What Have I Been Doing?

So, I've been in Virginia for a month now and I wanted to give a little update on what I've been doing. I started this whole blog with the intention and promise to Do Something--capital letters and all. I'm not sure how much progress I've made Doing Something in the manner I meant it when I made myself that promise. My main goal was to not waste so much time. Instead of re-watching my favorite videos on Youtube or stalking pregnant acquaintances I would be doing something more productive. I'd be learning a new skill or hobby, volunteering, reading, and ideally writing.

I'm an expert procrastinator, so I knew this would be a challenge--and it has. I still spend a lot of time on Youtube and I haven't read a book since my internship started. To be honest, I come home at the end of the day, help make dinner, and basically just collapse on my bed watching Youtube videos. And while part of me is like "It's okay, you've had a long day. Relax, don't worry about doing something right now. Have you watched that new Vlogbrothers video yet?" the other part of me is disappointed in myself.

That's not to say I've been completely lazy, and that's what I'd like to focus on today. Call it a self-given pep talk, if you will. I need some motivation right about now.

1) Internship: As I mentioned before, I've been interning with FEMA for the summer. So far the job is...well, pretty boring to be honest. I don't feel like I'm earning my keep because nobody ever has anything for me to do. Most of my day is spent secretly playing bejeweled on my ipod and hoping someone comes by with something (anything) for me to do. The problem is that the people I'm working with deal with a lot of classified material, and I have zero clearance. So I literally can't help out with much. But hey, if they're paying me to sit in my own office with my own bathroom and drink tea all day that's fine with me. Even if it is extremely boring.

There was one fun aspect of my internship this week. I got to go on a site visit! Basically, some of the roofs needed to be replaced throughout the facility. I got to go around with the contractors working on the roofs and inspect them. This means that I was climbing up and down ladders and traipsing across scorching hot roofs all morning with a bunch of old men in work boots. These were the good kind of old men. The kind that call you ma'am and say things like, "Don't be afraid of that ladder; you don't weigh enough to do anything to it," I just smiled sheepishly at that and tried not to think of the 4 sprinkle donuts I'd eaten that morning.

Other than that the internship has taught me about tea. I've always wanted to be a tea drinker. I can't stand the smell or taste of coffee, but I felt like I needed to be able to order something besides a smoothie or a cookies-n-cream milkshake at a coffee shop, and now I can order tea. My aunt is a tea fanatic and has a whole cupboard of different kinds of tea at work. I've been trying a new one each day to find out what kinds I like. So far chamomile, green tea, and blueberry-flavored green tea are my favorites. I know this doesn't sound like Doing Something, but I think it counts as expanding my horizons. Right?

2) Family Stuff: I've been spending a lot of time with my extended family since I came to VA. I hardly ever get to see them all, so I've really appreciated this opportunity. I spent a weekend with my aunt and uncle and their two little girls in Arlington, which was lovely. The girls are brats thought (don't tell them I said that!). I went to two separate Father's Day dinners with a father that wasn't my own. One was at the Peking Gourmet Inn where we all pigged out on delicious duck. I'd only been there once before and I was younger so it was lovely to go back and be able to really experience the new food. Also, they had Jasmine tea, which was wonderful.

The second Father's Day dinner was at my uncle's parents' house. They are from Switzerland and have the most incredible house there with an amazing view of the Matterhorn. They also have a ping-pong table in their basement, where my cousin Erich and I played before dinner.

The most exciting family event I've participated in was a bridal shower. The bride was already married by the time we through this shower (apparently I come from a whole family of procrastinators) and she wasn't even present. Instead we all filmed the shower and my uncle is going to edit the film and send it down to her. It was my first bridal shower ever, I didn't know the bride, and she wasn't even there. It was unusual, to say the least. 

What was so fun about the bridal shower was that it was thrown in a house just three doors down from where my Great Granny raised her thirteen children. That's right, 13 kids. And you should see this house! So small--and no air-conditioning! I don't know how she did it. We took a walk down to her old house and she told us stories and those of her children that were present reminisced. Being so far away from my family I don't get to hear many of these stories, so it was an experience I'm really grateful for.

3) Sandwiches: I helped make 1,780 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches today. I had to wear gloves and a hairnet and everything. A bicycle tour is coming through this middle-of-nowhere town in VA. It is a very scenic town, but I'm still surprised so many people are coming. Anyway, my uncle happens to be the mayor of this very small town and so is in charge of providing a snack of all these cyclists. My aunt, uncle, and I and about 10 other volunteers spent our Friday night making sandwiches, cutting up fruit, and probably wishing we lived somewhere else--but then again, maybe not. There was a great sense of community there. Or that could have just been peanut butter. Tomorrow is the day of the ride where we actually pass out the sandwiches. I have to wake up extra early for a Saturday. Wish me luck.

4) Italy: I bought my plane ticket to Italy. I'm officially broke, but hopefully I'll get paid soon. Buying the ticket kind of solidified how real this is in my mind. It's happening. I'm really going to Florence--for a whole semester no less. Crazy. My mind can't even process this right now.

Well, that's all I've been doing for now. My plan is to start writing for realz on Sunday--did I mention how good I am at procrastination.

Survival of the Fittest

I've had several pets in my lifetime, though few have survived. I don't know what it is about my family, but we just don't seem to deal well with pets. It all started out before I was born, so I know that I'm not the one to blame--obviously it's my parents' curse. We had a dalmatian named Ashley, with one blue eye and one brown one. I have very few memories of her: she was scared of thunderstorms, she refused to play fetch, preferring to look at the ball disdainfully, she loved green beans but not peas, and she had one leg that didn't work.

The accident that cost Ashley the use of her leg happened before I was born. Dad wanted to show her (like in those creepy dog shows) and was training her at the horse tracks where she liked to jump over the hurdles. After doing a few laps, he took her up to his friend's office on the fourth floor. Ashley took one look around, spotted the open window, and jumped through it just like a hurdle. She lived, but only thanks to a stranger across the street who called animal services when he saw a dog, legs flailing, plummet the four stories to the ground. What I wouldn't give to see the expression on that guy's face! So she broke her leg to the point where it never fully straightened again. She got the hang of it eventually, even was able to run, but for a few months my dad had to carry her to the bathroom. That's dedication.

The next animal was my hamster, Snowball. I should have known things would turn out badly the moment I looked into his beady red eyes at the pet store and he bit my finger til it bled. Snowball and I did not get on well. I, admittedly, wasn't the best pet owner. I often forgot to feed him or give him water, and I refused to clean his cage point-blank. It came as no surprise when my mother and I went to go feed little Snowball one day only to find that he'd chewed his way through his plastic cage. We looked for him everyone--under the bed, behind the couch, in the closets, under the sink, everywhere. We looked until we expected to find only a tiny hamster skeleton. I wasn't too choked up about the loss.

 2 months later we found Snowball, resiliently and unbelievably alive. Behind the washing machine. He'd been living off Ashley's dog food.

So, we got a new cage and stuck him back in it. A few months later, he'd chewed his way out again. This time we didn't bother looking too hard, knowing he'd turn up eventually. Quite a while later, Mom was clearing out the back of her closet and found a tiny, chewed hole through the baseboard of the house...Snowball. Mom screamed, and I never saw my oh so beloved hamster again. He ran away; chewed straight through the house just to get away from me. I like to think that there is a herd of snow-white hamsters living in the woods behind my house, they're monstrous red eyes and talons terrorizing the neighborhood.

My next encounter with pets was birds. In my defense, they weren't my birds and it wasn't my fault. I was babysitting my friend's two birds (Sonny and Sandy, colored blue and green respectively) while she went to visit family in Texas over Christmas vacation. My dad, the jokester that he is, decided it would be super funny to let the birds out of their cage so they could fly around the house and annoy Mom. He probably should have turned the fan off first.

That's right. I walk in the room just in time to see a little blur of green get smacked by the ceiling fan and thrown into the wall, little tufts of feathers floating down in its wake. I don't know how, but the thing survived. I almost felt guilty taking my friends 'thank you' present...almost.

Then there was the cat. Nothing dramatic has happened to Shadow, but she's annoying as hell. Every morning, between 1 and 3am, Shadow decides to make some noise. I don't know why, I've never asked. She climbs into my bookshelves, and begins knocking my books onto the ground one by one. Thud. Thud. Thud....THUD! This is immediately followed by me forcibly removing her from the room. Occasionally I 'accidentally' throw her into the wall at the other end of the hallway, but she always lands on her feet.

After Shadow we got fish. A LOT of fish. My dad likes to do spontaneous things while Mom and I are on vacation. We go to grandma and grandpa's while he has to work? He buys a big screen tv. Mom goes to work and gets home late? He buys a boat. No lie, he legit bought a boat. We go to Spain for a pilgrimage? He buys a 50 gallon fish tank. It's just what he does.

So, if you have a 50 gallon fish tank you obviously need fish. We had fish of every kind (and several different batches as they all died out, but let's focus on the first). We had blind albino frogs, sucker fish, elephant fish, pretty fish, ugly puffy fish, guppies, baby shark looking things, green fish, beta fish, and tiger fish. I had one fish that I grew quite attached to, Tiger. He had a little tiger-striped tail that was adorable and he could out-swim most of the predators in the tank. It became evident pretty early on that the fish were being eaten, but rather than fix the problem and save the fish my dad decided it was 'survival of the fittest'. Tiger was one of the last to go, and I mourned him for weeks. 

The most interesting fish in our tank were the frogs. They were white with red eyes (just like Snowball) and were blind. This was particularly entertaining at feeding time, because they couldnt' see the food or the other fish, so they just swam around blindly and ran into everything. Including the sides of the tank. It was hilarious!

Our next pet was Abby, another spontaneous purchase by my father. She is a black lab-golden retriever mix that we rescued. She and her siblings were trapped in a storm drain and she was the only one who survived. She is lovable and friendly and we haven't managed to kill her yet so that's a plus. But that's not to say we haven't come close.

Dad bought an electric fence for her so that we wouldn't have to walk her anymore. We were all ecstatic. Dad and I worked together to get it all set up, adjust the perimeter and power level of the collar, and then stuck the thing on her. We were heading out to walk her around and train her to know where the fence was. We'd just gotten to the door when her collar started beeping.

 ME: "That's weird."

DAD: "Yeah." 

We ignored it and kept going. Abby got two feet before the collar shocked her...at the highest level. We had gotten the levels mixed up; we meant to put it on the highest perimeter and the lowest shock-level, but did the opposite instead. I know, we're smarties. Abby paid the price for it though. I'll never forget her little black body leaping into the air, her howls echoing down the road. We haven't used the fence since.

The next pet is my turtle, Grady Bubba. My best friend from home and I each got a turtle; hers is named Brady. They are little red-eared sliders, I believe, and don't require much maintenance or money, which makes them the perfect college pet! Grady just sits on my desk, never complaining or knocking books off. I only have to clean his tank once a week and feed him, like, twice. His low-maintenance attitude hasn't been all good, however. I kind of forgot him over Thanksgiving break...but he's still alive! Alive and well, and now my roommates remind me to feed him and take him home with me, so it all worked out.

My family also has an iguana now. His name is Marley and he lives in the empty 50 gallon fish tank. My dad bought him for my brothers 15th birthday. You could say it was an unusual present, as Richard had never expressed any interest in iguanas, but that's the kinda bloke Dad is. An unusual one. Marley is alive and normal as far as I know. He doesn't like it when you get close to his tank, but other than that he never moves. Seriously, he is the most boring present ever.

And those are my family's pets: two dogs, a cat, a hamster, countless fish, a turtle, and an iguana. I vote we go for a goat next.