it!])

Huh, so I always forget about the various blogs I have hiding around the interwebs and am shocked when I rediscover them. It's kind of funny reading old blogs and seeing how I thought back then. Our thinking does change with time, as impossible as that sounds, and I would be the first to deny it if not for these mysterious public pieces of me that keep popping up to remind me that I was indeed different once upon a time.

Nothing particularly comes to mind at the moment, just a general feeling of being in a different place now than I was when I last wrote. Of course I am literally IN a different place, living in Southern instead of Northern Illinois. It's amazing how different it can be if you drive six hours away. Visiting up North always opens my eyes to just the small nuances in a society, and how different a rural town like Carbondale is compared to a suburban town of South Holland. I'm in the SOUTH here! Life move just a little slower, we use sacks instead of bags and drink soda instead of pop. There is also the basic ill will towards Chicago. No one down here really likes, "those city folk."

Not that Carbondale is a backwater town! Far from it... well, at least next door to it. We have a very odd mix of humans down here. There is a very artistic community, mixed with local hippies, academics from the university, and then your basic hick, not to mention a very rich (in terms of characters) and varied homeless population that is always good for a short story or two. (And every knows just which homeless type you are talking about with very little description given. You just have to say, "Yeah, the guy with the towel who preaches Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at Shnucks?" and they pretty much know who you're talking about.)

I'm also looking at the final days of my life as an undergrad. I'm finally, let me say again FINALLY, graduating and I am now wondering what I'll do next. I've applied to MFA programs, but from what I've been hearing from professors the competition is pretty tough. Several of my professors have said that people who really should be getting into MFA programs are getting rejected. (I've also been told by several professors that I am someone who deserves to get in, which is nice, but doesn't mean I will.) So now I have to decide what I will do if I don't get accepted. Oddly enough I really wanted to join the Peace Corps; however, that is not really an option since my boyfriend (and not the same one I was talking about earlier in this blog! How things do change!) and I just bought a car together and the Peace Corps doesn't really want you in any sort of debt, excluding college loans which they will help you pay off.

I really really loved my experience in China, and I really DO want to go overseas again, only longer this time. Two months in China wasn't enough for me, especially since now I can actually speak and read Chinese! I want full emersion! I want to come back with the confidence that I can hold conversations in Chinese without blinking an eye. (Right now I'm not great. I can have little, simple conversations, though I should be more fluent than I am. Practice is key in these kinds of things, and I just didn't practice enough!) I have several friends teaching overseas right now I and would SO love to join them, but I don't want to do it alone. I want to drag Jason with me, and he is not really thrilled with the idea.

Speaking of Jason, he wants to get to our relaxing TV time, which I don't blame him since I want to veg myself. Anyway, these were just some random thoughts that I figured I would post since I was recently reminded about Xanga. Hi to anyone I know who still reads these! And comment, let me know I'm not alone in wanting some sort of travel adventure here!

Excuse Me, Is This 1984?

I signed up for a modern grammars class, hoping to maybe learn a little more about linguistic theory and maybe brush up on my grammar knowledge since I'm a writer and I need to know these thing. Before I started reading for this class I was slightly disturbed by the growing popularity of netlingo; however now that I'm reading essays by linguists and English teachers I am practically terrified for the English language. Not because the articles are panicked, but because they seem to find the changes in the English language to be natural and good and they don't want to stop the natural "evolution" of the English language. People, if we all start saying "lol" in face to face conversation it won't be long before we become H.G. Well's "Eloi" or the totally controlled society in George Orwell's 1984! Only it won't be "new speak" by chat room jargon that will kill the subtly and nuance of the English language and narrow our perceptions to nothing more than sitcom references and fart jokes.

The first linguist with whom I have a complaint would be Harvey A. Daniels. In his essay "Nine Ideas About Language," Daniels tries to say that those of us who are worried about the state of the English language in America are merely overreacting. He claims that the changes are slow and natural and that they aren't that drastic because, "we tend to forget that we can still read Shakespeare." Oh yes, now I am at ease, but wait, Daniels uses a quote from Shakespeare earlier. Daniels points out, "We may only be a generation of two from the day when we will again say, with Shakespeare, 'I will not budge for no man's pleasure.'" Oh, look, Shakespeare used a double negative, so we Americans don't have to be afraid of the sudden use of the grammatical mistake, because that was how Shakespeare spoke.

Has anyone studied Shakespeare? If you did then you would know that Shakespeare's plays are filled with all sorts of elaborate linguistic jokes and puns placed there purposefully to get a laugh from the audience. This line that Daniels quotes but doesn't cite happens to be from Act 3 of Romeo and Juliet. The line is said by Mercutio, who has already been established as a jokester at the beginning of the plays and whose jokes have had some homosexual overtones. Heck, even in the (and forgive me for bringing this up) recent film adaptation Romeo + Juliet, (yes the one with DiCaprio in it) the character of Mercutio is shown dressing up in drag as a joke while making these homosexual inferences. So, when he uses a double-negative such was, "not budge for no man's pleasure" couldn't Shakespeare be giving a small wink to the audience, as if to say, "So, he'll budge for a certain man's pleasure, huh?" It would seem that contrary to what Daniels says later, due to the slacking of certain grammatical rules not even Daniels can fully understand Shakespeare.

I am truly afraid that because academia has suddenly decided that all forms of English are good and proper and because the apparent devolution of our language is normal and natural that some day we'll find ourselves in a similar position many scholar's in China find themselves today. Because China has switched from traditional Chinese characters to simplified, there are many scholars in China who are afraid they are just a few generations away from being completely unable to read their own ancient texts. If we allow the rules of English grammar to slacken too much will we suddenly find ourselves completely unable to read the great literature of our past?

I was again disturbed while reading Dennis Baron's essay "Weather Report". This time it was not over what the author had to say about grammar, rather it was concerning an anecdote he shared about an experience he had in high school concerning grammar: "I dared to challenge a pronunciation by the severest of my teachers. The word in question was written gaol, the British spelling of our American jail. It is pronounced to rhyme with rail on both sides of the Atlantic." Apparently little teenage Baron corrected his teacher in front of the class, and her reaction was to make him march up from his desk to hers and look the word up in the dictionary and read it to the whole class. This, for any teenager, was punishment. He was proven correct, but still, to the day he grew up and wrote this essay, little Dennis Baron felt punished and humiliated. He says, "I was just a fool who corrected Mrs. N. on some amazingly trivial point."

Now tell me, is this how a teacher should have handled the situation? Especially when the student ended up being right! Does this mean that we teach children to sit quietly by while the teacher is teaching the class how to mispronounce a word? Granted, mispronunciation isn't the worse form of misinformation a teacher could be practicing, but I think that the concept is still the same. If a student sees a teacher make an error and corrects her shouldn't the child be congratulated? That teacher will probably never forget how to pronounce gaol, same with the students present. Grammar was corrected that day and in a manner that was unforgettable, so should the student really be punished? He wasn't talking back, he wasn't insulting the teacher, he was making an informed, educational point. No wonder no one likes grammar classes! Is this how we are to handle students? Even if the child was wrong, shouldn't the teacher have looked it up for the class, graciously, and then informed them of the proper way to pronounce that word? Even if little Dennis Baron was wrong the teacher could have used that interruption to TEACH something instead of to embarrass some teenage kid.

What I am saying is this, the academics of this country have to become more concerned with the slippage happening with our language. Instead of rolling over and excepting the "natural evolution" of our language, which is really becoming an oversimplification, they should stand firm and teach grammar and give everyone a chance to be able to read, understand, and appreciate Shakespeare. Also, instead of humiliating children who challenge grammar or who make grammatical mistakes, teachers should use those opportunities to show why grammar is so important or to teach the correct use of grammar. For crying out loud people, this is important! We have to become more concerned about this!

The Canadians Know More American History Than I Do!

So, who here has heard of the war of 1812? No, no, not when Napoleon invaded Russia, but the war that was going on in America at that time. Anyone? The second war of independence? Does this ring a bell with anyone? It was the time we invaded Canada.

Yes, the U.S. invaded Canada.

I had no clue. Serious, to all Canadians, I bet more than half of the American people have no clue that we ever invaded Canadian soil, ever. Seriously, when I heard "the war of 1812" I thought Napoleon. I had to find this information out from a documentary called "Who Killed Canada". It was mentioned as a matter of course, and here I had no clue.

Apparently my brother-in-law knew about it because he learned it in the State of Wisconsin class he had to take in high school. I didn't have to take a State of Illinois class! What IS this? What else haven't I been taught in school? War with Canada? And why do the Wisconsin people know and we here in Illinois are left in the dark when Chicago's own Fort Dearborn was attacked and burned to the ground in what is now known as the Fort Dearborn massacre? A massacre in Chicago's history and we don't hear about it or are told why it ever happened. Frankly, I am pissed that I have been allowed to go about my life totally ignorant of the history of my home state.

What else don't I know about American history?

Not All Poems Are Good, People.

So I'm feeling like a horrible student of literature. It's not that I don't enjoy literature, I do. Really, I love to read and I usually enjoy reading new books for class and discussing them. I don't feel like a horrible student because of the books I have to read this semester, I feel like a horrible student because of the poems I'm being forced to read.

I'm a creative writing student, and for some reason the university feels that for me to get a complete and well rounded education for creative writing I must be forced to take a years worth of poetry classes where they force me to write my own poetry. I am not a poet. I've never pretended I was poet. I don't write poetry, I write fiction. When I go for my MFA I have to choose either poetry or fiction and never shall the two meet. At least, not in one program. So, my learning how to write poetry has nothing to do with my future in an MFA program, it's just SIUC's form of torture before they allow me to graduate.

That being said, I do not like the poetry I am being forced to read and emulate in my class. It's not that I hate poetry as an art form, I happen to like several poets. Ogden Nash, Rumi , W.H. Auden, Edgar Allen Poe, John Donne, Lord Byron, Shakespeare, all sorts of poets. I like poetry; however, I do not like THIS poetry. If the capital letters don't stress this enough let me make it clear, I do not like this, what IS the present literary era? Post-postmodernism? Are we still in the postmodernism era? Anyway, I don't like this incredibly long and boring poetical crap that we are producing in the modern era.

I just had to read five "expanded object" poems by five different authors and frankly most, if not all, of them were long and boring. Let's face, maybe Frost was write about unrhymed poetry. (Frost, by the way, said that writing an unrhymed poem was like playing tennis without a net.) I don't know, there are several poets I like who don't rhyme, but they seem to show more talent than these poets.

Robert Pinsky's poem "Shirt" just seemed long and depressing. I could see the point he was trying to make about sweat shops, but then he goes beyond that and somehow we end up in Scotland and "Braveheart" talk and I just don't really see the connection. I know there are things called poetical "leaps" but this one leaped right past me and I believe it missed its mark.

Worse, however, was Eamon Grennan's "Cows". This was pretty much as thrilling as watching a bunch of cows chew their cud. No, sorry, not my idea of a great read.

Can any of these authors write a sestina? Do they have any poetical talent whatsoever, or can they just string words on a page? I'll admit, I CAN'T write a sestina, but then again I'm not pretending to be a poet. Shouldn't a poem take a little more talent than writing vague or overly descriptive sentences and arranging them in some artistic way? Shouldn't writing a poem be challenging? Right now it seems like any teenager with angst can write a poem. What IS poetry any more?

And for that matter, I really must ask one last time, what literary era are we? Have we even started one or are we still trying to copy the greats from postmodernism? Is that all we will ever do, copy? Where is the poetry for this age? Maybe we should, if we are going to mimic, mimic a later age. Maybe we should try to recapture the greatness of an era BEFORE modernism, instead of continually following in the footsteps of the postmodernists.

Anyway, that is my rant for today. Mostly because I was bitter for having to waste a part of my Saturday reading poems I would never have finished if I didn't have to.

I am truly frightened. I was procrastinating, tooling around on the internets trying not to think about how I couldn't seem to write ANYTHING today, when I stumbled across a list of various blog sites. Now I thought I knew a lot of blog sites, but this was ridiculous! I mean seriously, what is hi5? Or bebo? This was crazy! But, not as crazy as it gets. Have you heard, oh make believe readers, of a site named Writernia?

Now I've been through a few creative writing workshops because that is what creative writing majors do. We read each other's work, usually while feeling pretty good about our own, and try to offer the best advice we can. Well, not always the best, we don't want a lot of competition out there in the old publishing world, but we offer some basic advice. You think, things like verb tense changes and whatnots. Sometimes, if I'm the one reading your story, you'll find huge red marks that read, "Hell no!" But such plot advice can be rare depending on who is reviewing your work.

Anyway, so I've read peer work in these classes, and usually with a LOT of bemoaning if that particular peer has a history of just awful stories. (Mind you, there are some peers whose work far out does my own! I love and hate to read it because the stories are both very good and way better than my own, hence depressing.) Anyway, this site, Writernia, is a WRITERS blog!!! So guess what, it's filled with peer work!!! And just like in a workshop, while there will be some diamonds, there is a LOT of rough. A lot of rough. Wow! So much rough!

Now, PLEASE don't get me wrong, I don't believe my writing is, well, anything to write home about, but I am a reader. I read just about anything. I LOVE cheesy fantasy novels with knights on horses and wizards and fay folk running about causing a ruckus, love it! I read Stephen King and I read Jane Austin, I read EVERYTHING. I love stories. So, when I say that some of the stories on the blog are horrific and NOT because they are horror stories, you have to understand that I'm saying this from the opinion of an avid devourer of words! It was crazy!

Which naturally means I'll be making several visits to this site to read more stories. Why, you ask? Because I did leave there feeling a little more confident in my amateur work AND in my basic ability to at least know how a story is suppose to work. I've been learning the technical for years now, and it's just nice to know that I've retained a little knowledge. That, and it's a LOT of fun to read some of these stories out loud in a very dramatic Shakespearean act voice. It makes me giggle.

... yes, I am evil.

I just ate a pommelo. It happens to be the largest citrus in the citrus family, ranging from the size of a grape fruit to the size of a basket ball. I did not consume the basket ball variety, but it is now my mission to do so. They were originally found in Malaysia though mine was Sunkist and probably came from California. It's rind is INSANE! And really, if you try to peel this thing, it is more effort than it's worth. If I had been smart and looked it up before I ate it I would have known to eat it more like a grape fruit. If you peel the thing it seems to generate five times the amount of garbage than there was ever fruit to begin with. It was quite the experience.

Oh, so you were probably expecting this to maybe be about Christmas, since that did just past. Well, Christmas was interesting. First off, my Mum and Dad are five hours away, and neither me nor really my little sister Erin own cars that would make it there. Well, actually Erin's car probably could have made it, but it is a Neon and Jason is over six feet, and it's a five hour drive. No, Jason and I rented a car.

Well, it was suppose to be a car, but Enterprise ran out of cars. Actually, I got a call on the 24th, the day I was suppose to pick up my rental car, telling me that Enterprise had no vehicles to rent to me whatsoever. Yes, the car rental place had. no. cars. I thought that was kind of funny. I guess no one turned in the cars on time! Finally, about three-thirty I got a call saying that someone turned in a Dodge Caravan and that they would rent that to me at the same cost as the standard size car I WAS going to rent. So I ended up being the proud renter of a very nice, very comfortable mini van. I think that was the only way four adults were able to survive the five hours in the car! It was a NICE ride!

Why are families so stress filled? I generally like my family. For the most part I think we all get along pretty well. But. Well, you put EVERYONE together in one house for a holiday and I can tell you we all feel a little bit of stress!

For me, mostly, it's my dad. That man stresses me out like no one else! I get along with my Mums great. She, in fact, is probably my second biggest confidant under Jason whose my first. Mums is always the bait that gets me out there. I want see her, and then I remember how much my father just stresses me out!

The bait was doubled this time because my big sister Jenny and my brother-in-law Mark were going to be there. I haven't seen those two in AGES! I really enjoy getting together with them and I really really really missed my nephew! So, with SO much pulling me in, I HAD to suffer the five hour drive Christmas DAY and go up to see my family.

It was a decent time. There are always bumps and hiccups. My dad likes to pick on my Chinese pronunciation, which is ridiculous because I took the language and he merely listened to tapes now and again. That ALWAYS grates on me. Apparently he has gotten it into his head that his pronunciation is better than mine. I keep telling him that I started learning while I was in Sichuan and that my first TA was FROM Chengdu, so my Sichuan accent continued which is why some of my pronunciations are different from his Beijing speaking tape. There is a HUGE difference between southern and northern Chinese pronunciations. The Beijing people like their "r's" what can I say? But yeah, he kind of pushes that. Sometimes, to get on his nerves, I might write a thing or two in Chinese because he can't read it. Take that dad.

There was more, but I'm just going to let it go. Family is family, right? It just means that these big family things are STRESSFUL. And I was very very happy to make it home last night.

I've been reveling in my home all day today. Dancing with Jason, eating a leisurely breakfast, hanging out. I think we are BOTH very relieved to be HOME. Even with the crazy storm that just hit and took away the powers for the last three hours! But that will be a different blog.

(Before I begin I should warn you that there will be some spoilers for the book "The Good Earth." Now this may mean nothing to you, but just in case I wanted to warn you that my rant begins with something from the plot of this book and then moves on into the concepts of beauty in America.)

So, I'm reading "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck, and right now the main character Wang Lung is making me very frustrated. After many years of marriage and six children he has suddenly become tired of his wife, O'lan, and has begun cheating on her with some little painted prostitute.

This makes me very angry! O'Lan has been a very faithful, helpful, caring wife through this whole book, and now Wang Lung is casting her aside for some tramp! And all this because he knows the O'Lan is not "beautiful". What IS beautiful? Can someone tell me, cause really I'm getting confused here.

I've been doing a little bit of research on this particular topic. I wanted to know what aspects do we as humans label as attractive and why. Really, the answers are a little odd. According to some sources I have found it seems to be all about dimensions. And now just one particular measurement. Women don't have to have specific numbers, but it seems that if, when you divide the size of your waist by the size of your hips, you come up with the number .7 then your dimensions are pleasing. (Men, you have to have the number .9.) Apparently such famous figures as Jessica Alba, Marilyn Monroe, and even the Venus de Milo. So what does this mean?

Really, I don't know! I think that with all the research and all the hype about body type, diets, workouts, and what-have-you we are still no where near close to understanding what we as individuals are attracted by someone else. Beauty really SHOULD be in the eye of the beholder, and frankly I don't appreciate anyone trying to set up predetermined mandatory features for the definition of beautiful!

So, yeah, O'Lan may have big feet and a round face, she might be big boned or quiet, but that doesn't mean she isn't beautiful! And if this Wang Lung guy were real I would give him a good slap in the face for his unfaithful behavior and his complete and total thanklessness for this woman who stood by his side through the worst of times. What is that quote? "Thanklessness plagues and dogs hard the heels of affection." Wang Lung should have kept that in mind.

If he were real and not just some made up character.

I really shouldn't get so wrapped up in my books.

There is nothing more surreal for a girl from Chicago than to be driving around in December with the windows open, no coat, and Christmas music playing on the radio. It is downright balmy outside, where did that come from? Not that I'm not thankful, it's been a little too breezy in my apartment, but my body is just not use to this weather-roller-coaster! I need season, real honest-to-goodness seasons, where the weather does typical seasonal things.

Anyway, that isn't what this random thought is about. That was, well, one of many random thoughts I suppose, and a decent opening line. It kind of sets my odd mood I suppose.

This thought was inspired by a conversation with a friend. He mentioned that there was a study having to do with basic human emotions that said there were only four core emotions, anger, fear, surprise, and happiness. He thought it was interesting that there was only one "good" or "positive" emotion. We talked a bit about the implications of that. It was a concept I instinctively questioned. I don't want to believe that we by nature are a pessimistic society. The scientists had to have been depressives themselves.

The one conclusion I could come up with was that the label of "happy" is overused. If the study was preformed with photos (and I have no idea if it was or not) there are many different expressions on the human face that we would call happy. Everything from a smirk to belly-laughing could be simply called happy, but that doesn't mean it's the same emotion involved in both cases. Just like everything else in life, happiness is complex and layered.

This thought lead to another, which my thoughts are wont to do. Why is it we have so many different labels for negative emotions and only a handful for positive emotions? My theory is this, when things are going well we very rarely question what we are feeling. Why question the feeling in your chest while you are laughing with friends or cuddled with a lover, you are in the moment, there experiencing every second of it and focused on the now, you have no time to spare to think about labeling your emotions. It's only when things aren't going well that you mind begins to dwell on how you are feeling. If you are scared or nervous or angry your mind, or at least MY mind, will pick at that feeling like a scab. You'll worry it and scratch it and bother it until you feel better. That doesn't mean we are pessimistic per say, we don't enjoy negative emotions, but it seems that we as humans tend to expect, almost demand, the good days and the positive emotions. We take them for granted as expected instead of realizing that every great day is fleeting and a gift and is meant to be cherished and lived and reveled in to the fullest extent.

I don't know which is better, being a pessimistic society or one that feels entitlement. Though, really, I don't believe you can pigeon whole an entire world. While there are plenty of people who want to follow the herd, there are plenty more who understand the necessity of uniqueness. And while there are plenty of pessimists, there are also the optimists. I know several people who know to relish what they have when they have it, and it's those people I fully intend to surround myself with. Positive emotions, even if there is only one, can be contagious. I hope to infect others with happiness myself.

My apartment is cold. Very cold. This is probably because the window in my apartment are plastic, not glass, and the plastic has various holes in it. Through the many holes in the many windows of my apartment there blows a rather brisk gale that combats any form of air warming device I can find. I did put up that heat saving, crinkly, somewhat annoying plastic stuff made by the duck tape people, but it had to come down. Not only had it been successful with keeping in the heat, it kept in the carbon monoxide too.

Yes, that's right, my CO alarm went off a few days ago! I was sitting here, writing emails, when a loud, ear-piercing beeping erupted behind me. The things that go through you head when you are suddenly confronted by foreign beeps can be bizarre. At first I thought my computer was going to explode. Then I looked outside. (Odd, I know, but the piercing tone of the beep made it sound like it was coming from everywhere at once.) Then I remembered that we had these things called alarms. I knew the smoke alarm didn't work because I tested it. I fill the house from floor to ceiling with smoke while trying to make focaccia bread. The smoke wasn't on purpose, but the extreme lack of beeps made it pretty clear to me that the smoke alarm doesn't work. Anyway, my mind was working well enough to remember this information, which left only one alarm left, the CO detector.

You grow up learning in school what to do in case of a fire, but no one ever instructs you on what to do if your apartment is filling with CO. I like to think of myself as a pretty smart girl. I'm alright. That being said, I still stood in my apartment for about five minutes holding the alarm in my hands and staring at it. Then, I did the one thing I could think of doing. I called my mom. When she didn't answer I called my Carbondale mom, Paula. Paula told me to leave the apartment and call my landlord.

Mr. Landlord. What can I tell you that will capture the epitome of Mr. Landlord? Well, I think you will get a metaphorical taste of Mr. L. as I continue with this narrative. If you took a real taste of Mr. L. he would probably taste like whiskey.

Mr. L. wasn't answering his phone. This, my friends and neighbors, was not a shocking development. I messaged my boyfriend, Jason, to let him know that our cozy little home was a poisonous death trap, but that I was trying to take care it. Jason, knowing me full well, was not at first alarmed. I guess those that know me know that the Becca panic button well labeled and low for easy access to problems of all sizes. Still, this was kind of a major problem.

I hung out at Paula's for awhile until she asked me a rather unusual question.

"So, what did the fire department have to say?"

The fire department? I don't usually speak to the fire department on a daily basis. I suppose they are doing well. Should I be in communication with my local fire department? Does that make a difference some how? Will they respond quicker should there be a fire at my apartment?

How was I suppose to know that the fire department also deals with CO problems? There wasn't a fun little CO dance in kindergartner to explain these things to me. I still know the stop, drop, and roll song, I would have remembered the carbon monoxide song had there been one.

So I called the fire department. (And the Carbondale fire department operator is a very woman. I actually did have a pleasant chat with her and with the non-emergency number lady as well.)

I went back to my apartment to await the arrival of what I figured would be one of those fire department SUVs. What I got was a full firetruck with flashing lights and sound. "This," I thought to myself, "is overkill." Before I could blink I followed eight, yes eight, firemen up the stairs and into my apartment.

Now, I have a little apartment. It feels very big when it's just me and Jason, but you put even one more body in the living room and the whole place shrinks. Picture, if you would, eight firemen in full gear wielding huge CO counters in front of them like tricorders. The apartment shrunk to the size of a playhouse.

I wasn't really sure what to do at that point. All eight guys were nodding their heads and saying things like, "Yep, yep, CO in here alright." "Yep, I got thirty, you got thirty?" "No, mine still says twenty-eight. I'm gonna try the kitchen." "Yep, CO in here too, yep, alright, there is CO."

Meanwhile my head is snapping back and forth among while I listen and ask questions. "Thirty? Is thirty bad? Is the CO coming from the kitchen? Does twenty-eight mean it's going away? Do you think the CO will give up and go home?"

The firemen walked through my house, and then checked out the garage underneath my house where the furnace and the hot water heater live. The CO down there was even less. Eventually most of the guys got back into the firetruck and left. One of the firemen had arrived in the SUV I had been expecting; he stayed and gave me his guess as to what was going on. According to him the CO in the apartment was probably coming from the oven because it isn't vented so there is no other place for it to go. The levels were too high yet, so his suggestion was for me to take all of the plastic off the windows, open them, and get a breeze going to air out the house. After that advice he left.

I did what he said, and by the time Jason got home from work I was able to turn the alarm on without it beeping. We ate out anyway. We're paranoid.

While eating twice-cooked beef at New Kahala Jason got a phone call from Mr. Landlord. (I did leave him a rather panic-sounding voice mail.) Jason told him everything, but Mr. Landlord wanted to check the apartment out himself. Jason told him we were eating but that we'd be home in about thirty minutes. Mr. L. said he would still stop by now and just wait for us there. I made a joke about Mr. L. bringing a fan into our apartment and waving it around as his solution, but Jason pointed out that the joke was a little too close to possible reality with this guy.

When we did get to the apartment we found Mr. L. eyeing the CO alarm with suspicion. He asked us several times if we had checked the batteries. We had, in fact, changed them the week before. He didn't believe us. I told him the fire department guys were out here and their sniffers picked up CO. "They lie. It's a scam," said Mr. L.

I blinked at this for a moment.

"The fire department is lying about carbon monoxide?" I asked.

"Yeah, they just want to make money off you. It's all a lie. Carbon monoxide only comes off your car," said Mr. L.

"The fire department is involved in a carbon monoxide conspiracy?" I asked. (I told you Mr. L. was something else.)

"Yeah, they just want your moneys," he said.

I blinked again, trying to compute all of this.

"But, they wouldn't make money off of CO. It's not like they are selling the detectors," I said.

"No, no they will charge you for showing up here to test it. They want to scare you. Make you call them more so they can charge me for coming out here. CO comes from cars. Did you have these windows open like this? With these windows open and my car runnin outside all sorts of CO is coming in here. If you just keep these windows closed you'll be fine."

I didn't even try here. I just nodded. Mr. L. did bring over a new CO detector which he plugged in by the stove. (Which, by the way, he won't vent and won't replace with an electric, because the fire department lies.) He was hinting at taking away my old CO detector, but that wasn't going to happen with me here. That little guy is working, he stays.

So that, my friends, is why I am typing this blog from underneath the thickest fleece blanket you have ever seen. I suppose I could try to find myself another apartment. But I've already gone and painted this one purple, and orange, and well, enough colors to loose the security deposit. That, and there is no way I'll find another place this cheap. Besides, the fire department would have told me to move if this place was that dangerous, right?

Wow, so it's been awhile since I've posted on here. I guess I've just been too busy with, well, with running around in circles doing my life thing. That, and I have a few different blogs that I also ignore but check more often, so that's been keeping me busy.

So, why am I posting on here now? To calm my nerves! It's the middle of finals week, which always gets to me, plus I applied to a few grad schools and I won't hear back from them until some time in March. This has me biting my nails. Just to add that final touch, my computer has been acting funny. Not funny-ha-ha, funny-not-good-or-funny. It's been turning off randomly. I'll just be sitting here playing some goofy little game to get my mind off things and poof, the computer turns off. The plug is still plugged, all the lights are on, but my computer isn't home. Welcome emotional break down, it's nice to see you again.

Since I seem to lack the moneys, I have to pretend that my computer is fine. I keep hearing, "Don't worry about, Lan Tian, you can't afford to worry." Now really that isn't true. Worry is free! I can afford all the worry my little mind can take, it's new computers I can't afford. Still, I do have tests and things to study for and I suppose I can't do this to the fullest if I sit around and worry.

So I'm going to blog instead. Because that has to be more productive, right? Write out my concerns to the unfaced populous, take the load off my shoulders with a little open whining and hope that maybe eases my mind, that sounds like a good plane, right? Well, good or not, here I am babbling away. Maybe this time should have been used for studying? ... Nah, I think this is better.

I'll try my best to think of something with a little more substance to blog about next time! Not that I think I'm gaining a fan base or anything, but just because the act of creativity is good in and of itself.

Until then, sleep sweet.

I'm giddy. Seriously, completely giddy. Why, you may ask. Well, mostly because it's now 10:40pm and I'm still up. It's that electric, tight, excited feeling in your chest that you used to get as a child when you knew you were staying up way past your bedtime. Exploring the unvisited, unknown, taboo times past the point of your waking hours. Yes, I am a little old to be experiencing that feeling, but it's there, radiating out of my chest and into my arms and legs, and yes I am bouncing a foot as I write this and smiling a big cheesy smile at the world beyond my bedtime. True, this could be caused by the caffeine in the tea I am drinking, or the nicotine in the cigarette (something that didn't enter the equation when I was a child), but I don't think so. I really, honestly believe I am giddy simply because I am awake.

I didn't realize until this moment how strictly I have asserted my waking and sleeping patterns. For many years now I've been working different early morning jobs, or attending early morning classes, and because of that I have acquired the habit of going to bed early so that I can be sharp for the following day. This regime became even more strictly enforced when I started working the baking shift at Melange. Since I had to get up at 3am so that I could eat and get to work by 4am at the latest, I found myself going to bed before the sun and waking in the dark hours that should honestly still be considered night. I did this for several months, both during the semester and then into the summer, living in a waking sleep for the rest of the day because my schedule was so thrown off. Well, my position at Melange has been dissolved, leaving me unemployed and unencumbered with a ridiculous sleeping schedule.

As you can see, I'm now indulging myself!

However, I don't think that is completely the cause of my giddiness this evening. I think I am partly giddy because, yes, I am breaking my own rules and staying up, which is wonderful, and partly because... well... I'm almost at a loss for words! I feel very childlike tonight. Not to be confused with childish, I don't feel like pouting in the corner or laughing at ridiculous slapstick. I feel enchanted with the world. This is probably caused by all of the fantasy I've been reading lately. I feel the world is endless with possibilities, filled with the unknown and unexplored, romantic and magical, bursting with potential and unexplainable wonders. I have to admit I love this feeling!

Mum used to call it being "high off life." Which, I suppose, it is a bit. It's a little piece of childhood that I hope to carry with me for the rest of my life. It's that little piece that the world in all its reality tries to gnaw away at and tear away from you, but I think it's a piece of the human puzzle that is essential to the whole. I think there needs to be wonder in life. There needs to be awe, there needs to be the unexplained and the magical and the amazing. This feeling was what drove me to start writing in the first place. It's something that life almost made me forget for a time, but that never died. It was quieted for a while, but hibernating, not dead.

In a world filled with explanations, hard science, and cold facts, I ventured forth in search of the awing, exhilarating, unexplainable wonder. I wanted to be an adventurer, an explorer. I found that in books, and I still do. I love the travel I experience when I read a good novel, and I really do feel like I've experienced the whole trip when I'm done. I started writing, conducting my own excursions into the unknown. The first stories I wrote were all fantasy or sci fi. I wandered strange lands, spoke with mythological creatures, rescued the captured and forged new paths for future explorers. Writing a story was as exciting for me as reading one. It's funny, but when I started to pursue creative writing as a subject of study I was pushed away from the true reasons I wanted to write.

For two years now, in most (not all) of my fiction writing classes I was strongly deterred from writing what I loved to write. My teachers wanted me to write stories about, well, about the factual, cold, scientific world I was trying to escape from. I was to write stories that smacked of reality and the mundane. And, frankly, because these weren't the stories of my heart I felt that my short stories began to lack soul.

My tutelage, along with a full helping of life in all of its demoralizing glory, helped to quell this childlike feeling of excitement, awe, and wonder that I'm enjoying now. However, I have discovered, if you look hard enough this little piece of childhood can be found. I found it in the joy of the silly little things around me. Like staying up late, or chai with honey and milk, or movie marathons (today it was Rambo!), or really good novels. I beam in the glow of simple pleasures and revel in the happiness they bring.

This has also brought about a little determination in me. I am determined to return to my roots and to seek out my pleasure for exploration in my writing once again. Yes, that's right, you heard me, I'm going back to writing fantasy! I love fantasy, and all the research that goes with it. I have books upon books of world mythologies and I'm not afraid to use them. I hope to maybe bring fantasy back to the basics and explore the beliefs of our ancestors and how they believed things worked in the world of the fay and the fortresses of the gods. If Neil Gaiman can do it, so can I!

Okay, I think my rambling is coming to an end. If anyone has made it this far, thanks for keeping me company on this little journey of discovery! I hope that you too can find that little piece of childhood and delight in something wonderfully simple and maybe stand in awe of something that never needs to be explained!

Goodnight! Sleep sweet one and all, and remember, take time once and awhile to revel in the joys of staying up past bed time! :-) *Huggles all*

I was cursed recently by a fortune cookie. Twice really, since the print looked as though it were printed twice in rapid secession which caused a shadowed look to the words. Bam bam, rapid fire curse casting; two hits, dead on. What was this horrible curse that my unfortunate cookie cast upon me, you may ask? The little, white, two inch piece of paper simple read, "You will live in interesting times."

Interesting times? Is that so bad? If you have to ask that then apparently you have never really lived through interesting times. Think about history. What happens during those interesting moments in history that we tend to remember and study? Usually it's something pretty drastic, like war or massive outbreaks of disease, or act of God type things. Now that doesn't mean that I believe my fortune cookie has now caused some sort of butterfly effect that will create global disaster, but I don't like the omen that my life might be "interesting" in the sense that I've already lived through some pretty "interesting" times and have had experiences that aren't the norm, and now I kind of just want to live and nice quiet little life were there isn't so much emotional upheaval. "Interesting" and emotional upheaval tend to go hand in hand, trust me.

This all leads up to my big question which is what truly IS normal? A nice, normal life; a nice, normal relationship; what is normal? Can you really make it to twenty-six (which is just where I'll be come March) without accumulating piles of emotion baggage? If you start a relationship now is it basically guaranteed that you are both going to be dinged and scared from past relationships and cluttered with doubts and uncertainties that will have to be dealt with? That could taint or corrupt the new life, the new relationship that you are trying to build? Once you live through interesting times is it pretty guaranteed you will continue through interesting times simply because they brand you and create more upheaval?

Why wasn't I hit by the knowledge wand when I became an adult so I could have the answers to all of these questions? I thought adults were suppose to know these things! I am greatly disappointed to discover that it was all an act and that even once you reach "adulthood" you are really just as ignorant about the big issues as when you were a child, only now you can understand that the big issues are WAY more complicated than you can ever imagine and that you have no real hope of every really solving them. Adulthood means you know the hopelessness of your situation and now you just trudge on as best you can, making up your own rules as you go along all the while pretending that you have it together and that you know what you're doing.

I still feel twelve.

I have way too many of these things! Thing being blogs. I completely forgot about this particular one, to tell the truth. Currently, if I write anything on a blog at all, it will usually end up on myspace. Aside from that you can pretty much follow my trail from blogger to xanga and everything in-between. I think I picked this site up because of travelpunk. The only posts on here are about my trip to China that took place two summers ago. (I think it was two?)

The trip to Chengdu, China did turn out to be the biggest adventure of my life. At least, as far as travel is concerned. I spent an entire week in Beijing before flying into Chengdu in the Sichuan province of China. I studied there for five weeks, living in three bedroom apartment with two other students. Actually, my things lived in that apartment and for about four weeks I was pretty much living with a friend in his studio on the twelfth floor of the apartment across the street.

I have a ton of pictures, all of them still unsorted, but all well treasured. I still talk to a handful of people I met. It's funny how you leave a place fully believing that you will stay close with these new friends all your lives, and then two years later you maybe say hi to them via facebook once a month. Ah well, so things go I suppose.

Now I am on to other forms of adventures. The setting is no where near as romantic as China, but I think the relationships are a little more lasting.

Ohmygoodness I am so nervous about this trip! A part of me is really excited to go, but another part wishes I had just opted to stay here for the summer since I'm going away to school in the fall. I am going to miss my family when I'm off in college, and here I am running away for five weeks? What was I thinking?

On top of that I have just recently been able to hang out with my little sister and go to local pubs to hear live music. I have a BLAST doing this, and we found a couple of really good spot, and now I can't take advantage of them!

Also I am completely distracted from my preparations for this trip because my boyfriend of a year and... three months... broke up with me. I adored him! Honestly, I know you always believe that "this one" is "the one", but I really did love him dearly. He wasn't my first boyfriend, but I think he was the first person I ever really loved. So I am crushed. Absolutely crushed. It's been a few weeks, and I keep hearing I have to just let it go and move on. If you had told me a few weeks ago how hard it would be to "get over him" I wouldn't have believed you. Now, now I'm just trying not to think about him as much each day. Not to think how much he would love some view, or song, or joke that I encounter during my day. Trying to remember not to call him when some minor event happens, or family concern arises. I wish I could just stay mad at him, but I was never able to do that. I feel so broken.

So, of course, I am wondering if my trip somehow broke us up. If maybe, somehow, things would have happened differently if we were spending another summer here, together. Last summer was a dream! Every day I spent with him was some little adventure here in town. I will never look at Chicago the same way again! I never enjoyed it as much before I met him. Honestly, did I really have to go on this trip? Wouldn't it have been better to spend another summer in Chicago with Jon?

So, yeah, I am having second thoughts, doubts, about this trip. It doesn't help that I am scared to death of flying!!! I've done it a few times now, but it never gets easier for me. So... here I am, two days before I leave and a completely bundle of live nerves!!!! I hope this improves somehow.

Hmm... first post, well, this blog was meant to capture my thoughts whilst traveling through China. I shall be spending a week in Beijing and then four weeks in Chengdu. I'm REALLY nervous about my trip, but I am excited as well. So, we'll see how it goes.

Short post, I know, but I'm chatting away on aim! Besides, I haven't left the country yet!