swu said:

that she's started leaving out juicy details due to unknown readership and i realized that i've been doing the same... apart from the addition of my parents as new readers (despite my trying to get them to read it for several months, they've just begun, and i'm so proud of them... i really feel like this is where - at least i used to - i tell people stuff that's so important to me i would normally send an email about it, but i don't have time to send them all separately so i just post them out in public. and therefore is some of the best of me and i want them to have a bit more of that *awwww*) i don't have a freakin' clue who reads this or if anyone even does anymore - except for those of you who email me about certain posts and those of you who comment, thanks to all of you. so here ya go.

i took a break from tipsy evenings with new acquaintances to go to new hampshire for the weekend and spend some time in a jane austen novel with my aunt, et al. seriously: they live at pemberley... it's rediculous. there're no curtains anywhere in the house: there're no neighbors, so why would there be curtains? it's like mayberry... only with fewer people and fewer locked doors. it's wierd though, because i'm standing naked in the bathroom getting ready to get in the shower and i realize that if someone were to come to the door, they would walk, at eye-level, right passed me as i stood there testing the water with one hand... makes doors seem a bit superfluous, but i closed it anyway.

i'm getting slightly ahead of myself though, because the highlight of friday was that i missed the train. because i'm dumb. how old am i? yah, that's right: nearly 24. a friend picked me up at 5 after 1 for a 1:22 departure. and i bought my ticket when i got to the station instead of running to the train and then buying it once i got on. (this turned out to be a VERY good thing, which i'll explain later)

so i run up the stairs with my bag and watch the vermonter pull away slowly without me inside. and the nice amtrak man at my side looked at me, petrified and said "you're not going to cry are you?" to which i replied with my hand over my face "not right now." and i didn't... i waited til we started back down the stairs as he led me to the office where linda (who also asked if i was going to cry) totally hooked me up. so i got on the 2:50 to springfield mass and then caught a bus to brattleboro. and by caught i mean waited 3 hours for.

but! i was supposed to be on the bus from springfield to brattleboro and here's why:
a little girl (well, 17) was sitting next to me. she was on her way to go camping with her grandparents for her birthday weekend and she had a lot to say. the daughter of two drug addicts, this girl goes to the roughest school in springfield (and it showed on her face), has lost 2 of her siblings to DSS and now does not know where they are, has another sibling in the city and when she was in 9th grade she raised her 5 year old sister (who calls her mommy), worked to put her in daycare, and went to high school. i know, you'll say she was pulling my leg. but she wasn't and if she was, she still needed me to sit beside her, tell her that her story is amazing, and ask her to begin writing the juiciest bits of her life story up into a nice neat college essay so that she can go to school for free. i reminded her as she got off the bus to start thinking about how she'll tell her story and to go visit her guidance counselor tomorrow (who hopefully is not just a glorified policeman like my first 2 were). so God wanted me there and i pray that i did what i was supposed to do. oh, she's also in ROTC, so when i found that out, i started going easy on the college essay and started telling her what a great thing it would be to join the army - this girl needs benefits, so she can get custody of her sister as quickly as possible...

next story: slightly less heart-wrenching and less important but still interesting. another girl i was in line with at the bus station was obviously just out of town from college so we started talking. she's a junior in college and was visiting her boyfriend in keene for the weekend. she'd been on 4 buses since 7 am that day and would arrive in keene around 10pm that night. so what, huh? well - she has a car and the drive from her school to his is around 4.5 hours. her parents wouldn't let her drive!!!!!!! so they risked almost certain problems by allowing her to take only buses to get there and then proceeded to call every 15 minutes throughout the day to make sure she was alright!!!!!!!! what is wrong with people?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? parents: don't try to "teach your kids a lesson" (and i'm not sure which lesson this one was) by making life difficult. this does not make them smarter or more capable, it just makes them pissed off at you. i'm happy to report that my parents never intentionally made my life more difficult (to my recollection) and i promise i'm a better person for it.

back to pemberley. highlights:
~ noah is very disappointed that no one taught me to throw a football better than i can. i couldn't care less. so future-husband, whoever you are, if you want our sons to play football, teach them to catch and throw yourself.
~ nancy and i nearly died laughing the first night i was there over a recipe we cooked saturday night. it went something like this: nancy's reading the recipe, and she says a whole list of things that only people who actually cook have in their kitchens. so i casually mention that my mother (her sister) would say "oh, we don't need x, y, z - we can use p, d, l." and she would say, if it lists something as optional, that it's not really a consideration. which is so totally true. we laugh. the very next morning. we're sitting at the table with gram going over the recipe again (can you tell we're all three cooks? this is not a difficult recipe that we're going over again) and gram's kind of reading aloud "and 'thyme *optional' oh! we can do that! i saw some rosemary out in your yard nance!" it takes us a half-second to look at her, look at eachother across the table and nearly wet our pants. then we have to explain it to her so, mom - at least you come by it honestly :) hahahaha
~ papa and i helped noah with some math homework which wasn't much, but it took a while and papa and i got into a philosophical discussion about the negative effects of homework on learning in young children and the tendency of universities to hire big names instead of big teachers and noah's looking at us like "that's great guys but i have to get this done and i want to go play." i told him about when i used to do homework at gram and papa's in 5th grade and i would cry because none of the pencils in their house had working erasers. they were all hard and grey colored and papa told me it was because he never made any mistakes. i was a devastated, chubby, perfectionist 5th grader.
~ nancy, gram and i spent saturday night cutting out 500,000 reading flash cards with real and nonsense words on them for nancy's 3rd graders who need a bit extra help. i disagree that "transvessed" is a nonsense word.
~ simon and noah took me on a woodsy hike to big rock which is a big rock in the woods behind their house. there's a lot of old (old) trash up there and simon found me a clear glass cold-cream jar with raised glasswork flowers that i'm guessing (guessing) is from the late 1800s. it's totally intact and it's my new jewelry holder next to my bed. i LOVE it!
~ i played a harry potter trivia game with the boys - does it matter than i had to beg them to play it with me?
~ in his efforts to impress his sort-of in-laws, kevin cleaned the garage/basement and in the process filled all the gas-powered machines with gas. so every time we opened the basement door or the laundry chute the kitchen filled with gasoline smell. delightful. (this was kevin's first and last shortcoming, he is an absolutely darling man who adores my aunt and treats my cousins like they're his flesh and blood.)
~ i made the train back to new haven with no problems. and gram gave me her old suitcase, since she bought a new one with nancy one day. not that i needed it, but now i a have a mid-size carrier to go between my weekender and my mamma-jamma.

ohp! almost forgot to tell you why it's a good thing i bought my ticket friday and missed my train. the train today was full. so i would have had to find some other way of getting home. and this time there was no nice amtrak man and woman to print out the bus schedule for me. would have tested our quick thinking even more, but on a day that would not have been the most convenient for quick thinking. so yea for buying tickets and missed trains. reminds me of lou mom - "it that a good thing?..." "we'll see!"

tomorrow i have course expo and wednesday CLASS!!!!!!!!!!! i can't wait!!!!!!