Surprise!

Traipsing into work today I failed to notice one key thing.

I walked into the main room and greeted the secretary and the head of the department who were having an impromptu meeting.  Feeling slightly out of place I quickly stepped my way to the back room where I clock in.  I checked the shared student board, as I waited for the machine to warm up, for any notes my fellow workers might leave for me. All that remained was a schedule for who brings in candy when, a sheet that stated different titles that are also their job (for example: a mother mothers), a creatively designed layout of the office (it looks very similar to clue and we have begun putting together a little copycat game), and a note saying different rules to remember while working there.  I had seen them before so I didn't even spend three seconds looking.

I clocked in and waltzed out of the back ready to face the responsibilities of my day, but truly my mind was on a movie that I am going to see later tonight.  After doing my everyday duties (checking the trash and emptying it, turning off the coffee pots, re-stocking the printer room), I asked the secretary what I could do for her.

Her voice flitted about as she arranged her thoughts into something I could understand and in the midst of this I zoned out.  Not that I didn't hear her, she essentially told me "nothing today", it's just that something else had caught my attention that was far more interesting than the extra unneeded dozen of words.  There was something tickling my hair.

Strange as that may sound, it makes sense.  It was like a breeze was tousling one section of my hair.  As politely as I could while the secretary talked, I tried to lightly brush my bangs out of my face and flip my head so the air wouldn't distract my any more.  Instead, I noticed the increasing annoyance of the continued something in my hair.  Now, thinking it is a leaf, I combed my fingers gently through my unruly hair and I felt it.

Rough, thin and much too small to be a whole leaf, I combed my fingers again through my hair to try and find it and pull it out.  Thinking now that the secretary must have noticed my behavior, I excused myself to try and pull out this leaf in my hair.  Walking over to the trash can she suddenly says three words that scare the life out of me.

"ITS A WASP!"

Then the next sound... the sound of a very angry wasp buzzing right next to my left ear. My life flashed before my eyes and every single moment that I had been stung before rushed to the very front.  Breathing fast I quickly lean way over, praying the wasp will just fall out of my hair.  The buzzing grows louder.  The secretary rushes over and tries to scoop it out of my hair with a sheet of paper. What a sight to see and sound to hear if you had walked in at that moment.

I was leaning way over, head almost touching my knee. The kind secretary was trying to get the wasp out without angering it any more and all the while I am walking away from my left side, thinking in my panic that somehow I could still get away from the evil creature.  She followed diligently as I moved farther and farther from her.  The buzzing only growing louder and louder.  I'm not sure what I spoke, only that it was frantic and probably very high-pitched.  I know the secretary tried to reassure me several times that she was doing her best but the many words floated to deaf ears. I could't focus on anything but my most basic thoughts: get away, get away, get away.

...
Somehow, the wasp flew free and the manly head of the department came strutting in and killed it with one good swat.  I escaped without a sting, but I'm pretty sure I will never be able to run my fingers through my hair again this week without a momentary panic of it being a wasp...

Ever had that moment?

That moment when you just want to find a corner and hide in it.  Maybe find a wall and become one of it's many paper flowers.  Or even just reverse time so that embarrassing thing you did could be stopped before it happens?

I had one of those yesterday.
We had a university testing day, no one had to attend classes.  All I had to do was take a test that everyone in my university has to also take.  I finished that in the morning and had the rest of the day to do whatever (I ended up watching Hamlet. The one with Mel Gibson with a strange short hair cut).  After the movie ended and I finished my responsibilities (working and all that), I had a few moments to do nothing.

Those moments are a good thing and a bad thing.  This time it was a bad thing.
I turned on my candle warmer that sits a few feet away from the futon we have in our room.  I turned my dinosaur laptop on and walked around for a good five minutes before it changed from the "Window's" screen with that strange, curvy four colored representation of a window. I sat around searching the endless internet for a while, finding nothing.

My roommate and I talked for a while and it was decided.  Road Trip!  I clicked the option to turn off my dinosaur and waited another five minutes before it said "Are you sure?"  After closing the monster and trying to hide it behind anything I walked over to my candle on the candle warmer.

It was halfway melted.  This is always slightly disappointing because the nice smell of the vanilla candle doesn't really waft through the room  unless the hot wax is allowed to escape into the free air.  In an attempt to free the warm wax I started using my fingernails to scratch a hole into the hard wax on top.
Shavings came away at first and when I got closer to the warm wax it started squishing around.  I hadn't finished getting ready to leave yet so I left it to put my shoes on and such.
When I came back I was happy to see a small puddle of wax oozing out of the hole I had created.  Excited, I started to push on the hard wax to cause more warm wax to come out.

This is the moment when I would go back and stop myself.

When the wax didn't budge at all, I used my other hand too, pushing harder to try and get the warm wax out all the while thinking that i wanted the vanilla smell to circulate better.  Disaster stuck right then.  The hard wax suddenly whooshed into the warm wax causing a volcano to erupt and burn everything in it's path; this included my hands.

I spent the next few minutes listening to my roommate laugh uncontrollably while I frantically tried to clean up fast-cooling wax from the carpet, the shelf and the bookend; ignoring my hands in the process.

I woke up this morning to find blisters on my fingers.
Writing today is going to feel just dandy.

Fall

This weekend was the fall break that we have in our fall semester.  I was very excited as this week crawled towards the elusive weekend.  Class by class I watched the time, barely paying attention to what the content was.  I got so lazy that I didn't even do the homework for my classes.  It is at this time, when the weekend is over, that I am regretting this decision.

Break was amazing though. I was able to tease my sister with comments about little shared jokes that we have created thanks to the intimacy of our sibling relationship.  I laughed with my parents as they joked about their lives, it is common to hear them joke about how my father is the head of the household but he refers to my mother as "boss".  We have spent many hours laughing about this.  My grandmother even came and spent the weekend with my family. This was all perfectly alright because I was able to score 5 loaves of banana bread, a dozen homemade biscuits, two jars of jelly (one of them is zuccini jelly....), and a Tupperware container of stew out of the deal.

I also was reunited with my little spastic dog Frosting.  She is a white Maltese-poodle mix who has the smarts of the poodle with the teasing nature of the maltese. It has become her habit to come up to any newcomer, beg mercilessly, run away, and repeat.  For me, she comes to my feet and the minute I reach down to pet her she rolls over and waits impatiently for my hand to arrive.  She follows me around and jumps onto my leg if I stand still too long without giving her attention.  I realize the spoiled nature that I am encouraging every time I reach down to pet her, but when I only see her once every few months I find it hard to resist.

It breaks my heart every time I have to leave for Frosting becomes even more attached to my side.  She even gets so irate that she will walk backwards in front of me, trying to stop me from packing and taking my stuff out to the car.  Today when I was walking towards the door to leave she came and circled my feet as I moved, trying to halt my progress.  I think she has learned that my visits are few and far between, and each time Frosting becomes a little more persistent that I should stay.  Or at least take her with me.

How/where/when do you read?

I have spoken to my sister many times about this question for we both have different styles of reading.  We both share a library (this has proved somewhat difficult while I am away at college), and we are often reading the same books.  Unfortunately, this means we are also often waiting for the other one to finish.  It is during these times that I especially pester my sister.

The last book that we really had trouble with this was when I bought The Hunger Games (and later the other two).  I had been holding out against the masses of my college mates who were demanding that I read them when finally, right before Christmas break, I paid for it.  I had, of course, already finished the book before I left school; I had finished it the day I bought it.  So, we had no reading issues on that one, but when she accumulated the second book she claimed it for herself first.  So what did I do?

We have a reading couch in our family.  It's not technically for that reason but my sister, my father, and I all sit in one spot on one couch to read...  This couch is right in the front room, beside the dining room, and a hallway away from the kitchen and the bedrooms of me and my sister.  This couch is centrally located based on everything in the upstairs section of our house.  This is what I did: every time I walked by this couch with her sitting on it I asked a variant of "done yet?"  Several "Finished yet"s, and a few moments of "can I read it now?"  This effectively annoyed her to no end, causing her to lose her place or forget where she was reading. Sometimes I caused her to need to re-read sections over again as she tried in vain to ignore my continued pleading based on her lack of response.  Keep in mind, I do this out of love and, she gets me back more often than I get to tease her.

Now down to my answer of the above question: I read books once for plot.  Then I read them for character. Then I read them for side notes.  Then I read them for hidden sidelines.  And eventually, I read them again because I forgot all the details of the plot.  This is where I get my joy in reading.  To read a story once is not enough!  I want to understand a story fully, and for some reason my brain can't do this in one reading.  This is where my sister teases me mercilessly.  Always on the first time through I can't seem to remember names of characters. I can explain everything they have done and every part of their personality but my mind refuses to remember their name (I know, it's strange even to me).  So I hear questions like "who did this, huh?"  "Remember that person's name?"  All while she has a hold of the book so I can't cheat...  unfair.

This is just a part of the love and bond that we share, linked with reading.