i am back from the largish island! (i've gotten sick of calling it "the big island".) the trip was memorable, and it certainly brought a lot of things to my attention. that sounds really ominous, and i promise it only half-should. nelson mandela said that there is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. change isn't always bad; i know. the summer is teaching me a lot.

first things first - picture time. i only wish i had everybody sitting in silence in some midwestern living room while i fiddled with my slide projector. enjoy! =)

i'll go ahead and get the dandelion picture out of the way. the gigantic volcano crater in the background is masked by the steam vents, but you can use your imagination. it was incredible:


also, i was able to regally pose with a statue of king kamehameha. he's important - like several-streets-named-after-you important!:


ladies and gentlemen, meet katie. well, katie's back:


and i'm sure we're already acquainted with my back, but this is a special variation i like to call "my butt and a volcano":


katie ran toward the factory tour at the macadamia nut farm, shouting "i've got a golden ticket!" it was all for nothing. that factory was like a ghost town. a really boring ghost town, even when we played the recorded explanation of what was (or wasn't) happening on the other side of the glass in several of the world's languages. thus a new phrase was born: "we got totally mac fac'd." we thought "we got totally macadamia nut factory'd" was too cumbersome. you understand. voila:


finally, here's my sexy tiger pose next to a lava tree. i don't know why i do this. i'm sorry:


anyway.

i thought about jacksonville today - jacksonville, florida. for anybody still unaware, i moved to jacksonville when i was seven and left when i was fourteen. despite several subsequent relocations, my family (in my mind, at the very least) and heart have remained anchored there by the love and familiarity felt from the church we attended. at this church, my father once served as elder and teacher, my parents facilitated a marriage seminar, my older sisters miraculously taught children's bible school, and i was baptized. what i'm getting at is, i tried to remember the last time i had been to jacksonville, and i couldn't even come up with the date of my last visit. i'm pretty sure it was when i first got back to the mainland from living in guam, right after i graduated from high school; we drove there right after moving to montgomery. it's funny how happy and sad it is to go back to a place you used to live and watch how the world has managed to spin around without you. people really do move on, and towns expand. restaurants sprout up where some boggy field used to be. giant shopping centers may have materialized and existed for months and months while you were away, without any permission from you at all. when i say "you", i really mean "me". i want to see people, and to not have lost contact with them. i'm glad i left florida, because moving opened up an entire world to me, but it's starting to feel like you can only really be a resident of one place at a time. if you spread yourself across the pacific ocean, there isn't enough of you anywhere to do any good at all. and here i am with an alabama driver's license. in hawaii.

given my penchant for being excruciatingly emotional, i am continually puzzled by my simultaneous reluctance to be excruciatingly emotional. my sister katie is leaving tomorrow for training to work in public diplomacy for the state department. after her training, there is a special ceremony having to do with flags or some such - the state department gives you the flag of whatever country you are assigned to. i think it all sounds really exciting, honestly, but katie has mentioned to me several times (usually when she wants something, so who can be sure) that she could be leaving for some insanely long amount of time, like five years. five years isn't so much, but even one and a half years would exceed our record of time spent apart, i believe. her plane leaves tomorrow at half past noon and i am absolutely dreading the goodbye routine. i'm not sure what the answer is there, but i thought it was worth mentioning because it's been on my mind.

having said that, i really miss speaking in a foreign language. i miss french class, and studying for french tests, and - heck - even taking french tests! there is a very specific brand of agony accompanying the atrophy of the knowledge of a foreign language over school breaks, and i am silly-french-moustache-deep in it. last summer i translated songs. incidentally, the french word for dandelion is "pissenlit", completely eliminating it from the list of potentially cute, foreign, and 'meaningful' baby names. anybody named pissenlit will end up listening to neighbors' dogs. or committing matricide. maybe this summer i can translate some poetry? so much depends upon… le poulet blanc?

i was just watching the daily show. the guest was howard dean. head of the dnc! =( what were the democrats thinking? (rhetorical question, rushton.) i will cry into my pillow tonight.

i think that's all from me. bless whoever read this far.

you know how i usually say "zero points awarded to robin"? today, he gets at least 10, maybe even 11. thank you for being so understanding. =) i had a bad day today, a difficult day, one of those days. as of this very moment, i'm having one of those nights as well, but this too shall pass. it's nothing that six hours of the gilmore girls can't mentally transform into a wb pilot.

today i remembered that people can always surprise you, in positive and negative ways. i'm sorry for the times i've shocked people with my amazing powers of jerkiness, but i know there are days when i am able to astonish others in a good way - i'm thankful to God for those times. i hope they can... well, be fruitful and multiply.

i woke up to a phone call from beth (the #2 crocker child... chronologically, not sentimentally), which is a nice way to wake up. all attempts to return to happyfluffydreamland were pathetic failures. all intentions of at least reading a book when i stay in bed awake for an extra hour were noble but were proved to be ridiculous as the book i'm reading (was ferociously recommended by my sister katie, has a terrifying cover, but is actually quite interesting - one of the few nonclassics i've tackled in a while) was horrifically left in the room across the hall, nearly 30 feet away from me. so, i contemplated my navel for a while. what's a girl to do?

when i finally peeled myself off of my beautifulfluffypinklightemitting bed, i caught a few episodes of the gilmore girls. i bought seasons one, two, and three in one sequentially fantastic display of discriminating buyership, thus realizing a lifelong dream: to use "sequentially fantastic display of discriminating buyership" in a sentence. the new yorker, here i come! seriously, though, it was pretty darned discriminating, as i ended up paying (with my $20 rebate) $89 on three full seasons, seasons which would run $50 each when bought separately at Every Other Place I Looked. there should be some trophy available for that. somewhere, someday, somehow...

speaking of trophies, some of you may remember the sad cloud i spent all last semester developing in the margins of my literature notes, as pictured below:



you'll all be very happy to learn that my sad cloud has been further developed into a french cloud, as pictured below:



that's what i do all day. i miss you guys. oh, by the way, i'm leaving tomorrow morning for four days. i'm going to the big island to seek my fortune amongst the pools of lava, and possibly the pirates. faretheewell!

this morning, my shower smelled like urine because my cat has taken to peeing on everything in sight. i felt dirtier in the shower than out of it. when i was squirting the conditioner onto my hand to wash my hair, it made this incredible christmas-tree-like design... i think i know now how it felt to see mother theresa in that cinnamon bun, or something to that effect. i found myself staring at the christmas tree for a long time, but i realized that the entire world around me smelled like cat urine and i just wanted to get out of there. i think the saddest part of that whole episode is that my sister katie actually asked me if perhaps i had been the one peeing in the shower.

just peeing in the shower, and leaving it there. seriously, katie. c'mon.

at dinner tonight, we had salmon, mashed potato, and spinach salad. in the middle of dinner i (1) got down on the floor on all fours and bit my father's posterior as he sat eating, (2) stood up on my seat and just looked down at my family for a while, saying nothing, and (3) released several shrill and drawn-out mongs. my family didn't do anything. i'm starting to realize that i can do whatever i want. they are completely desensitized to it.

standing on a little stool at the dinner table in the middle of the meal. i can't believe it.

i'm happy that i have a friend to call up and bother in hawaii, and eventually maybe even bully into learning how to play mah jongg. we're not there yet, though - baby steps. today i saw matt's barracks and they are small and crappy. instead of magnetic ribbons, let's write some letters to our congresspeople and request larger living spaces for our military. no? ok, magnetic ribbons it is.

i love you guys, and i'm glad you're the type of friends who let me make fun of magnetic ribbons without misunderstanding my motives and posting mean responses.

how was that? support our troops.

i made a friend!

i met him at church, his name is matt, and he's twenty. he's from north carolina (where, coincidentally, i might be moving), and he's working for the navy for a few years so that he can go to college. he's a fun guy and he definitely fulfills my need for immature collegesque conversation. yesterday, we went to the north shore and i sat on the beach reading a girly magazine. =)

in other news, we've been religiously watching the daily show and the gilmore girls, which is quite a spread. i just bought all three gilmore girls seasons on ebay to feed my family's addiction...

i'm going to hilo (on the big island - a whole different island!) for a few days, starting this coming saturday. it's just my sister katie and me going, so it should be fun. there's some wicked lava flow there right now and we'll probably hike up to see it. i hope to take a lot of pictures. katie is packing all of her things up right now, as she is leaving for her foreign service training in less than two weeks, so hopefully this trip will be the light at the end of a very stressful tunnel for her. she's leaving pretty soon after we get back, though, so that might put a strange mood on things. i have no real idea how it will be without her.

it's only been three weeks or so since robin left, and it feels like we're completely disconnected. i think that's partly because we don't have any shared experiences to talk about, which is an issue with every single long-distance relationship, whether romantic or otherwise. at least i'm not off seeing greek or turkish ruins every other day... we're both just bored and lonely without each other. no matter how many interesting family members or friends i have around me, i think i'll remain bored and lonely. i am definitely prepared to wait through the summer. i do like being home, but it's difficult at times.

blah blah blah my life is so terrible i miss my boyfriend... i'm very sorry about all of that. truthfully, it's what i think about a lot, so i thought i may as well share it with you, scott - you who beg for updates. =)

and in my shock-and-awe campaign against anybody who remotely knows me, i've got an appointment with a mary kay consultant tonight at 6:30. shock! awe! blush! liner! she's a friend from church, and it seemed like it would be a fun and feminine escape.

i smell like i just rolled around in a carabao field... lunch time! then who knows - maybe a shower? i like to switch it up. don't want to live the same day twice.

when my eyes finally opened this morning, not counting the early phone call from robin (he got a job), they landed on my sister katie's copy of Leaves of Grass by walt whitman, whose revolutionary free verse makes me want to vomit up my insides and snorkel in them (it's been a long time since i said that - far too long). as i further contemplated my attitude towards whitman, it came to me that i cannot possibly hate every poem found in his self-proclaimed bible (Leaves of Grass); i decided to go through it and find something that i enjoyed.

in its 400+ pages, poem 13 - To You - was quite nice:

Stranger! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

yep, that's the entire poem. but it is walt whitman and i do not hate it. so there you have it. it's... just such a personal triumph. i was considering doing my senior seminar on why i hate Song of Myself and I Hear America Singing. (that's very nearly not true.)

i spent all day reading, painting, and watching the gilmore girls.

to all those still unaware, katie wendt's birthday is fast approaching. as a sneak preview, katie, i have located the Awesomest Shoes in All of Oahu. i don't think it will get there by friday, especially since it's almost wednesday and i haven't sent your gifts out yet. there's always that.

i want to take some pictures of hawaii to show you guys what things really look like here. i've been playing with the digital camera a bit, but i won't bore you with pictures of my cats in various unnatural positions. cats are so strange.

but hey, here's robin and me.



i'm sorry this was mostly about poetry i don't like. =/

God bless u2. God bless All That You Can't Leave Behind.

if we lived out our entire lives without ever seeing our reflection in a mirror or a window or in some still spot of water, would we be able to pick ourselves out of a line-up? i wonder if we'd know how we looked from the way that we felt. for instance, i would feel hip and be able to identify myself based on the new sunglasses i bought at ross for (insert minuscule amount of money here). they emit a fiery hotness. when i wear them, i emit a fiery hotness. that's really the whole point of this little rant.

and i'm out.

my interest level in getting a job is so low that it's almost undetectable. i have no idea what brought about this complete lack of motivation. given the choice, i would want employment very enthusiastically. so, are things like that a choice?

i'm making my way pretty successfully through the chronicles of narnia. now wendt can't taunt me with understanding the presence of the lamppost while i am without a clue - katie, your imperious rule is over!

i have let my mind wander so much this summer... it's strolled so far off into the future that i'm almost embarrassed. should God allow it, there is so much to be discovered there. having said that, tomorrow is just an idea, really. we have only today and only this hour. sigh.

i want to paint today. i will.