All things bright and sparkly

I have been a negligent blogger. I apologize. In light of September's events, I would like to write a post in honor of my ring only. Certainly, the man who gave it to me is worth a million posts. But I know you want the dirt. So here it is.

I

If you notice the half-moons on my nails, I'll only say that I went a little crazy with the cuticle cutter. I am now prohibited from using it.

These photos honestly don't do it justice. I spend a good deal of time gazing at my hand, and I actually enjoy walking in natural light because of the sparkle.

Wonderful ring, wonderful boy.

Favorite things that I actually have.

Summer of the Birds

While walking under a shady path at Logan's annual Summerfest Festival, a blob of something wet fell from a tree branch overhead and landed in my hair. It was a fine hit.
I saw the culprit flit away gleefully, twittering, nonchalant. It was a robin-- or maybe a swallow. I was too busy rubbing bird poop off my head to get a good look. My first thought on seeing the bird was, "I wonder if it has a nest...?"
I began taking cautious and measured steps toward the car, and glanced down at the small, white, glutinous mass on the tissue. It seemed innocent enough, but the lump triggered a series of memories, most of which had to do with my animal-loving sister, Shirsti.
The spring of 1999 found me in a fever. A perpetual bird flu, if you will-- except it's not at all what you're thinking. The highly contagious sickness was inflicted by Shirsti, who had been trying all her life to catch and tame a wild bird. She was extremely astute at finding baby birds, and under her guidance we ravaged the yard searching for nests, eggs,  chicks, and wounded black-bellied Plovers. We climbed trees and trespassed into neighbors yards. We scouted rooftops and ridgepoles. We wanted a pet bird, and by golly we were going to get one, even if it meant stealing it-- which was precisely what we did.
Working as stealthy partners in crime, on a whim we decided to take two smooth, gray-spotted Sparrow eggs from a neighbor's tree. One for her, one for myself. Hardly able to contain our excitement, we placed them under an aquarium light and waited for the chicks to emerge. Several days later, we returned to the same nest and stole a baby bird, as the mother Sparrow seemed to do a much better job at keeping her eggs warm than we did.
Only an inch long, the thing was bald and pink, with popping eyes and little tufts of gray fuzz sticking out of the sides of its head. I christened it Zinny (because of Sharon Creech's Chasing Redbird) and together Shirsti and I took turns feeding it throughout the day and night. Two days later, Zinny's head went limp and lolled to one side. I was filled with unspeakable horror. We mourned quietly for several minutes before we determined to steal a more mature baby bird from a Robin's nest in our pine tree.
Our yard, our birds.
We took the ladder from the garage and Shirsti climbed to the top, rustled around in the needles for a minute, and emerged with a tiny, fuzzy Robin with clear black eyes and a very disapproving expression on its face. For some unexplainable reason, the honor of naming the bird fell on me again and I called it Squeakers (because of the Wild Hearts Humane Society series I was reading). We told our mother the cat had knocked down the nest. As we very well knew, our mother couldn't say no to a needy soul, and so we were allowed to keep the little bird.
Squeakers was our first, and only, success story. Through the involvement of everyone in our family, we were able to adequately take care of the little Robin and, because of our mother's wishes, release her back into the wild. It was a supremely stressful process, and one that merited me many tardies in the fifth grade, which was just as well. Shirsti and I bonded over the ordeal, and I spent a good month of the summer sleeping on her floor next to the bird cage.

Ah, Shirsti. I thought to myself as I slowly shampooed my hair. I thought about how we also searched for wild cats, tried to tame squirrels, and bred hundreds of guppies in a twenty-gallon tank. She is the only one who has known my secret dream of finding an orphaned fawn in my backyard, or nursing a premature kitten with a bottle. I thought about how she had to bend the rules to keep Abilene, my pet bunny. We are the bleeding hearts of our family, our sweaters matted in fur, fostering wounded animals in secret. With bird poop in our hair, we come together to tame the world, one baby bird at a time.

Happy Birthday

I grew up with an uncanny resemblance to my sister, Koseli. In order to distinguish my individual personality in seventh grade, I dyed my hair with henna. The result yielded hair roughly the color of beet juice. For different and otherwise unknown reasons, Koseli was doing similar-- if less dramatic-- things to her own hair, and so we really weren't ever that different at all. We were the orange-hair twins, the Henna sisters; our faces were round, and our teeth full of braces. We were practically interchangeable until I hit a growth spurt and sprouted six inches in less than a year. Stand us in a police line-up and a witness could easily tell us apart-- I'm the huge one, she's the tiny one. Take photos of our faces and recordings of our voices, however, and anyone would be hard-pressed to discriminate. When talking to her on the phone, I often mistake echoes of my own voice for hers and demand to know why she's mocking me. In also talking to her on the phone, I mistake her real voice for an echo and yell loudly into the receiver, "Hello? Hello?" to which she responds in a similar fashion and we're both equally confused.
"Am I you, or are you me?"
I'm not her identical twin exactly, just her identical twin delayed by three, solid years. If I need to look into my future, I need only gaze as far as Koseli has been, and I can, mistily, see myself in the distance.
Despite all these similarities, we're more different than anyone can see from old family photos. She is the next Sharon Creech, Martha Stewart, Editor-in-Chief, and whatever else in the world she wants to be because she is KOSELI--the one-and-only-- and there is no one else in the world like her.
Except me.
Happy birthday to my intelligent, beautiful, and always sweet older sister.

Clean?

You'll forgive me.

Despite my dabbling in the beautiful, my feverish fascination with the pretty, and a real, definite love for perfume, I relish in the disgusting.
Oh yes. It's true.

Playing in mud holes and irrigation ditches as a child is no rare thing, but the satisfaction of squeezing a pustule or clipping toenails, for me, has not lessened with age.

From some unknown irritation, when Louie was in middle school, her ears started to produce a surplus of earwax. Perhaps it wasn't all earwax-- it could have been skin-- either way, great yellow flakes the size of my pinky toenail were coming out of her ears and it excited me. Waiting with eager anticipation, I took to skulking around corners, armed with a handful of Q-tips, hoping to persuade her to let me clean her ears. More often than not she didn't, so instead I resigned myself to eyeing her beadily as she cleaned them herself, hovering uncomfortably close and shouting frantically, "Deeper! I can see some deeper!" if I fancied she'd missed a spot.
On the rare occasion when my exhortations worked I came away triumphant, curiously studying the fragile earwax-flakes perched precariously on the top of my Q-tip, and then reluctantly throwing them into the garbage when I finished.

Having never suffered from allergies myself, I was surprised months later when this same child came home from the eye doctor announcing her blurry vision had been caused by an excess of mucus under her eyelids.
Such unfortunate circumstances but such delightful grossness!
"The eye doctor lifted up my eyelid...he rolled the Q-tip underneath and the mucus started rolling off in a big, long string!" she told me.
She expressed embarrassment when the eye doctor had accidentally exclaimed his surprise at the great excess of mucus residing thickly under her eyelid, and also at the fact that the mucus continued to wind around and around the cotton without apparent end.
I was enthralled.
After coming down with a bad head cold several years later, I noticed my vision was a little obscured. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I hardly dared to hope. Cautiously I raised my eyelid and slid the Q-tip across the edge. It came away wet and shiny.
At last!

Yesterday, when Bart told me he had popped an impossibly enormous zit on his back, my immediate response was,
"I missed it?!?"
To make the situation even worse, Bart went on to explain that not only had the zit yielded a substantial amount of pus, but it was also a large blackhead-- roughly the size of a sewing pin head. He had to pick through three scabs before he got to the core. He mentioned that the process was supremely disgusting, but he regretted to have gone through it without me, knowing full well I would have enjoyed it.
And it's true. I would have.
Little has changed.

And so, beneath my love of beautiful things, there is a deep and very real part of me that would gladly clean your ears, your toenails, or the mucus under your eyelids.
All I need is permission and a hand full of Q-tips.

Favorite Things Part II

Have you seen this man?

I have.

He has been touring the country for the past ten years, educating children about the differences between candy bars and carrots and intimidating them with 20 foot long models of their intestines. From the first time he slipped behind a door and emerged in this tightly fitting body suit, Slim Goodbody has never managed to entirely leave my thoughts. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing a grown man wear a flesh colored unitard, or maybe it was the afro. Either way, he has danced and sung his way into my long-term memory.
I was a faithful patron of Inside Story as a child. The only specific thing I remember learning from the show is what happens to a dinner roll when eaten by a person with a normally functioning digestive system. This was through a series of original Mr. Goodbody songs, the first having to do with the mouth and the salivary glands and the last ending abruptly with Slim running to the bathroom and slamming the door.
When thinking about Slim, I can't help but wonder to what low levels adults will stoop in order to convey a message-- any message-- to kids. This is apparent in shows like Barney where sharing is epitomized by a Tyrannosaurus Rex and his brightly colored protoceratops friends. If you think you're in a bad spot now, imagine playing a Teletubby or a Boo-Bah for the entertainment of three-year olds around the globe. Better yet, imagine yourself in spandex singing a song outlining the entire human digestive system.
You won't feel so bad afterward.

The Dance of Youth

While talking to Koseli on the telephone yesterday, a peculiar memory surfaced that had not graced my mind for many years.

Jane Spense's Dance Academy procured some of the strangest costumes I have ever worn in my entire life-- and this includes years of playing dress-up with Kathy (see the photograph of us dancing in sparkly spacesuits and human-hair wigs). Glowing green warm-up pants, a black unitard with a tall, sequined, red-and-white striped top-hat, a neon-blue Mina bird outfit ornamented with feathers on the head, and a Pink Yink ensemble, complete with a magenta collar were some of the more mild outfits we were forced to wear.
While every year yielded stranger costumes, Koseli and I reflected on a particularly bad performance in which the whole school inacted "Sally's Room," a short story about a girl whose abused furniture and dirty clothes follow her around until she is forced to clean them. With four girls enrolled in dance, our mother felt obliged to involve herself in this spectacle, and played the part of a battered chiffarobe which she artfully decorated with an enormous, dangling bra she had purchased at the D.I. Koseli was a Karate Doll, and she wore a black jumpsuit and a yellow tie around her forehead. I was jealous of this particular costume, as I had opted to be a bedpost but instead landed the part of the half-eaten bologna sandwich-- a double insult as the costume was much too big and nearly impossible to maneuver. My simple task was to chassé across the stage, but the two stiff bread slices slung over my shoulders made bending my knees nearly impossible. I remember falling and skidding face-forward onto the front bread slice during the dress rehearsal, unable to stop myself or to stand up again without assistance.
From all of this, I like to imagine what my father would have seen from his seat in the audience: his wife's head sticking out of the middle of an enormous dresser, his daughter doing high kicks punctuated with interpretive dance, and me, the paper lettuce crinkling as I stiffly skipped across the stage, the slightest hint of rubbery bologna pinned between the wooden bread and my back.

These are a few of my favorite things...

B.M.

There we were, all of us Christensen siblings, separated for months and reunited once again. We were lounging on couches, chairs, cushions-- whatever we could find in the heavenly mishmash of furniture our mother keeps around the house-- talking, laughing and feeling content. Kristian ambled away and returned moments later from the kitchen. He was holding a container of cookies in one hand and a can of prunes in the other. In a gesture of generosity and genuine good will, he walks up to my sister, Koseli.

"Cookie?" he asks.
She replies, "No, thank you."
He turns to leave, but then, almost as an afterthought, he turns again and questions, "Prune?"
"Ooh!" she says as she looks up with sparkling eyes. "Don't mind if I do!"
She takes a single prune and Kristian moves on to Kari.
"Cookie?"
"I really couldn't... but I will have a prune," Kari replies promptly.
Shirsti is next. Without a word she pries the lid off the can of prunes and takes a small handful.

Slowly Kristian makes his way around the room. One by one, cookies are denied and prunes are taken in their stead. I watch in growing wonderment.
When Kristian arrives to me I hesitate. I do not want a prune, but I feel obligated to take one. I look around at my siblings, happily munching, and I remember the faraway and much younger voice of my mother asking a much younger me, "Have you had a B.M. today?" I feel my mouth twitch at the corner and I say, in a far more demanding way than intended,
"No prunes. Cookie."

Our parents' push for healthy digestion must have made a lasting impression on us.

Right and Wrong: Learning it the Hard Way

I admit it. I have a history of breaking and entering. But from my experience, I am convinced that even the most hardened criminal must have encountered something, some object in some house, that makes him blink before he gathers his loot and causes him to wonder, "...What the hell?"

Because my father has been slightly obsessed with the cat house he has built for Libby, I find my mind wanders frequently to the subject of cats and cat-doors. This leads inevitably to the only house I know that has a cat door on it. It belongs to John and Carol Platt, our elderly and rather feeble next-door neighbors. The moment the Platts enter my brain a photograph I saw once flashes into my mind and refuses to leave-- a particularly ugly thought that sticks like glue and won't be undone. It is because of this photo that I can never think the same of the Platt family again.

Many years ago, Shirsti, Koseli, and I were asked to cat-sit the Platts' kitties while they were away in China for several weeks. At first that is all we did, and the whole affair was quite innocent. For some reason however- and it honestly escapes my memory why- Shirsti and I decided to break into our neighbors' home through their conveniently flimsy cat-door. The task proved quite simple. We sneaked in like burglars, barely letting our fingertips brush the banisters as we tiptoed downstairs to watch movies on the big screen.
As time went by we became increasingly bold. After finishing the seemingly endless task lists my mother had set for us each day, we would escape gleefully, exclaiming as we skipped out the door,
"The cats must eat too!"
We invited friends to join us. We began searching the kitchen cupboards for food. Soon the basement floor was littered with popcorn kernels and stale fruit loops. We spent entire evenings sprawled out on the couch and soon we were completely at home in somebody else's house. We exhausted the movie supply. Not wishing to return to our real home, we started exploring. We stole about the living room, peeked into the bathrooms and down darkened hallways and then eventually- and really I'm ashamed to admit it- we entered an entirely forbidden area-- the bedroom.
The focal point of the room was an enormous canopy bed with 90's style drapes hanging from the top. Everything was neat and orderly and quite respectable. Through some sheer hanging curtains one could enter the bathroom which was adorned with a round porcelain jacuzzi. On the crowded counter top near some bottles of antiquated perfume I saw the photograph I mentioned earlier for the first and only time ever. It displayed Carol in a blue feather boa and nothing else. She was younger in the picture-- maybe mid-thirties. Her hair was curly and short, and her pouty lips were adorned in bright pink. A dreamy cloud framed the corners of the photo. No one expects to see their next-door-neighbor in a scanty, sumptuous boa. I held it in my hand for some time, stunned, not knowing if I should cover my eyes or run first.
"What's that?" Shirsti asked from the linen closet she was nosing around in.
"I...am not sure," I replied.
When the Platts returned from China, they brought us each back little silk purses as souvenirs. With eyes downcast and a guilty feeling in my heart I took the gift, hoping against all hope that they wouldn't notice the lopsided cat door on their house.
I had thought myself quite clever when we figured out how to unscrew the cat-door and crawl in, as slippery as snakes. Though I was slightly scarred I should be grateful for that photograph. It undoubtedly saved me from a life of crime.

Fear of Falling

I've always been overly cautious. In the wintertime, I walk the sidewalks like a ninety year old grandmother. My body hunches over, my knees stiffen. I rake the ground with my eyes searching for any potential peril.
My timidity has even been caught on tape. We have a video of me at a swimming lesson in 1996. In this video, I'm wearing a pink swimsuit with one ruffly strap and big purple flowers everywhere else. Amid the splashes and screams of other children echoing around the pool, you can hear my mom asking me questions as I doggy paddle and struggle to keep my chin above water.
"How do you like swimming lessons?"
"I...." The water laps up over my mouth and I gurgle incoherently. "I don't know if I like it..." Gurgle.
When I talk you can see that I have one front tooth. My enormous glasses are still on. They are dappled with water droplets. It's a miracle I can see at all.
The teacher takes my class to the deep end of the pool to dive off the board and I refuse to go. You can hear my mom coaxing me on the other side of the camera, occasionally adding a side narration to the camera itself,

"COME ON JOS! YOU CAN DO IT... she's not very excited about jumping in. Look at the way she's just standing there... YOU CAN DO IT, JOS!"

At this point I'm standing at the edge of the diving board. I look skinny. Terrified.
I would like to say that I faced my fear and jumped. I would love to paint a picture in your mind of a young girl, triumphantly throwing off her enormous glasses, raising her arms into the air and gracefully swan-diving into the pool while everyone cheers.
However, this is not what happened. Eventually I exit the diving board via the stairs, looking completely defeated and pathetic. I stand, dripping and awkward, and look at the water.
"That's okay, Jos. Maybe next time," my mom says.
While the other children cannonball themselves into the water, I gingerly sit on the side and then gently scoot into the pool-- both hands safely anchored to the wall.

I've never been one to put myself at risk. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Though I never suffer from broken bones or bruises, I've never jumped off the high dive or kicked a soccer ball more than five feet for the fear of falling.
It's a lose-lose situation.

Epicurious

I recently finished a book entitled Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant. It was a collection of stories and complicated, single-serving recipes assembled by a true Brooklyn foodie. For those of you who have never heard this term thrown around so casually, a foodie is someone who has an ardent and refined interest in eatables and elegant wines. For years now I have secretly sought to achieve foodie status. I have thrown extravagant wine and cheese parties. I have carefully baked salmon with a garnish of tiny green French lentils. I've used fondant and dream regularly of seven layer chocolate cakes garnished with clotted cream and organically harvested black stone cherries. In this book, the New York foodies flock to Le Bernardin, sampling Yuzu cured wild Alaskan salmon with a side of shaved red beets and coriander infused verjus. The maitre d' constructs the entree so that it resembles a skyscraper, and all the tasting menu items are accompanied by a $2,500 bottle of 1982 Chateau Margaux. To these people, dessert isn't really dessert at all, but rather the entree served as such. For example, in Paris, one would order candied tomato stuffed with twelve kinds of dried and fresh fruit and anise-flavored ice cream. In my imagination, the foodies eat off Waterford china plates and stock up on asparagus and Australian shallots at the local farmer's market every Saturday. Their houses are furnished with things from Anthropologie and they all have a wine cellar. All of them.
And here comes the most regrettable fact of all: I am no foodie.
I have an undying and passionate love for the simplest and most meager of dishes: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A foodie would not touch such a thing-- not in a million years. I find myself preparing this course for breakfast, lunch and dinner-- sometimes all in the same day. I eat them toasted. I eat them raw. I eat them cut into fourths, halves, and butterflies. I start around the edges, nibbling off the crust bit my bit before making my way to the middle. When I finish, I let out a satisfied sigh and lick the peanut butter from the knife like an undistinguished glutton. I do so quietly, and in a secret way, so as not to draw attention to the fact that I have immature taste buds-- probably the same that reside on my four year old nephew's tongue.
So there is my confession: I am not a foodie, and I may never achieve foodie status if I continue to use peanut butter as my sole sustenance. I've tried to think of minty couscous with rose water and macadamia nuts as dessert, but I just can't do it. In pure simplicity of mind, sometimes I think that ten thousand ingredients for one recipe is too much, and I prefer the pureness of the PB and J. My hope is that one day this most divine sandwich- more divine than caviar and lavender ice cream- will be recognized as the elegant dish it is. Until then, I remain a foodie imitator, piling my squares of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on top of one another until I slowly and delicately devour them all.

How to demolish an entire civilization and still feel good about yourself.

This is an email I recently wrote.
I seriously think I am so funny.
Thus, I am sharing it on my blog.

I have one thing to say to you: I am traveling through time today. Figuratively speaking, of course.

No. Really. I'm wearing a red coat, with big buttons. And tall, black boots. My hair is curly, like the way an English judge from 1776 would wear his wig.
I didn't realize it until I stepped outside, and then the realization hit me: I look like a British soldier, a redcoat, an enemy of the people, a soldier of war. This was especially apparent in the way pedestrians were eying me from the sidewalks and from inside their apartments. As I marched to class, (yes, really) with my shoulder bag strung haphazardly over my back and a loaded musket in each hand, children and puppies fled from my presence, screaming: The British are coming! The British are coming... again!
Last semester I gave a presentation on Benjamin Franklin. I tried to convince Daphne that if she joined me wearing knee-length knickerbockers and a long, white wig, we would make my presentation A+ material. She didn't buy it. I would have done it, but I wasn't nearly tall enough. Plus, I thought it would be better if Mr. Franklin simply ambled around the room, stared at various members of the class through his bifocals and occasionally touched them, creepily, on the shoulders.

Now I know why she wouldn't do it.

After I take the quiz in my next class that I'm supposed to be studying for, I am going to remove this red coat, hang it in my closet, and never speak or think about it again.

If you own a red coat with similar properties, I beg you to do the same.

Sincerely, your most loving friend,
Joslynn

So cute, but so wimpy.

My experience in college has widened my mind; I like to think my knowledge has increased, my awareness of the world is more acute, and my ability to see beyond my own perspective has improved. There is, however, a severe deficiency in the practicality department.

College has taught me to rush-- class to class, apartment to library--I push forward with complete lack of vigilance. As I made my way to Dr. Cheney's lecture this morning my mind was occupied with distractions. I walked and chanted in my head,
"The hair cells depolarize, the potassium channels open, the sodium channels close, the neuron fires and OPTIC!!! OLFACTORY!!! OCCULOMOTOR!!!!!!"
With my head down, my body bent against the wind I stepped into the street, my feet tapping to the rhythm of my internal study session.
Halfway across the road, a speedily approaching driver was quickly forced to slam on his brakes, narrowly avoiding steamrolling me under the wheels of his vehicle. He laid on his horn as I hopped, yes literally hopped, across the street to the safety of the sidewalk. I cannot convey how deeply I blushed then, or how scared I was to cross the street later that afternoon. I stood on the curb, putting one foot onto the asphalt and then quickly withdrawing it again until every possible approaching threat had passed.

For how well I claim to understand psychology and philosophy, I still seem to be fixated on my inner-childishness. I can tell you everything you could possibly want to know about Freud and Jung and Adler, but I cannot safely and properly cross a busy street by myself.
Explain that to me.

Glitch

My father is a faithful patron of the Macey's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Five years ago Dad could hardly sneak in to watch the second half of the parade-- due to his jam-packed Thanksgiving agenda. In order to make good time for this important event, he has learned to rise early, work quickly, and finish all preparations before the sun has fully risen. After speedily massaging the raw, naked fowl and popping it in the oven, he will inevitably go upstairs before any of us are awake and turn on the TV to watch the parade from tip to toe.

"Well it's a BEAUTIFUL Thanksgiving day here in the neighborhood of New York City," says one announcer to the camera. He is wearing earmuffs and a bow-tie.

"Why yes, Stan, it most certainly is," replies the female announcer on his right, "but the air is cleanest on (pause) SESAME STREET. Just look at those muppets!"

As an enormous float bearing Elmo, Oscar, and Big Bird fills up the TV screen, my dad begins his favorite part of Thanksgiving-- the critical commentary:

"Oh ho! Can you believe these guys? Every year they're drunk! They all have hangovers!"

There's a crash of cymbals and a high school marching band passes behind the float.
Bleary-eyed Stan takes the camera again.

"And here is the BEST high school marching band in the country-- they traveled over 2,000 miles from Pennsylvania to be here today. It's their first trip to NYC so we want to give them a warm, holiday welcome to the Big City," he says.
His smile has the odd ability to show all 32 of his teeth.

My dad's favorite part of the critical commentary is not the ridiculously huge floats, the creepy, King-Kong sized balloons, or the annoying circus music. It's making fun of the announcers.

"What?!? Pennsylvania is not 2,000 miles from New York!" He exclaims as if the announcers had done him an incredibly personal injustice. "What did they do? Get lost on the way? Stop in Disneyland first? Psh!"

After the parade is over my father reaches for the remote. As he turns the TV off he wears a satisfied smirk on his lips. For a man not accustomed to criticizing others, yelling at the stupidity of these holiday anchormen and women is a sort of therapy.

Another Thanksgiving Day, under the belt.

No Man's Land

I am an average American. I am an Earth abuser.

While walking on campus the other day, I noticed that the student body had taken upon itself the task of posting cardboard signs on the patio of the TSC. These signs were handwritten, and stated such facts as:

"Americans use 49 million diapers per day!!! Conserve!"

or

"Have you been drinking out of a plastic water bottle? It's plastic, NITWIT!!! Recycle it!!"

Further down the line, near the salt and pepper shakers were more signs.

"Napkins come from trees! Take ONE please!"

In case you missed the first one, there was another sign posted two feet away that read,

"YOU WASTE NAPKINS-- YOU WASTE TREES!!!!"

Though I hate to admit it, at this point I was feeling a little annoyed. Don't get me wrong-- I like our planet and think it should be kept in the best condition possible. However, I get a little tired of hearing the same news over and over again. Why don't we ever condemn the millions of people killing Panda Bears and rain forests while taking joyrides in their Range Rovers? Why do we glorify Rambo? Certainly he can take the enemy out with electrical wire and a bazooka, but he demolishes enormous trees with one blast of his machine gun in the process. How many napkins would it take to replace that precious tree, or the panda bear fearfully cowering in its branches? I'm sure that while directing "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore probably did not take into account that his $4 mocha latte in its plastic cup was probably contributing to that day's CO2 emissions.
I bet he recycles though.

For all our earnest efforts to stop global warming, America is still stigmatized as an extremely wasteful country-- a label we have no doubt earned. In Washington D.C. I stayed in an expensive hotel that had signs posted near every water spout exclaiming: SAVE THE EARTH. My initial thought was, "That's nice. But how?"
According to this $160 per night hotel, not washing my sheets, towels, and body is a good start.

"Millions of precious gallons of water are wasted everyday on room service..."

According to the statistics on the sign, the water wasted in washing millions of dead skin cells from my bedding is also the same water being stolen directly from the cupped hands of a dehydrated African child. I noticed the sign didn't say anything about the water used in their $20 pots of Earl Grey, nor did it denounce the thousands of plastic cups that are wastefully thrown into the garbage daily. Apparently that is a different kind of water.
I don't mind reusing a towel, but anyone who has seen an episode of CSI knows what resides on every hotel bed. If I am going to pay for room service, I WANT my sheets changed. The malnourished children will never know the difference.

Today I am wearing a shirt that says, "Save the Earth" across the chest. It's only a bit of a fad these days, but as I'm writing this blog I realize it is slightly hypocritical. I purchased the shirt at Old Navy for $3. It was probably assembled in mass quantities somewhere in China, transported by a ship or plane that belched out black smoke in the air or oil into the ocean, and eventually came to rest on my body. SAVE THE EARTH, it says. "Yes, this is a good cause," I thought, as I paid for it with my plastic card.

Tonight as I'm leaving the library I will play the part of the average American. I will finish up this Coke that I am drinking, belch carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and throw the plastic bottle into the garbage.

Above Ground

She was an investment-- a friend that could be purchased with cash and lured into affection with edible reinforcement. Her presence was supposed to be my salvation. I got her in anticipation of my friends dropping off the face of the planet in the desperate hope that her fluffy plumage and bright song would somehow take their place. For the week that she managed to stay alive she did an excellent job. When I came home from class, there she was in her little white cage, pipping and flitting lightly from one perch to the next.

"You got awhat?" my sister exclaimed when I told her of my newest purchase. "A bird? Why a bird?"

Every weekend I volunteer at the local Petsmart and assist with pet adoptions. In my downtime I like to investigate the store, mostly hoping that some new bunnies will arrive, but always making a stop in the bird section to watch the Finches. They are tiny creatures, very versatile, highly colored, and, as I came to discover, each harboring its own unique personality. When I found the little birdcage with the curling white metalwork, I could not resist. I bought the cage, and a little finch to put inside it. I hung the cage from my ceiling and watched the antics of Pip the Finch while I wrote papers, brushed my teeth, talked on the phone, and ate breakfast.

Two nights ago I came home late and crept up to Pip's cage to check on her. I expected to see her sleeping in her little nest. She'd look up at me with a cocked head and sparkling black eyes, I would coo at her, she'd coo back and we'd both go to sleep. Instead I saw her lying on the bottom of her cage, her feet straight in the air, and her feathers askew like she'd just pecked a light socket.

My shaking fingers dialed a number on my phone.

"Hello?" the warm voice of a dear friend was only slightly comforting to my hysterical and slightly dramatic personality.
"Ahhhhh! Pip is dead!! (sob sob sob)"
The mellow voice on the other end tried to talk me through the process.
"You need to take her out of the cage, wrap her up, and put her in a box."
(Sniff sniff)
"Did you do it?"

I never realized how afraid I was of dead things until Pip expired unexpectedly. When I was younger I would pick rotting animals up off the road and bury them with my bare hands. Since that time my resilience has started to wane. I picked up a pencil and poked Pip with the eraser.
"I'm afraid she's going to wake up and start flying around."
The voice on the other line was silent for a moment. "She isn't going to wake up, Jos. Just pick her up and take care of her body."
I tried maneuvering the pencil so I didn't have to touch the tiny, lifeless body.
"Gah! Why can't I do it? It's so hard! I wish I had gloves."
"Jos, just imagine you're not doing it, okay? Just think, it's MY hand picking up Pip."
Grimacing slightly, I reached my friend's hand into the cage and gently picked up my little dead Pip. Her body was almost entirely weightless and she felt soft, downy, and fragile. Using the pencil eraser I stroked her belly. "Oh Pip. Oh Pip, Pip, Pip."

I wrapped her up in a little blanket and placed her in the box-- her tiny sarcophagus, a pygmy coffin. As I began to seal her tomb I stopped. Her left wing, extended, looked flexed, like it could flap and fly about the room on its own accord. I kept the box open all night just in case she decided to ditch her funeral and fly away.

Revise me!

Okay. So, for those gluttonous blog-readers, here's a post to satiate your hunger. It's a personal essay I recently wrote for my English class and I'm considering entering it into the Voices competition. Because of this, I require your questions, comments, and criticism. Note: Yes, most of it is made up and VERY exaggerated. It's the way I roll; deal with it.

My sister has been my idol for as long as I can remember.

In the dreamy nostalgic years Koseli and I pored over American Girl magazines and sat side-by-side on the bus. We used to spend days on end together; we built forts from patchwork quilts, had tea—really just cups of Ovaltine in my bunny tea set—in the garden, and jumped on the trampoline, our bodies temporarily suspended in air before gravity pulled us back to Earth. Even in our immature and childish years she moved with a kind of grace I could never reproduce. I remember sitting next to my parents in a school gymnasium as she took the stage wearing a small navy blue jumper, perfectly smooth curls, and a resolute expression.
"Spell Psoriasis," said the adjudicator.
She took a deep breath and began, delivering the letters decisively, one after the next.
"P-S-O-R-I-A-S-I-S," she said.
"Correct."

By the time she was in the eighth grade she could practically paper her bedroom walls with all the awards she had won: talent shows, 4-H competitions, reflections, Little Miss beauty pageants—my sister was the champion of them all. Much of my doodling was done in the margins of recital schedules or special invites; they covered twisty borders and glamour shots with objects from my fantastical imagination: elves on roller skates, weasels turning cartwheels, people with their heads cut off.

Throughout my childhood I strived to replicate her every move. I dreamt of the day I would conquer her in at least one subject, but wherever I stood she was always three steps ahead. She was prettier, smarter, and more successful—in my eyes she had everything. I found it profoundly unfair that while I was still struggling with my identity she had seamlessly incorporated herself into the world: sterling scholar, honor student, prom queen. While she planned service committees at the local retirement center I constructed sculptures out of garbage from my trashcan and covered all the cardboard boxes in our storage room with handmade paper. My talent was definitely there, but its purpose was maddeningly amorphous, even to me.

I come from a long line of doctors and engineers. My family as a whole is practical, hardworking, and academically inclined. In my house art is considered a luxury, not a livelihood. The only thing I liked about myself- my one safety and satisfaction- was the sketchbook of pictures in my closet. I wrote and illustrated stories in it ceaselessly. I painted for hours once with acrylics on an old canvas to illustrate what I imagined the Lobster Quadrille would have looked like after reading Alice and Wonderland for the first time. When I was finished, I proudly displayed the bright red dancing lobsters for my family to see.
"Maybe you should take up drafting," my father suggested.
"You didn't get any paint on the rug, did you?" demanded my mother.
"Those lobsters are excellent, Jos. You really captured the power in the crusher claw."

My sister, in all her perfection, was supportive to a fault. Her kindness towards my artistic skills made me love her and at the same time internally grumble about how much I hated her.

In high school I tried treading the path she had previously made. In my opinion it was a long and muddy road wrought with footsteps too giant for my faltering feet to fill. On every first day of school my teachers would peer over the roll at me and exclaim excitedly,
"Ah! Another Christensen!"
Their eyes would sparkle as they anticipated the pleasure of tutoring another genius pupil; it is a foolish assumption that skills run through genetics. Each one quickly learned that being the sister of a genius is not the same as being a genius yourself.

In an effort to establish a niche, I gave the track team a try. After nearly breaking my ankle on the first run, I joined the French club, the honor’s society, and the school spirit squad. Each was one booming failure after the next. The cold, hard fact had surfaced: I wasn't good at anything—nothing important at least. I was quickly becoming a masochist; a victim of my sister’s charm, and I considered accepting my position—being trampled under her shadow—and never pursuing an alternative. I settled with becoming weird, like one of those kids who shows up for school pictures with fake bruises over their eyes or who carries a cane everywhere. Even with my newfound identity, my nightmares were still haunted with phantoms screaming, "Why can't you be more like your sister?"

Eventually I graduated and came to college and my sister moved to New York. When separated from her I began to appreciate me—something I had never done before. I abandoned my attempts to appear decent and allowed the best and worst part of me to show through-- the part that loves chess, classic literature, teapots and old headboards—the part of me that is ultimately nerdy but definitely me. I began to decorate and draw plans for houses and offices and bedrooms. I took out my old sketchbooks and looked at the drawings again. This time it was different—they were mine, and they were good.

Koseli maintains a blog, and this was the beginning of her last post.
"Joslynn and I have begun writing stories together. We've set no rules for ourselves as to the subject matter, the characters, the plot, the style, or the voice except I will indicate where one of us ends and the other picks up. We welcome your quips, your criticism, and above all, your praise to help us overcome our fear of publicizing our writing. We expect unprecedented numbers of comments, a syrupy sweet drip of feedback that lures us back to our email-storying fury. On a side note, Miss Joslynn is 19, my Tibble Twin sister, tall and beautiful, a sophomore at Utah State, and a far more talented writer than I."

Even though there was no ulterior motive to this message, when I read it I realized how much I have grown. In that instant I knew that I had come into myself enough that I did not need to be Koseli's carbon copy anymore. I never recognized it in my insecure, art-loving younger self but I have always been an individual, broken free from routine and radically different from anyone else. More specifically, I am me, and for the first time I like who that is. And so, it seems, does my sister.

There is no greater joy than being loved for oneself. Who I am, my distinctions, shine through me now. And because of that my sister and I are finally on an equal level. In many aspects she is still my idol; but in a few others I am hers.

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