Posts Tagged ‘Fort Worth College Girl’

The air is warm. Seven tired students and teachers, satisfied by dinner, flop down in the house. They are tired, their uniforms are untucked, the backpacks deposited by the door. The chores are moving slowly, and in the background Hotel California plays. We have finished our first day back, and though the heat of summer lingers, the somnolence is over. We no longer estivate.

For myself, it was a full day, starting at 6am when I alit from bed (alright, it wasn’t that fast, or glamorous) so that I could walk the dog and get ready before it was ninety degrees outside (I’d like to avoid roasting myself more than once daily during my bike commute).

We had never walked that early – at first Brise was cautious. But, soon the sun started to peek out, pink, over the tops of the trees. It was peaceful.

After riding to school with a broken bike seat, standing on the pedals (the seat tipped back if I sat on it) the whole way, I arrived an hour early. I sat and read the paper.

I found my first class – large, a hundred students. Psychology. It shouldn’t be bad – show up, keep your nose clean and you can make it. Then came Organic Chemistry. Here I met up with an old friend, always good. We gave each other dark looks as the grading was explained. “What are we doing here?” we thought. Finally, an Honors Philosophy course. I looked around to see if the honors students looked any different from the rest of the student body. Nope, pretty normal. The 60/40 female/male ratio held up. The professors were characters.

After, I checked my email, and saw some loose ends had been tied up. I checked the bookstore and decided a second time against supported the College Bookstore Racket going there and at campuses everywhere. Realizing my lunch was at home, I started back – but not before stopping in at Colonel’s Bicyles, where they fixed my seat in about two minutes. I rode home, saw my dog, ate my lunch. Put the syllabi into my planner. Made bread. Bought my books from Amazon.

Not bad for a first day.

Credit to tigress1 of stock.xchng

Well it’s that time of year. Living in a house with six other people who are also in the midst of their educations, it is inevitable: those days, summer waning, when people run about gathering uniforms and making lists, getting classes, making late night runs to Ross to get gym shorts, arguing about who has the worst teachers, frantically running about like Scarlett O’Hara – “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!”….”School is starting! School is starting!”

Did we get everything on those grade school supply lists? Is the ninth grader in the right language class? Do we have enough fruit for lunches? The editor is starting a new job, and has to be gone every day going to what sound like pretty boring meetings, then rushing to set up her classroom. Mr. Cassella doesn’t start for a week or so, but you can tell he’s sorry the summer is over. Heck, we all are. The boys realize all too late that today is their last day of freedom – but is it? They are doing summer essays, digging up sports equipment, and generally going through a wringing of hands.

Meanwhile, I am deciding where to live, the youngest children’s ride fell through and we need to choose a school for them to go to from which they may be picked up easily, and the oldest of the family, here for a few weeks before starting graduate school, is depressed because she doesn’t start school for a month.

It never ends. School lists, books, supplies, uniforms. So much money to be spent! Ross, Wal Mart, Famous Footwear, Office Max, calling Grandma to get the few things we couldn’t find…Everyone needs shoes (that’s about 7 pairs…), notebooks (we’re talking dozens at that point), and thinks they need all kinds of other things. The ninth grader tries to help – “I don’t need a new graphing calculator at least!”

Meanwhile, I am on my own frantic search – to get a hold of the head of the Honors program at TCU so I can get my classes. It’s Friday afternoon. Classes start Monday. I sit in the office, waiting for the receptionist to come back from lunch so she can introduce me. A guy walks in, chats with the woman I need to see for twenty minutes. I start to get restless. I cough. I move. I’m here! Take care of me! This is urgent, I need classes! Finally, I am rescued. Introduced. “This poor girl has been calling the office every day this week, can you see her about her schedule?” The director looks nervous, thinks, then starts talking fast. We get things done – at the end, she apologizes for the rush, for my wait. “It’s been so crazy with meetings and everything before school starts.” I look her in the eye. “I am one of 6 children. My mother is starting to teach at a new school. My stepfather is returning to UNT. Everyone starts school this week. Trust me, I understand.”

The editor’s post about the male friends issue seemed to create quite a foment. I am here to clarify the problem at hand. I was the one who was complaining.

Now, I have no problems with male friends. I have always had piles of them. I value them very much, they have been there for me in crucial moments, and made up the majority of my socialization. I get two things out of these relationships – I can mate-search and hopefully also enjoy good conversation.

However, there are different types of male friends. There are those relationships with which Nietzsche would agree – those in which there is such revulsion that no attraction is possible. I haven’t had one of those.

There are those in which there is a tacit agreement not to hit on one another. We are intellectual friends who are probably slightly attracted to one another, but for reasons such as distance and temperament are not actively attempting to pursue a relationship – yet.

Then there are those in which I wake up one day and realize I have somehow gone from friend #2 to the unacceptable: female friend who has become male friend, and hears stuff that makes me go “TMI!” There is a difference between a guy casually mentioning other girls and telling me all about his gigs. At this point, I see no point for me to pursue the relationship further because I don’t want to be with this guy even in the abstract as I have been repulsed and the conversation has soured (we should have stuck to literature).

Now, there are all things in between. Sometimes there appears to be interest on his side in a relationship. But that can drag on and on and on – for years! At some point I start to wonder why I’m keeping him around (see, good conversation will have kept him around – but only for so long if he hits on me, as I will start to weary of the empty chase).

I suppose what it comes down to is that my male friends are guys who, by and large, I’d like to go out with (that’s why I don’t have male friends with girlfriends. That would just be weird.) – at least in the abstract! So, if he makes himself someone I wouldn’t want a relationship with – by, say, talking about other girls to excess, after all I don’t want to be that woman who in ten years writes Dear Abby to say her husband is always looking at other women’s legs and it’s driving her to the breaking point – then he’s walking a thin line.

I won’t be so extreme as my mother (I rarely am in views about dating, probably why I have the problems I have) and say that if he mentions someone else, he’s gone. But if he does it enough, the attraction fails and he may fall off my wagon. After all, in the life according to Pia, male friends are as rare and wonderful as rocks – metaphorically.

She traveled with her sister (shown driving) and her best friend. Then, upon arrival, she made a YouTube video of her photos as they drove , played to the tune of The Who’s Baba O’Reilly. They took the northern route, via the I40 by Flagstaff and Albuquerque. For those who haven’t been on it, the route goes through the Mojave desert, which lasts into Arizona, where the landscape turns into mountains and forests and Flagstaff. New Mexico is next, hilly, crossing the Painted Desert and lots of mesas. Finally, you cross the Panhandle Plains shortly after arriving in Texas; you go through Amarillo before veering south towards the metroplex. Note the striking change in the sky when they arrive in Texas, and the excitement as the Fort Worth skyline appears.

I posted recently about “media with great replay value.” Today, I’ll share the movies that I watch – repeatedly. For years. This is a sampling.

Topping the list for movies is the ultimate in “comfort media” Notting Hill. It makes me happy inside, from the beginning, when Hugh Grant as scruffy bookshop owner tries to woo Julia Roberts – the world famous Anna Scott – with the contents of his paltry bachelor fridge:

all the way to the end, when, rejected by the still-scruffy Thacker’s worry of a broken-again heart, Anna softly says:

Don’t you just melt? He did – about an half hour later, just in time to race to his friend’s car and catch her before she left the country for good.

Next, Amelie, which appeals to feeling of being different. I can quote it in English and French. This is the only movie that I actually refrain from watching too much, because I love it so much I want to save it.

Eat Drink Man Woman, a movie filmed in Taiwan about the travails of family – especially siblings. I like to listen to the Chinese, and drool over the food – the movie begins with a ten minute segment of Old Chu, the chef and father of the family, preparing a sumptuous feast.

Of course, the original three Star Wars movies – which I religiously watch every time I am sick.The ones produced later have little for me – though when I was younger I loved the second, as it had the budding (and insipid, to my later self) relationship of Anakin and Padme.

Little Women is the tearjerker of the bunch. Involving both Christian Bale as a young cutie pie and Susan Sarandon as wisdom incarnate, it’s like rolling up in a big quilt next to a softly crackling northeastern fireplace. And yes, every time Beth gets sick and has that scene with Jo, I sob like a small child. I am of the opinion this is actually rather healthy – cleansing, sortof.

Studio Ghibli will forever have a special place in my heart. Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro got me through some tough times – and every time I watch Howl’s Moving Castle, I believe in magic again (and finding a man whose voice is as sexy as Howl’s). In Howl, a young girl is cursed into old age by a jealous witch, and finds herself as the cleaning lady of an enigmatic wizard with multiple personalities. A fire with an attitude adds spark. Kiki’s Delivery Service, also a Ghibli, fits in with the rest as a beautiful work of art.

Movies aren’t just about plot, about excitement, for me — they’re about feelings. One has to believe that one is not the only one who’s ever felt the way one does — and that is something my favorite movies list brings to me again and again.  No, I am not alone. Feeling various ways is normal. I’m not the first and not the last to feel the way I do, and I’m not the first or last to keep watching the same movies over and over again incessantly. There must be someone else out there who does this!

—–N–ss

This is the next installment in the “Media with Replay Value” lineup.

There is a bit of music I listen to ad infinitum. Ranking songs by play count on my iPod is a favorite habit of mine – and often a rather sobering one too. Here is a small sampling of that which never gets old for me. Links are to YouTube videos with the songs.

The Lake House Soundtrack tops the charts far and away. Rachel Portman’s instrumentals and a handful of musing soft songs forms the perfect background for my daydreams of eligible bachelors, as I pace the room.I probably average listening to it about four times a week. The main theme is here on facebook.

Also, Let it Be - my favorite Beatles album. The Beatles have always have a steady place in our household, and I grew up listening to them. The eponymous Let it Be and Across the Universe probably rank in the top three best of theirs in my opinion. I have fond memories of my stepfather playing the latter on his guitar late in the evening when I was in grammar school. Also, the Long and Winding Road speaks to me in some way (still looking for who’s at the end of it, though.)

ABBA: Gold -made a certain drive to Amarillo tolerable a few years ago. Among others, Dancing Queen seems to have allure for girls age 7 to 70 – it just makes you happy.

Finally,Shania Twain will also have a place, as the first CD I ever owned, bought for me by my mother in Toronto back in the late 90′s, was The Woman in Me, and I still listen to it  and her other albums to this day. My favorite on The Woman in Me was Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under. Her later albums contain many memories – like the time when driving through the Mojave on a two lane highway my stepmother passed a cement truck going 100, while listening to Man! I Feel Like a Woman. From This Moment On reigns as my favorite song to embarass myself with, through the woeful means of Karaoke. I once “sang” it in front of a large audience, after which my mother made me swear never to sing in public again. Finally, Nah! got me through more than one breakup.

So what’s your poison?

My mother and I share many traits in common: we are both tall, have long hair, and watch Star Trek because the actors are attractive (with her, it’s the original Captain Kirk. For me, Trip from Enterprise. That lazy southern drawl gets me every time; the fact that he ends up with T’Pol and I secretly wish I was her is also no coincidence. It’s much easier to like a guy on screen if his female interest is someone you can stand).

We also value media with great replay value. Or, to rephrase that, both have a tendency to listen to the same music, watch the same movies, and read the same books – over and over, “ad infinitum,” as I’m sure it seems to those around us whose tastes doesn’t quite align. Some people have recently questioned my tendency to do this; they feel that a book, once read, has been exhausted of most of its value, and the same with a movie, and, though those in question will probably listen to the same music over and over, I doubt they stick a CD in the car and refrain from taking it out for six months (as my mother did with the Dixie Chick’s album Home. I can still sing along to every song on the album, half a decade later.)

Whether you can chalk this up to an intellectual tendency to dig deeper and deeper, or just sentimental attachment, it is what it is. There’s a reason I had Gone with the Wind quoted to me throughout my entire childhood – “Isn’t this generation soft and ladylike!”  There’s also a reason I know the first line of Pride and Prejudice – “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.” And, there’s a reason myself and my siblings can quote some movies nearly end to end – Toy Story, if you’re my sister and I, Billy Madison -among many others- if you’re the boys, Men in Black if you’re me about eight years ago. There is also a reason the Lake House Soundtrack by Rachel Portman has a play count of nearly a hundred on my iPod.

Why? Because we just really like the movie, book, or song. A lot.

What about you? Do you have this tendency? Maybe it’s a yes-or-no deal, but regardless, it runs in our family. From my mother and my devotion to Gone with the Wind to the kids getting a new movie and watching it three times in a row to Papa playing that Negramaro tape every time he makes pizza – it’s just our thing.

Well, I did it: I wrangled my way into a job on the ancestral farm in Davis, CA. I’ve been staying in the house my grandfather built, and the sense of continuity is impressive. It’s amazing to think the same family has lived here for over 50 years. Hopefully, this little ten acre parcel never leaves their hands.

Bordered by Putah Creek, Highway 95, a neighbor, and a gravel road, it sits about five miles outside the college town of Davis – newly emptied by the end of the school year. Every day, piles of bicyclists in bright cycling gear go by on the highway – a narrow two lane affair, which sharply turns and goes across the bridge over the creek right by the property. This bridge is an art form, decorated with decades of graffiti. Nearly two thirds of the land here is taken up by Christmas trees – firs, cedar, and even a few evil sequoias, which sport very spiny needles and are not pruner-friendly.

Fruit trees dot the area, too, and a small barn houses chickens and two highly obese donkeys, who are moved about the place every day to “keep weeds down.” About seven cats make their home here, mostly barn cats.

My sister and I are here mainly to prune those acres of trees. Every morning we go out with a wheelbarrow filled with two pruning shears, a pair of hedge shears, two handsaws, a pump-bottle of weed killer, and a metal bucket with a jar of stump killer and a brush to kill volunteer trees- and, starting today, a battery operated radio, which hummed hits from the 70s and 80s as we worked. We make out way down two rows at a time, cutting off extraneous branches and double tops.

About once a week we rent a chipper, and, hauling it on a tractor, go through oue work and chip the large piles of branches. We work from sometime after 7 to sometime after noon. At our 10 am and noon breaks we come in, drink some water, and usually sit and read the newspaper or play video games. In the afternoon, we rest; I study Biology and S stuffs creatures or reads papers or somesuch. We eat at 5, and around 7 go out and move about 600 feet of metal pipes down the rows, to set up the night’s sprinklers. Every day we move about five rows. Then we come inside, mess about more – lately, I watch her play Zelda – and then have some ice cream with fruit before retiring around 9.

It’s not bad, and at the end of the summer, hopefully I will have a car. Meanwhile, I heartily enjoy the time with my sister, whom I have not seen this much since she was in highschool.