What I Did During Summer Vacation

School ended two weeks ago. I'm a firm believer in unstructured time, that it allows our brains to process emotions and information and generally heal itself. I need a little healing this summer; ever since Jamie died on March 23, my entire life has been a mishmash of grieving, writing papers, fighting tooth-and-nail to keep up with school reading, not being overwhelmed with the malaise and ennui and other French states of being lurking around every corner, dealing with Jamie's stuff (so much stuff, and yet so little; unless we're very rich, there's so little left behind), handling other people's grief, staying afloat at trivia night, and just generally trying to be OK, that there's not been... time.

Time for what? Whatever. Riding the ridiculous bike I inherited from Jamie (don't believe every well-meaning adage you hear; I remembered how to ride, but I did not remember how to stop. I have the bruises and scratches to prove it)... Craft projects for the sake of them (Golden Girls. In glitter. Full color. You better believe it)... Rereading The Stand (and by "rereading," I mean "getting to the end of the book and, in the same breath, starting over on page 1)... Sleeping in (mission: accomplished on that one, courtesy of some pernicious insomnia that's been screwing with my sleep cycle).

I miss Jamie, I miss him terribly. I did the easy, full-on, burst-into-tears grief at the beginning, like everyone else; I say easy, because that's when it's expected, and that's when everyone's there with a comforting pat on the back or big bear hug. The other, more difficult grieving comes now. The deeper sound of my soul saying "Son of a bitch!" when I realize that my best friend is gone forever, if you don't count the tiny vial of him I mixed with glitter and have sitting on a bedroom shelf (I don't, because the chances of that vial pronouncing Andrew Zimmern's name wrong are slim-to-none - we argued about that, the day he died [Jamie and I did, not the vial and I]; "How do you not hear what people are saying?" I whined. Jamie harrumphed).

This was to be the summer where I sat down and made an effort; where I wrote down what Jamie meant to me, the good memories and the bad that made up our friendship. This was the Jamie Summer, to go with all the other momentous summers of my life: Bingo Summer, Swimming Summer, Ear Zit Summer. Jamie never understood naming summers; I couldn't properly explain to him how the name of each summer conjured up stockpiles of memories, from Michael Jackson's Thriller on a little mono tape player, to Pink Swimmingo Kool-Aid and string-cheese pizza and Diver Boy, to Kleenex and Q-tips as tools and one important death followed by an equally important birth.

I was going to keep a diary of my daily goings-on, and in a highly creative and excruciatingly literary way, relate them to my dead best friend. But "Slept till 11 and watched The Price is Right while eating leftover pasta con broccoli" is hardly New York Times bestseller fodder, at least not the way I write it. Yes, Jamie never accepted Drew Carey as his TPIR host, and yes, the PCB came from Jamie's favorite restaurant, where he once made me cry and where, on a separate occasion, I made an off-hand, horrifying, entirely accidental racist remark (then said, in the same tone and volume for anyone who may have been listening, "I voted for Barack Obama!"). Jamie's unwavering allegiance to Bob Barker was mildly fanatical, sure; but I couldn't reach when relating him to my everyday life. That's gotta come naturally. I spent my life forcing Jamie to do shit that was good for him; I'm not going to force him now that he's dead.

So, it happens a little at a time. When I'm lying under the bike, bleeding from the elbow and cursing him for buying such a ridiculous thing. When I'm going through old emails from right after he died, reliving the rush of emotion that accompanied those days. When telling a funny story about him and having to endure the softened eyes, the sad mouths of people feeling sorry for me. Because right now they're not funny stories, they're sad stories, at least for everyone else. For me, funny and sad always came together as a package deal with Jamie, so I'm used to that part of it. I'm accustomed to wanting to laugh and cry in the same breath, like the time at Target when he lost me and I was standing in the aisle, big as ya please, and his eyes were so bad he had to call me to have me lead him to me.

I miss my friend, and this summer is about him in a lot of ways, but not exactly how I'd anticipated.

I Have A Deep and Abiding Hatred of Local Attractions.

I hate Kimmswick. It is my ninth circle of hell, where dreams go to die. I hate anything country-themed, or old-timey, or with lace, or gingham. And Kimmswick is an entire town dedicated to such things, where you can buy Christmas ornaments made of popsicle sticks or suits for your big yard goose. I think everyone I know knows that I hate Kimmswick.

I hate the Muny. I don't really understand most summer activities here in the Midwest/border South (which it really is, at least weather-wise; politically, well, that's a matter for another day). This spring has been long and cool, which is a rarity. We usually get one decent-ish month, sometime between March and May, where the temps are in the 70s, but most of those days are marred by hair-destroying humidity, where you can't figure out why the pits of your shirt are soaked through, because hey, it's 70 degrees. Don't let the temperature fool you. Then, we get another decent month in the fall, when the air is crisp, the sky is achingly blue, and you go apple picking just to realize that it's suddenly hotter than hell and perhaps a t-shirt would have been a better choice than the argyle sweater that seemed to go so well with the season.

But anywho. The Muny. Have I mentioned that it's hot in St. Louis? Have I mentioned that I hate musical theater? Well, I do, and I do. Combine those two, and I'm in a 5-hour-long nightmare. I thought I just hated the Muny because of standing outside in the back waiting for the free seats to open up, because that's all I'd ever been to, but no. Paid seats are every bit as bad. All I can think about when I'm there is how hot the actors must be in their costumes. The stage must be air-conditioned, right? But even so, it has to be cold comfort (so to speak). I don't think anyone should have to risk heat exhaustion to play the role of Jean Valjean in the seminal Broadway classic Les Mis.

Three months ago, a team comprised of my mom, one of my sisters, Jamie, and various and sundry others came in 3rd at a trivia night, and for our efforts, we won a free two-hour session at Pin-Up Bowl. I had never been, so I was game.

Dude. It smells like a stale Frito. And the lanes are warped. And no one knows how to fix anything. And the bathrooms are practically open onto the lanes, so if you have explosive diarrhea, good luck making it through in privacy (for the record, I did not have explosive diarrhea, but the set-up alarmed me greatly - WHAT IF I HAD?). And the shoes only come in dudes' sizes.

Also, and this is not Pin-Up Bowl's fault: I like bowling. I like bowling one single game. Somehow every time I bowl (which is like, once every 3 years), I forget this and let someone railroad me into starting a second. And by the third frame I'm just grabbing any old ball, launching it down the lane, and letting it fall where it may. I don't give a crap; let's go home. So by the time our two hours were up, I was feeling pretty sour.

My sister suggested that we hit Blueberry Hill, another place locals trot out when trying to impress out-of-towners. Chuck Berry still plays there! ...Yeah. Big woo. Their food sucks. But, I was trying to be a sport, so we went, where the horrible horrible hostess told us that she couldn't seat us in the three available booths (we had a real crowd going) that we could see right from where we were standing because it would overwhelm the kitchen.

So we left, because I at this point, we were so hungry we were clearly wasting away, and ended up going to a chain place. I'm not usually a chain fan, but at this point, I had had about as much local color as one person can absorb in one day, and was more than grateful to feel too cool to be there rather than aggravated and too old. I'm sure no national rock-and-roll treasures eat there, I'm sure no hipster would be seen darkening their door, and I know we didn't have to fight tear-inducing traffic to get there. It was beautiful.

A Healthy Dose of the Truth

My mom cleaned out her closet the other day and found a pair of athletic shoes that she'd never worn (she does this all the time - half of my sister Lisa's shoes come from my mom, and they're always brand-new). I really liked these, but they were size 7. No matter; I was committed, despite the fact that I wear at least a 7-1/2.

I crammed my feet into the shoes to go see Star Trek with Amy and Greg yesterday. By the time I walked from the front porch to their car, my right foot was throbbing. After the 5-minute drive to the movie theater, I could not feel my middle toe. I was hobbling, so I told Amy and Greg about snatching the shoes up before Lisa could get at them.

"You - what?" Greg doesn't get sister-sister relationships.

I retold the story, and modeled the shoes for him. "See? They're very cute."

We sat down in the theater, and I had to untie the shoes; I'd completely lost circulation from my ankles down.

"Sandy?" Greg started. "Sometimes you are fucking crazy."

Excuses

I'm really good at making excuses, and I'm really good at not keeping in touch. So first, the excuse: It's Facebook.

I know very few people read this blog, but I also know that Facebook is a shitty excuse for my abandonment of it. I can also add in that I've been out of school since just before my last entry, and that I was sick for quite a bit of time that I was on break, so there wasn't anything to report but the fact that I sat on my couch a lot. Seriously, though, that's all I ever do, so whatever. When I'm in school, I say I'm too busy, and when I'm out of it, I say there's nothing to talk about. See? Excuses.

So. Here I go. Last semester I had an insane professor who wanted me to spend an inordinate amount of time on his class, which was basically just Educational Bullshit, though the university, not surprisingly, does not call it that. I called my sister halfway through the semester, begging her to talk me into sticking with the class. She was successful, and I got an A in it, which came to me as a shock. You know how there are always people who are like, "Oh, I totally failed that class," and they get an A, and you want to kill them? I'm sometimes that person. This time, I was not, because I literally had no idea what my grade was like in the class. The professor chose not to make use of the school's Blackboard system, which in my opinion is the cardinal sin of teaching at the college level. Almost anything else can be forgiven, and you can lecture me on my need to be intrinsically motivated (no, really), but I want to know what my damn grade is. Grr.

Otherwise, the semester proceeded relatively smoothly, and two weeks ago, I started a new one.

Except the first day of classes, when I skipped school to watch the inauguration at the Royale. I'm really glad I did it. My entire schedule this semester consists of literature classes (American Lit I & II, British Lit II, Writing About Lit). As you might imagine, that involves a lot of reading, and so far, I've been doing pretty good at keeping up with it. Of course, it's still early, but the fact that all my professors give reading quizzes every day really helps. See above re: Extrinsic motivation.

So, about Facebook. I love it. I've gotten back in touch with just scads of people, and it's been such a positive experience, I can't say enough about it. Seriously, what are you doing here? You should be on Facebook.

To the Teeth

A couple weeks ago I needed a new toothbrush, so when I was at Target I went insane. Instead of buying a $3 plain-Jane, soft-bristle brush, I grabbed the Crest Spin Brush. I did this based on a commercial where the benefits of the brush are touted, and the voiceover guy tells me that the spinning action removes 70% more plaque than regular brushes. I figured this would be awesome for me, since I truly hate flossing. I have a figurative big mouth, but literally, it is super-tiny. I can't get my hands in there that well, and it's just a big rigamarole.

Except now I hate brushing my teeth. It sounds like I'm ripping a chainsaw to life in the bathroom, and it makes me drool everywhere, and there's no satisfying lather. I need some major lather to really feel like my tooth-brushing is doing its job. Just brushing my teeth is the biggest ordeal of my life, and I can't deal with that two times a day. So I've been super-lax. It's kind of embarrassing, but I've been brushing my teeth once a day, tops. Every night, I get into bed and I run my tongue over my teeth. I want to brush my teeth; I need to. But the prospect of getting that machine going just saps my will to try, and I go to bed with a dirty mouth.

I had some ice cream this afternoon, and afterward, my teeth positively throbbed. I felt like if I wiggled them, they'd fall out, one by one, like a stress dream. So I bit the bullet, brushed, flossed, Listerined, and brushed again. My mouth feels totally awesome, but I'm going back to Target tonight and getting a normal toothbrush like a normal person. I'm too lazy for a power tool as a personal grooming appliance.

IT IS DONE

Remember that to-do list I posted a few weeks ago? I'm totally done with everything now. All I have to do now is my Grammar final, which I have to turn in by Tuesday, and study for my British lit final, which takes place Thursday at 7:45. That's AM, folks. That's rough

I'm Extremely Current and Have My Finger on the Pulse

It's not that I hadn't heard of Vampire Weekend before, I even saw them on SNL. But when I saw them on Conan tonight, I really liked the song they played, so I immediately downloaded their album. AND THERE'S A SONG CALLED "OXFORD COMMA." OH MY GOD! Could there ever be a band more suited to me?

I have long been a proponent of the Oxford comma, most likely because I was taught grammar and punctuation by a chalk-throwing nun who wore bandannas when it got hot out. I don't know that the chalk or bandannas are relevant, but they're always worth mentioning.