In summary...

I had a really weird day today. Okay, not WEIRD weird, like I've had in the past, but semi-weird and really eventful. It started out with me waking up 15 minutes before my alarm went off. I was all excited that I still had 15 minutes to spare, closed my eyes, thought, "Isn't it weird that it's light outside?" and opened my eyes in what felt like 3 seconds later, but was actually 30 minutes. I thought, "Drat-- I'm supposed to leave for work in like, 25 minutes", but I took a shower anyway and just showed up late for work. When I got there, I went to my boss, who was actually in a good mood for once and happy to see me. She was like, "Charissa! Hi!" And I was excited and said, "So, what do you want me to do?" "Actually, I don't have anything for you to do." Oh... "But Melissa does! She has a LOT for you to work on..." So I, all excited, because I have to be there for 3 hours, and I don't like being bored for three hours, go up to Melissa- "Melissa-- I heard that you have lots for me to do!" "Charissa! You did? Well, someone lied to you..." What? Maybe she's kidding... "No, really-- I have nothing for you to do." "I guess I can... go back to Kathy and ask if she has anything again..." So I go back to Kathy, call her a liar, and she says, "Well, I have a lot for you to do NEXT week, but nothing right now..." At this time I'm thinking, "I am NOT going home right now, I'm poor and I need these hours..." as she says, "So, let's ask Sheri if she has something for you to do..." Sheri does. I was kind of excited, kind of not, because Sheri sometimes has really scary tasks for me, such as "Do a literature review on so and so"-- I, before working here, had only heard of the term "literature review" in psychology for people who want to write papers who are working on their masters, so just the term scared me. Or, "Go on a hunt to find a COLORED scanner"-- apparently there are non-colored scanners?-- "And then pretened you know what you're doing and that you know where the building I'm going to send you to is, and scan this thing at 600 pixels per something you don't understand." But I've done all those things-- they were scary, took endless hours, but I did them-- so today when she said, "So, have you ever heard of the Veterans Heratige Program?" I was like, "No..." She said, "Oh... well, I'll have you do it, anyway. So, there's this program that the Library of Congress is putting on, and... do you remember our big project that we did last year in November?" You mean the one that took all of you PhD people an entire year to come up with and emplamented throughout the entire state, and how I had to spend literally 3 hours scratching my hands and making them bleed because we just HAD to have that flag put in that EXACT spot in the box of stuff we sent EVERY SINGLE LIBRARY IN INDIANA... yeah, I remember that... "Well, we want to take that National this year." Ambitious, I think. "So, here's the information on the Veteran's thing from the Library of Congress, and here's this year's Indiana's Logic Model"-- hold it right there--when I hear a word that scares me or a word I don't know, not only does it fly over my head, the entire sentence before, and pretty much everything you just told me that built up to that moment fly out of the trap door that's apparently always in my brain, and I forget everything you just tried to say to me. "I'm sorry-- what is this?" "Indiana's Logic Model." I can't begin to tell you how much I don't understand. "That means... nothing to me, Sheri." "Well, here's last's years logic model, and this is this year's." Yeah, I actually like you as a person-- most of the time, you don't scare me, but no matter how many times you try to explain it using that term, I'm not going to understand. So I just let her move on, because this conversation's going nowhere. "So, I need to know how to make these two mesh." "... Like, you want me to see how we can incorporate our model with the Veteran's thing?" "No, actually, you're not even going to use this logic model. We want to PARTNER with the Veterans." "And..." "There's a website for the Veteran's Program." "Oh, so if I go on the website, they'll be like, instructions on..." "No, you have to start from scratch and come up with a plan how to make OUR program go Nationally. The Veteran's Program is for just the veterans, but ours is focusing on both the soldiers and the families. " "...Okay..." "Do you get it?" Yes and no... "So, what I want from you is to take this information (info on the project) and find out how to take our project nationally, so that every library in America will do this, too. We need grants, we need partners, we need permits..." She lost me when she said "We need grants." I mean, I can barely take responsibility for my school grants-- and work study-- you know how proud I was of myself for just finding the building my work is in now? "I just stayed up all night, and my brain is fried, and I need ideas by noon, and you can bullet point them if it's easier, I just need a plan and I need it fast." Okay... so, in other words, you want me-- ME-- an undergrad, who has no experience, skill, or interest in public affairs, to take a program that took PhD graduates, civic leaders, and who knows who else a year to put together, and put it in National Spotlight... Yeah... remember yesterday when I cut up stickers? I want to cut up stickers again. That's more on my level... "Oh, and maybe facebook can somehow be involved? We need public awareness, so maybe they can put a banner on their thing somehow, I don't know how it works." Yeah-- remember the part where I don't know how this entire thing works, either? I remember. Why am I responsible for what seems like the entire future of this project? I'm not even going to do this in a future career, and I literally know NOTHING about anything. But it was my assignment, so I thought I'd do it to the best of my ability. I thought, "If we're going to partner with these people, I need a contact name." I found the name of the contact leader for colleges and universities. I e-mailed them asking for more information on how to create a partnership. I told them what our goals were-- I told them how it fit with their goals. I made it sound all professional. I didn't even get into much-- it was just a query e-mail. I got a list of all the organizations that they're already partnered with. 10 pages worth on Microsoft Word, if you wanted to know. Tomorrow I'll be going through all of them and seeing whether or not it would be good to partnership with them. I e-mailed various branches of the army, family groups, anyone who had not just state, but NATIONAL ties to large groups of people-- I used my work e-mail and gave them a link to our site so they would know I was the real thing. I even contacted the Congressman asking for resources. Three hours of all this work, and I was actually semi-excited that I had gotten as far as I had for knowing as little as I did. But then just now, I get an e-mail from the Veteran's Project people-- "We actually have too many partners-- we're going to get rid of what we have-- we've decided to only use people who want to ONLY pursue our goals. Thank-you for your interest, though." Now I know, I'm an undergrad-- they shouldn't have put me in charge of trying to set something up anyway-- but still-- my first thing that I actually try to do, and it completely fails. I feel like a failure right now. My boss was COUNTING on this partnership, and I just send a query email, and they're all, "Don't even think about it!!!" Now what am I going to do? Taking it nationally is just a bad idea right now, anyway. Remember how hard it was to take to all of Indiana? It was successful, but we don't have any real national partners that I'm aware of-- are we really going to get some company to think, "Wow, it worked once, and you only tried it once, but it's a really good idea, let's spend our money on that!" Yes, it was a success, but companies want more than that. We should do an area thing first-- maybe like, the midwest, or the "Ohio Valley"-- maybe like, 5 or 6 states that's big enough to aquire attention but small enough that we don't feel like we're in way over our heads. If it's a success there-- if other states heard, "Oh, remember how they were involved in that thing last year that was a huge success? Maybe we should have something like that, too!" Then we'd be more prepared-- have companies who are willing to take a chance on us. As it is now, we have like, 30 people working where I work- most of which are students like me. I think it's a great idea what we're doing, but that doesn't mean I expect other people to spend the resources they're given on us. It's just insane, and now like I said, I feel like a failure. There is no national library that is in charge of a state library in America-- I checked-- the closest thing we have is the Library of Congress, and they just rejected me-- so if we want this done all over America, we have to get every individual state to do it separately anyway. This is going to take a lot of time, and I can already see how it's going to turn out-- I'm going to do a bunch of work, it's going to account for nothing-- I'm going to go back to my boss saying, "So, this won't work", and it's just going to be a big waste of time, and I'm going to look that much worse at my job, which is usually entering data on a spreadsheet, or cutting out stickers. Oh well...

March 15th

Today was an important day for me. Some very horrible things have happened in my past today, along with some very amazing things. I'm grateful to all my friends that were able to come and celebrate with us today. It was a very good day. The weather was beautiful. I love warm weather. It makes me feel more alive. I really want to be outside whenever it's warm, even if it's just to sit. But sitting outside when you're in an apartment complex tends to creep people out, so I'll have to go somewhere else to do it. Like the Battlefield-- I love sitting at the Battlefield! No one's hardly ever there. It's a great place to be outside.
11 years ago, there was no daylight savings time, so I get an extra hour of March 15th. I really think Daylight Savings Time was a bad idea. I like it being light longer, but I think we should just keep it at that time all year round. I mean, really-- ancient civilizations would probably think, "What do you mean you change your time? What does that even mean?! How is that at all possible-- doesn't that get confusing?" I understand different time zones, but I really don't like changing time. Probably because I'm from Indiana, and we just started doing it.
I'm in a very... reflective mood tonight. I wonder if that's even the right word for it. The thing is, I've been given so much in my life, and what have I even used it for? It's been 11 years since everything started to happen-- I was only 13 at the time. You would think that after 11 years, I'd know how to handle everything and how to deal with everything. It seems like in some ways I've grown and in other ways I've regressed. I still feel like I've been changed for good (now I have the Wicked musical in my head), but what do I use that for? I'm actually not that unhappy with my life. I'm not that frustrated, and I don't have as much stress (or maybe I've just learned how to deal with it? Probably not...). But-- I just really wish I could see-- not into the future, but I wish I could understand some things that I really want to understand right now. Some things that have kind of kept me at a standstill. Perhaps I'm impatient-- prehaps I should have learned these lessons long ago, but I just chose not to-- but I really just... want to get it right. In my enthusiasm to do the right things, I don't want to actually end up making the wrong decisions. That makes more sense in my head than when I wrote it out. Like-- forgive me for making this parallel-- marriage-- it's something that we're told is the right thing to do, so a lot of people are so eager to fulfil that commandment that they end up making a thoughtless choice, and actually frustrated the end to what the commandment was for. I am terrified of doing that. I don't want to do that. I want to make-- informed decisions, so I decided on one thing, but at the same time, I know I'm doing it wrong, too. I just... wish I could see how to do this one thing. I say that, but I'm one of those people that says, "If I could only have this one thing, I'll never want anything ever again! Or until tomorrow, or rather, this afternoon, when I'll want something again." This is a rather long post for something that doesn't even make sense to most people reading it, and since it has multiple meanings, I'll just end here.

The Conversation I would have with my walls...

Tonight's prompt is write about a conversation you would have with one of your walls. So, here it is:

Write about a conversation that you would have with your walls.

Setting: The Watson’s house. Amanda comes downstairs after getting off the phone with Charissa. The rest of her family is sitting at the kitchen table playing Phase 10.

“So, we need to just kidnap Charissa and lock her up in Cassie’s room and make sure she just sleeps for like, 15 hours.”

Cassie placed a card down on the table. “Why?”

“Because I just got off the phone with her, and”

“Oh, so once again, she calls YOU and not me…”

“Yeah, she loves me better. But it’s a secret. (Not really, Cassie, you know I love you!)”

“Whatever, Amanda, she’s MY best friend!”

“What’s going on with Charissa?” Sister Watson yelled, not because of the argument so much as her wanting Amanda to get through the story so they could go back to the game and actually try to finish.

“She just had a conversation with her wall.”

Everyone stared at Amanda in disbelief. Finally Sister Watson spoke for everyone. “… What?”

“She just called and told me about a conversation she just had… with her wall.”

Again the stares. “Is she all right upstairs?”

“Well, apparently not, Mom, she just had a conversation WITH A WALL.”

“And what did this wall say to her?” Cassie asked, confused and semi-interested in the mental state of her best friend.

“It laughed.”

“What?”

“It laughed! Charissa got up from bed to go to the bathroom, and as she walked through the door, she heard laughing.”

Again, more stares.

“That’s what she thought, too. Actually, she thought someone was hiding in her room, almost peed her pants. So, she grabbed her shoe that was in the hallway, and she like, approached her closet door and opened it really fast, and threw her shoe, as hard as she could, inside of it.”

“Because that will save her if someone’s hiding in her closet” Melissa said.

“I know. We like, have magical shoes or something. ANYWAY, after she throws this shoe in her closet, she screams and looks up, and no one’s there.”

“So, she just went insane,” Aaron commented.

“Apparently. But then—THEN, she heard someone laugh even more.”

Sister Watson was still confused. “Was she fully awake? Was this a dream that she had?”

“No! That’s what I said—honey, go back to sleep or something—but she swears she was awake. Anyway, she turns around, and thinks, ‘They must be under my bed.’”

“See, at this point, I’d be calling the police and running away screaming,” Melissa announced.

“Yeah, me too- what if someone really was under her bed? I told her she’d be murdered, and then we’re going to have to track that guy down and murder him, and that could take a lot of time, and I have to student teach.”

“So, she checked under her bed?” asked Cassie.

“Yeah—and no one there. And there’s not a lot of places to hide, either—just basically in her closet and under her bed, so she was really confused. And then she heard it again, and she asked, ‘Where are you’, kind of freaked out, and she heard the wall say, ‘I’ve always been here. Up until this week, your room has always been dirty, so you couldn’t hear me, but now apparently you can.’” She said it reminded her of when the box laughed at Audrey and she ran away into her car and she’s spending the night at her mom’s house.”

Everyone in the room just stopped. Complete and total silence. Finally, Melissa said, “… Okay…” More silence. Then, “So, who’s turn is it?”

“Cassie went last.”
”So, it’s Aaron’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, goodnight, everyone!” Amanda turned back and walked upstairs. Random things happen in her group of friends, it wasn’t at all unusual to tell a creepy story about horrible or unusual things happening and then go right on with whatever you were doing before the story began. That’s the way it worked with them. Amanda smiled to herself. “I love my group of friends.”

It's still March!

Just so you all know, it's still March, and it's going to be for the next 20 days. How exciting is that?! In a little under 3 weeks, our friend Stephen will get home from his mission! I can't believe it's been two years, and I can't believe it's ONLY be two years. Probably because of guilt. "Wow, we should really write Stephen. Oops." Thinking that every day for two years, no wonder it seems like a long time! I e-mailed him today and told him that he had better e-mail us and tell us when his flight comes in. And that the Watsons ate all his cookies. We really have to send that package by the end of the week! Or else it won't get to him on time. That being said, the reason for me writing this blog was two things: 1, to celebrate the fact that it is still March. Sunday we're going to have our "Yay it's March 15th!" Party that we have every year. Yes, we have a "Yay it's March!" and a "Yay it's March 15th!" party. My group of friends will use any excuse we can to have a celebration. "Look, you're wearing green! And I'm wearing green! Party!" So we might not be THAT bad-- okay, maybe we are... but it is exciting that there's definite greenage outside! And the second-- Shean's a big fat liar. I can't even say that-- he's a small, skinny liar! Skinny liar, Shean! There, that was my comeback. Skinny liar pants! Okay, now I'm done. Bye!

Writing Club- March 4th, 2009

March 4, 2009 Writing Prompt

What I would miss most if I went back into the 1800s…
The setting is… the 1800’s. Jordan, Shean, Amanda, Morgan, Cassie, and Charissa have gone on an adventure with Audrey after she fixed her time machine and attempted to return home.

“Wait, what do you mean I can’t talk to anybody?” Charissa asked, as she was standing out in the middle of the street. The rest of her friends had already crossed, and were waiting for her, but there she remained, frozen to the dirt road that she stood uncomfortably on (uncomfortably because of the women’s shoes that were popular of the time).
Jordan turned back to escort her friend safely to the other side. In other words, she pushed her out of the street. “You’re going to get killed!”
“They don’t have cars here.”
“But they have horses, and very heavy wagons, Charissa—those can be dangerous, too!”
Charissa started to protest out of habit, but then realized that she agreed. “That’s true. My great-great aunt actually was killed in a buggy accident. But still—how do you die in a buggy accident?! I don’t understand that at all!”
Audrey at this time was losing patience. “Charissa, time traveling can be a dangerous place. And I am NOT going to try to scoop up whatever gets flattened if you stand in the middle of the road like that again.”
“But I don’t understand!”
“Big things can flatten you, WHAT’S SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND!!!”
“No, not that—this!” Charissa’s friends just stood there on the side walk, waiting for her to finish explaining.
“Ice Age, Paul?” asked Amanda.
“For real, what is she talking about?” others asked.
“I’m talking about THIS!!!” Charissa showed them the object she was holding in her hand.
“Your… phone.”
“Yes!”
“… What about your phone?”
“It doesn’t work here!”
“Well of course it doesn’t work here, Charissa, there are no phone lines.” Amanda was using her teacher voice.
“But it’s a cell phone!”
“That means nothing, Charissa!” Audrey chimed in. “Haven’t you ever been through a tunnel?”
“But we’re not in a tunnel!”
“I know- I’m just saying—you know how when you go through a tunnel, and your phone doesn’t work? And why doesn’t it work… because…”
“Because… it hates me?”
“Yes, but also because…”
“No, that’s it. I think it’s just that it hates her.” Shean joined the conversation. “It hates her because she once thought it was made of chocolate and she tried to eat it, but then she realized it was made of metal, and it couldn’t be eaten, and ever since then, her phone has been scared that she would try to eat it again. And that’s also why her phone never works, because it’s scared that she’ll start talking and then see her phone and think, “Mmm, CHOCOLATE!” And then eat it.
The rest of Charissa’s friends muttered in agreement.
“Well, at least that made up FAKE story admits that the reason why no one can understand me is because my phone is bad.”
“No, I said your phone was SCARED, Charissa, and it’s actually because you mumble.”
“I DON’T MUMBLE! You can’t mumble and yell!”
“I used to think that, too, Charissa, and then I met you…”
“You know, whatever the reason is, I don’t have my phone, and now I can’t talk to anybody, and I’m sad.”
Audrey looked confused. “Who else do you ever talk to, Charissa? Because we’re all here.”
Charissa thought about that for a second. “Very true.”
Just then, she heard the ring tone to “Why”
“Hello? Yeah. Well, I’m still in the 1800’s. Yeah, we’re just sightseeing. I’ll be home soon. AND WHEN I DO, I GET DIBS ON MY GAME! Yes I do!!! No, you see—I have been stuck in the 21st century for all of these years, and I get AT LEAST the next 4 on the PS 201. Okay. See you soon. Goodbye.”
Audrey hung up her phone, and the rest of her friends just stared at her. Suddenly, she felt very self conscious. “What?”
“Why does your phone work and not mine?”
“Because it likes me better.”
“Or, because she’s from the future,” Jordan said.
“How else was I supposed to keep in contact with my family, Charissa, since I couldn’t see them for all of these years?”
“But… my phone…”
“That’s why I win.” Audrey said, and she turned and walked away. The rest of Charissa’s friends followed.
“But… but… no! I win. I do! I… won,” she said, in her Charissa English. And she ran to catch up with her friends.

YAY IT'S MARCH!!!

I love March! I really do. So many awesome things happen in March. In fact, just this year alone:
-It's not February anymore, so one of my friends is happy.
-My two sisters and my two step-sisters will turn 26, 23, 22, and 21.
-Daylight Savings Time will make it so that it's light outside when it's almost 8:00.
-It's going to be SPRING!!! That's the start of the warm time! I really love the warm time.
-It should at least get 10-20 degrees warmer on average toward the end of the month! Hence the warm time.
-Shean's one year anniversary is coming up for being a member of the Church.
-I'll hopefully get started with my pre-internship at a children's hospital in Indy!
-SPRING BREAK!!! It's going to be so much fun, just BEING on Spring Break.
-I'll be able to get some really good work experience to put on my resume, even if it means driving up to Fort Wayne this Saturday by myself and getting lost.
-The Hana Kimi special I ordered will come!
-Other stuff I ordered will come!
- Perhaps we'll be able to take walks outside in the graveyards or in the rain, or anywhere at all, because it will be warm!
-Maybe we'll get to see half wolf puppies, or go to Wolf Park, or star gaze!
And finally, it's just March, and March is the best month ever anyway, even without all those reasons. And then after March, it's April! See-- you think, "Oh my gosh, what's after March? April! April's after March! And April's warm, too!!!" So it's not like you are excited for just one month and then it'll get cold again, because this is the START of the warm time! This warm-time is going to be so awesome.