Recap!

Ok, so I know I haven't been around for a while...so instead of blubbering about how I'm terrible and how I feel super bad about not updating like I should I'll give you a recap of whats been going on and some ideas running through my brain of things to write about:

1. My family and I drove to Portland, OR to celebrate my great-grandmother's 90th birthday
2. My dad left for Israel on a business trip
3. My mom and sister will be leaving on their trip to Kansas City for the summer (I have taken that trip twice, once with my mom and sister, and once with my grandparents. I already wrote about my first trip in the piece "Across the Country With Your Eyes Closed" but I want to expand on it and write about my trip with my grandparents in significantly detail)
4.  We attended our annual family reunion picnic on my maternal grandfather's side
5. All of this in between 20 hour work days and the days in between that I like to call "Julie gets to nap because she is over worked and under paid" days. 

I want to write about all of these things, I just need to find the time! One of these days...

SHAMELESS PLUG!! Meet "The Spoiler"!

Since I plan on writing a series called Spoiled on the relationship between my maternal grandmother and myself, I thought you all should get to know her. I'd like to introduce you to her blog, http://cachingontheroad.blogspot.com/ She blogs about her travels with my grandpa in their RV. Soon you'll be hearing my side of the story, so I suggest you brush up on grandma knowledge.

Enjoy!

Across the Country With Your Eyes Closed

I know, I'm terrible...but what's a college girl to do when school lets out for the summer? Sleep in of course! And also carry on two jobs and freelance work...So I'm posting late today, and I seem to have forgotten all about last week (finals week) entirely! Shame on me...however, until I can get my gears working again, here's a piece from my CNF class: an assignment to cover our "Seven Wonders of the World".

Seven Wonders

Self-Employed

Self-Employed

Spoiled (part I)

Note: I have decided that I really like the quality the Scribd documents give the pieces I write, so I've decided to submit most of them through Scribd and post them here using the embed method. I apologize to my readers who may not be able to access the pieces as easily if they are using a mobile device to read the blog. Additionally, I would like to mention that when viewing on Scribd you should be able to download the pieces and print them out, and I encourage my readers to do so as I believe that it may give a different feel to the writing.
Another Note: I have mentioned in the following piece that this is part of a series I intend to begin, although I cannot guarantee that one piece of the series will be posted every week. Please be patient with this endeavor, and without further ado....Enjoy!

Spoiledpt1

No Longer Konstant(ine)

NoLongerKonstant

The Daydream

            I was driving to work today when I started daydreaming, as I often find that I am able to pay more attention to the road while also doing something else, just as I most often am simultaneously taking notes and surfing the net during some classes. The following is an expanded version of the extremely short daydream I had. Take note: the following may be fictional, but it was a REAL daydream, therefore making it non-fiction, right?

Roughly a week after posting my recent blog entry about my workplace a lot of the hype had died down and I was no longer worried about any sort of repercussions due to the controversial nature of the post. I had been working for about an hour on the line when an older woman approached my station. She had close cropped graying hair and wore her forty-some-odd years around her hips like an inner tube. She carried a yellow legal pad and wore a grey pantsuit, unbuttoned. I asked her what she would like to order, she glanced at the menu and ordered something with surprising flippancy. While I was begging my order, she shuffled closer to the glass sneeze guard, leaned in close and whispered to me, “now tell me, when was your last break?” to which I answered a surprised “excuse me?” She clarified, “how long did you work before getting your first break?” I explained to her that I had only started working an hour prior to her visit, and so was not yet entitled or aching for a break. She wrote down everything I said, no matter how relevant to her “cause” and looked at me with pained sympathy as she left.

            As weird as that was, what was weirder was how many more people came to discuss working conditions with me and my coworkers in hushed tones over their obligatory burrito in the ensuing few days. We had as many incognito news reporters, with their pantsuits and fashionable bob haircuts, as we did teenagers on a Friday night after the championship game. All of them wanted the inside scoop on our working conditions. Were we forced to work through breaks or even off the clock? Did we really receive our weekly pay in unmarked envelopes full of 20’s on dark street corners? No, none of those things. In fact, the paper that sparked their interest was only a compilation of “worst-case-scenario” scenarios. But it was fun to mess with them.

            “They only let us eat food that was messed up on the line!” one of my coworkers whispered to a heavily made-up young woman, already pushing retirement at her TV news station. She gasped, and purposely messed up her order, only to find the line worker flippantly toss it in the trash. She glared at my coworker and walked out.

            “They make us stay after our shift to scrub the floors on our hands and knees,” one of my coworkers muttered under his breath while sweeping close to a young reporter’s table. She quickly scribbled something on her pad of paper and returned later that night to peer in through the glass windows, only to see everyone clock out exactly on time and leave after a long days work. She stomped her feet all the way to her bright red Prius.

           

In a blink it was over, the whole daydream. I was making the U-turn to get to work and it was over in an instant. But I wonder, is that off-duty reporter standing in my line only watching out to make sure we spent the required 30-seconds to wash our hands, or to catch any worn or weary looks on the line and misinterpret them as the forlorn looks of sweatshop workers, forced to work outside the state mandated daily limit. To them I say, it’s only a minimum wage job, only one step above the proverbial “flippin’ burgers”. You can’t  take it too seriously.

The Set List and Guitar Pick

On the top of the first memory box is a baby blue Ernie Ball guitar pick and a 12 song set list written in red ink on a piece of binder paper.

            My first real boyfriend’s name started with an E. We were best friends first, while he dated someone else, who I hated at first, then came to like. After all, eventually we had so much in common. E had a band with two of his friends. They used to practice at one friend’s house on the weekends, in the middle of his huge, housing complex style living room with big bay windows and brand new beige carpet. E played guitar, like every boyfriend does, and his friends played bass and drums. One of the guys’ girlfriend’s name was Crystal, and while I was in the on-again stage of my on-again, off-again relationship with E, she had her quinceanera. Of course she asked the guys to play, and of course they said yes. E was always a Blink 182 fan, so it came as no surprise to me when their set list was as follows:

1.      Feelin’ This

2.      Alien’s Exist

3.      Anthem pt. 2

4.      You’re So Last Summer

5.      Adam’s Song

6.      Letters to God (a Boxcar Racer song, an alternate name for Blink 182)

7.      All The Small Things

8.      I Miss You (acoustic)

9.      All The Small Things

10.  Elevator (Boxcar Racer)

11.  Going Away to College

12.  Dammit

I am pretty sure that Crystal’s ultra-conservative parents cut them off way before “Dammit”. The quinceanera is one of the last real happy moments I can remember from that relationship, and I am slowly realizing that most of my memories are from when we were just friends. The last thing I remember about this night is ripping the set list off the side of one of the amps in the back of E’s big van, still in the midst of youthful bliss.

The Boxes - An Introduction

I would like to introduce you to my dirty little secret.

Earlier today I decided that I should start to post little blurbs sometimes, to free myself from the restraints of Tuesday posting (I sounded like an artist just then didn't I?), so I thought I would go back to where this blog originally started: The Boxes.

The Memory Boxes are my dirty little secret, if only because they are so abundant. I found out (earlier this evening) that I have, not the two that I remember, but EIGHT boxes of memories. Horrified at my apparent hoarding, I decided to begin my endeavor this evening. After all, there seems to be a lot to get through.

Box #1: A box of photos from a summer trip I took with my grandparents. I estimate a total of 504 prints on 21 rolls. The printing alone cost me about $80. As a hoarder, I saved not only the printing receipt and sleeves, but also the film containers with locations and numbers written on the top.

Box #2 A box of every non-necessary item that I found, received, or purchased on a trip to Washington, D.C. with my school band. We stayed for a week and played a competition at the Kennedy Center. My most memorable moment there was walking the National Mall in the rain during the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Box #3 This box appears to be full of miscellaneous photos found around my room and prints from when I took a photography class in high school, which I like to think I excelled at. The first photo I saw on the stack was one of my older cousin, B at my (now passed) great-grandmother's apartment with christmas bows tied in his hair. we were so happy.

Box #4 The first Memory Box. It is an un-themed mishmash of items that go from about elementary school to middle school. I am still amazed it stays closed despite being packed to the brim with stuff. It is so full, in fact, that there are even things taped to the inside lid: A guitar pick and the original set list from Crystal C.'s quinceanera.

Box #5 One day when I was cleaning my room, I discovered that I had a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to throw away, and not one empty shoe box to fit it all in. I also seem to remember there being a large item that I was glad would fit in this box a pair of rain boots came in. I'm afraid to look inside, but I know that the box weighs about a ton.

Box #6 The second Memory Box. When the first box got too crammed, I started stuffing things in this box. I believe this one takes me up until high school, and probably beyond. Its just too easy to stuff things that have even an ounce of sentimental value into a shoe box.

Box #7 A box of photos taken while I was studying in San Francisco. I took a photo class that required at least two rolls a week of prints. We would take one day out of the week to go on a photo mission, and the second day to critique each others prints. I turned some of my best shots into a watercolor series.

Box #8 I'm pretty sure its a sign that this box says "Predictions" on the side, though I'm not sure what kind of sign that could be. It has every little trinket from the aforementioned summer trip across the country with my grandparents. The most valuable item: A collection of smashed pennies from almost every place we stopped at.

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Originally I had intended these to be vignettes, so this has just been in introduction. Vignettes will be starting soon, so keep an eye out!

Food With Integrity ~~ Work With Integrity

This is my first real try at an annotated essay. For reasons you will soon discover, it must be read in a document format, so I uploaded it to Scribd. If you have any trouble navigating the Scribd format, let me know. Otherwise, Enjoy!

Chipotle_foot


DISCLAIMER: Although it may not be obvious in the essay, I really do LOVE my job, without an inch of sarcasm. I have worked there for about a year, and I am so happy that I am employed, especially with Chipotle. I love everything the company stands for, I love the food, and I love my coworkers (although they can be annoying at times).This essay is not intended to be hurtful, merely a personal critique on my own personal workplace.

How to Write a Creative Non-Fiction Weekly Blog

(the story of a personal endeavor)

Step 1: Decide to write a blog every Tuesday. Why? Because you started on a Tuesday of course! And what better way to begin an unknown length project than on the day that you attend school for 12 hours. In a perfect world, after cramming information into a brain for half a day, that brain would still be capable of forming a coherent thought at the end of that period. This, however, is hardly ever the case.

Step 2: Write blog in the infinitesimally small amount of time between first night class and second night class. Why? So you have the smallest amount of time to work on it. Obviously it would be impossible to write it during the two hour lunch break you have earlier in the day, which you most often use to do all homework for the last half of the day and catch up on Doctor Who reruns. Blog writing could never separate you and the Doctor. With any luck, the next version of Windows will be able to divide the screen into at least 5 sections: one for watching Netflix online, one for checking Facebook, one for cramming for a test, one for finishing last night’s homework, and one for writing your crazy-successful blog. Hopefully.

Step 3: Completely blank out on topics for blog right before needing to write it. This step may also be labeled: fail to write down amazing blog ideas during the week, forming a list of ideas to pull from. This blog ought to be called: random subjects I come up with on Tuesdays. I am almost sure that if I wrote a blog on Wednesdays, they would perhaps be more angst-y, or maybe on Fridays the blog might be more fun and exciting. However, on Tuesdays, the blog is just rushed and mundane. Which is how we like it over here on the other end of the blogosphere.

Step 4: Write the blog quickly without rereading or revisions before posting. This point is one that I stand by almost religiously. Rereading and revising waters down the raw emotion of the piece. You said what you meant to say the first time you said it. revising is only your left brain telling you that it is unacceptable. Do not reread until after you have made the piece permanent. Until you can no longer take it back. You can never revise your first draft. A revised copy is a whole new piece, completely different from what you started with. So: never reread or revise.

Step 5: Finally: anxiously await replies to new blog post. This step is especially effective when you only have a readership of roughly 5. The anxiety caused may even ride you over to next Tuesday, hopefully causing you to churn out a better, more poised, more polished post. At this step, it is time to face the music.

You are writing a creative non-fiction blog. You are not reporting on important events, or posting pictures of kittens with funny subtitles, or even compiling recipes or game cheats. What you are writing is a Van Gogh. It may only be recognized as art after you are long gone. Maybe you’ll never be recognized at all. But there is one thing I know for certain: its good enough to just get it out there.

Zygote (WIP)

(Please note: This piece is designated a Work In Progress. Please leave your constructive criticism. This is an essay that I am exploring for my second workshop piece. At this point it is more like a skeleton, in need of some insight. Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.)

(Also: The following may be difficult for some readers. If you feel strongly about the Pro Choice/Life argument, proceed with a grain of salt)

Oh, my unfortunate little zygote. You were borne out of first opportunity, second love, new hope. You were a victim of Plan B, but you were far from that for me. You were not even my Plan X or Y, far from a Plan B, but that is what you became. You were a victim of nervous unpreparedness.

Plan B was approved by the FDA in 1999 as a progestin-only emergency contraceptive. The “day after” pill works best within the first 24 hours of having unprotected sex. It is 89% effective within the first 24 hours, with its effectiveness decreasing up to 72 hours after unprotected sex.

Oh my tiny zygote. You were but a flitting thought in my young mind, passing through while I was thinking of the man I loved. You were only a precious side effect of my new found love, the love that saved me from myself. I could not think that a love so pure and true could be sabotaged by a tiny ripped piece of rubber.

A study of typical condom usage conducted in 1993 found that out of 177 couples, only 8.7% of them suffered condom breakage. This means that the average couple would experience breakage in one out of every eleven uses.

            Oh my precious little zygote. I don’t know where you went. Did you get disposed of into some sanitation system? Did you get caught up in detergent filled waters? Or did you never exist at all? Were you only a figment in my hopeful, youthful, puppy-eyed imagination?

            Studies show that 30-50% of fertilized eggs are lost before they even implant into the uterine wall. The woman will have her period at about the same time, often oblivious to the potential child that was miscarried.

            Could you have been my very first murder? Could you have experienced the big red “A” and been ruthlessly ripped from your life before your first heart beat? I don’t know. And not knowing kills me more and more every day.