Being Handed a Prize

It turns out that today was just as good as my unofficial "last day."
As you all know, May 21st was not the Rapture. That, or I was left behind and so was everyone else! However, I tried to live my May 21st like it was the Rapture and spent the entire day with my family.
First, Ma and I remembered the old times by reenacting stories, telling new tales, and basically just laughing hysterically so hard that I made her eyes sting because her mascara ran from tears of laughter. Then, we did the woman thing to do and laid out by the too-cold-to-swim-in-yet pool and basked in the sun to where Ma suddenly raised her head and shouted, "Wow! There's a lot of wildlife today!" at the squawking birds, rustling lizards, and barking dogs. Then, I dined with Kate at Panera Bread - food that is so good it's worth shelling out way too much money for! I feasted like I'm a poor college student on a whole pumpkin muffin, a crispy apple, and hot macaroni and cheese with a small orange juice.

Kate and I haven't seen each other since she was diagnosed with asthma (sorry, Ma, if you haven't told the distant relatives yet and were saving that information for a lengthy phone call in the near future. Hi, everyone!). ...My baby sister has asthma. My other sister is profoundly deaf in one ear. I have hypoglycemia (or something a lot like it). Seriously.... Seth, Morgan... RUN!! You do NOT want to breed with us!!!! We have scary DNA and it'll pass along to your future children should you marry us. RUN AWAY before you catch it, too!!!
After lunch, I watched The Fighter with Ma back at the house. Holy crap, awesome movie! If you haven't seen this film yet, go to a Redbox quick because you're missing out on cinema awesomeness! It is not just another "sports" movie where that's all that matters and the loser rises to the top. The story is so much more... even though the trailer doesn't make it look that way. And yes the crackhead former legend brother is played by Christian Bale - that same guy who growled his way through Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (also good movies, if you haven't seen those then we're no longer speaking!!)
Then it was time for dinner and my "last meal" was a big, fat piece of juicy steak and an equally fat baked potato topped with butter! Delicious!!! I didn't come up to breathe until there wasn't any meat left on the bone. I took off soon afterwards to visit with my dad where we watched bits of Cartoon Network with Anne before I hit the road.
My last hour was spent clutching my teddy bear Mr. Mars as we cruised down I-40 through Asheboro territory, home of the NC Zoo. I sent Morgan a text during saying, "Baby, I love you so much. I can't wait to hug you." 9:00 came. 9:00 went. I continued to drive down I-40.

~

Today continued to be just as amazing as yesterday. What was a trip to see the border collie sheep herding demonstration at the Got to Be NC Festival turned into your stereotypical Nicholas Sparks couples date to the state carnival trip. Morgan and I pulled up into a large field and walked across the street to the fairgrounds where we instantly headed to the Grandstand for the demonstration. Two border collies - one long-haired and one short-haired - proceeded to show us different techniques in herding sheep. It was fascinating to watch these intelligent animals work. The long-haired, Ranger, was a young and obviously inexperienced. He wanted nothing more than to get at those sheep. Morgan and I watched transfixed as the dogs herded the sheep around cones, into a pen, and over a small bridge. 

When the show ended, we walked around the entire fairgrounds then stopped at two booths to get drinks. I got a strawberry daiquiri smoothie in a long tube of a plastic cup and Morgan got lemonade and strawberry "Moose Joose Slush." We drank our beverages away from the warming sun near the coolness of a large fountain at the far end of the fairgrounds as families bustled around us with their strollers and dogs. We attended the end of the Paul Bunyan Lumberjack Show where we saw an ax throwing competition and a dog named Sandy beat a man at log rolling. 

Our last activity was Morgan proving he has the skill (that will never be used in real life except for that moment) of throwing a ping pong into the smallest fish bowl imaginable. To escape winning a live fish as we need no more pets in this apartment, Morgan had to throw the ping pong into just one bowl - the one on top of a pyramid of bowls that was perfectly blocked by a low hanging sign in the center of the booth. And on his third try, he landed that ping pong in the center of the red bowl!!! I was beyond thrilled and so proud of my baby!! Then, I was handed an orange plush clown fish that had been dangling over my head as I snapped pictures of Morgan proving his manly worth of winning his woman a toy from the carnival. We walked away with me cooing over my new toy and Morgan feeling pretty proud of himself. 

Remember when I was complaining about going to a carnival last summer with father...? ...And I wanted that Nicholas Sparks carnival moment so I won my own toy?? I find it ironically funny that then I won myself an inflatable clown fish that made me happy yet depressed at the same time because I was alone and heartbroken but I wasn't going to let that stop me. And now, a year later I have this amazing guy win me a plush clown fish. To whatever female pop star who says they don't need a man... getting handed a fish by the guy who just won it for me was so much better!

May 21st

So it's all over the news that tomorrow, May 21st, is the official Christian Rapture. According to a man and his followers (who predicted once before then said their calculations were wrong), the Rapture is tomorrow due to Biblical calculations and number crunching. For someone like me, a Baptist and true believer, I find the whole thing to have lots of holes and just another frenzy of trying to predict what we do not know and what frightens us. If you've read Matthew 26:42-44, then you're in the know. Still, the craze and the hubbub over the whole thing, like December 2012, is a bit daunting and freaky! As soon as I heard about it on Facebook, I immediately hit Google News and looked up different news feeds of where this information was coming from. One website I found was quite a catch. It had 21 reasons why it couldn't be the end, including "they haven't made a movie about this date yet" and "the iPhone 5 hasn't been released yet."
While I believe the prophesy that us Christians are going to be taken tomorrow at sunset is a hoax, I sat in Raleigh wondering what would I want to be doing if it was actually the end. I sat there on Morgan's couch watching another epsisode of "Brothers & Sisters" on NetFlix and thinking... this can't seriously be how I spend "my last day on earth!!!"
So I texted my mom and told her I'd be down in Charlotte in about four hours. And now here I am... where I grew up, the home that is the love of my life, with my family and the cat I never get to see, going to lay out in the sun tomorrow and go swimming. It's where I want to be.
Now, don't get too flustered or concerned about Morgan. I didn't choose my family over him. Tomorrow, Morgan will be spending his "last day" working a 16 HOUR shift at The Angus Barn!!! Even if I had wanted to spend my hypothetical last day with him, he wouldn't have been available to hug. I would have been watching more NetFlix at his apartment bored out of my mind while he raked in the overtime pay. While I want to be with him, no, I'd rather be here surrounded by my family.
The trip down here has already been worth it. While driving on I-85 near the Concord exit, the sky lit up with white light. At first, I thought it was lightning and I was going to be driving through a storm. But no! As I rounded the bend, fireworks lit up the night sky while Adam Lambert sang "Come Home", a song about a woman singing to her husband in the army to come back to her, on my iPod. Reds, blues, greens, yellows, and purples took up the majority of my windshield as my speed slowly drifted and slowed to catch as much of the show as I could. Even if the rest of this trip is a complete bomb, at least I got that beautiful surprise!!
So what do you think? Do you think your religious family members or you yourself will be taken in the Rapture tomorrow?

But more importantly.... what do you want your "last day" to be like????

13. The Starter Wife

Book 13: The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer (B+)

I picked up this book because of the popular television mini-series based off the book that Kate and I ate up a few years ago. The show was true to the book being witty, entertaining, and having an air of exaggerated truthfulness. In Hollywood, a wife of an ok studio executive gets a call from her husband saying he wants a divorce. Now, Gracie is an ex-wife, an outcast of the major Hollywood elite society. She loses everything, except the three loyalists of friends - a gay designer, the older cynic married to an even older man for his money, and the paranoid with lots of kids friend. As her ex begins dating Britney Spears, Gracie wonders what will happen to her as her four-year-old daughter starts wearing belly shirt with faux fingernails and herself having no job to speak of. While staying at the older friend's Malibu beach mansion, Gracie finds love in a homeless man, someone so completely not Hollywood that it's the perfect match.

The book reminiscences a bit too much, one of those where the chapters are mostly a collection of Gracie's thoughts instead of actual story. I suppose this is because that most average women, the readers of this book, don't understand what goes into being what is referred to in the book as "A Wife Of" or a Hollywood elite. Still, the constant mental ramblings of Gracie are a bit of an overkill.
I enjoyed that the book, while written in third-person, the perspective changed every so often throughout the book. While we see the world through Gracie's eyes for the majority of the story, there are a few paragraphs and chapters written from the perspective of Sam, Gracie's homeless boyfriend, or Joan, the older cynic. The characters are creative and charismatic with Grazer's insight giving them great depth in the shallow streets of glittery LA. I'd like to read more of her work. 
Definitely a good summer read!

Summer Begins

For college students, summer has begun! Last week, Stuart and I packed up the majority of my belongings in Cullowhee and crammed them into his already filled apartment. I brought my TV, my DVD player, my framed poster of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” my stuffed animals, and all of Sparta’s things. We were a silly-looking caravan driving down I-40, me with a cat wandering around in my car on top of garbage bags of clothes and Stuart’s boat of a car filled to the brim with shelving units and random items.

The "new" living room

In the beginning, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of moving in with Stuart. I hate the city of Raleigh for some reason I can’t explain and I kept wondering what would happen if we broke up over the summer. I didn’t have a job, but I didn’t have one in Cullowhee either. At the end of April, I officially ended my employment at The Western Carolinian, which was just as sad as leaving The Flaming Arrow at East Gaston High School. Now, I am actually enjoying Raleigh (for the most part) and now that I have my own belongings and personal flairs, such as my Van Helsing and Adam Lambert poster, tacked up on Stuart’s walls, I feel much more at home and happy.

And, I just found out yesterday evening while Stuart was grilling steaks on the landing that I have (finally) have a new job!!! After months of filling out application after application, I turned to my roommate’s mother for help. She’s in the journalism business and helped me contact some insider people. Meanwhile, I also applied for a job as an “examiner” at Examiner.comwhere I would write about a certain topic for the local audience of Raleigh. While I’m still waiting to hear from the insider people, I got an email from Examiner that said they’re happy to welcome me to their team as the Raleigh Pet Photography Examiner. While the pay probably won’t be near what I had at The Western Carolinian, income is income. I’ll be doing something I love about a topic that I love for a few extra bucks. 

Sparta and Stuart

In other news... Sparta is doing well at his new home. He absolutely adores Stuart's place with its long hallway that he can sprint through and the large windows in the living room where he can bask in the sun every morning and watch the birds every afternoon. Yesterday, he spotted and guarded his apartment against two stray cats in the parking lot.  The other day I dragged him to PetCo in Cary. I wanted to introduce him to walking on a leash inside of a building. While everyone in the store swarmed around him with coos and pets, Sparta was beyond annoyed, and after picking out a toy for Nutmeg, we left as quickly as possible. 

Nutmeg is also doing well. She's been a wonderful addition to the family. Every night, she scampers around in her exercise ball through the apartment providing entertainment to herself, Sparta, and us humans. She goes by several names, include "hamster," "Hamtaro," and Stuart occasionally calls her "rat" which I admonish him for!

So far, she's been easy to care for while providing fun and something new to love. It was interesting to see how something as small and simple as a hamster has really strengthened mine and Stuart's relationship as we jointly care and provide for an animal that depends on us. Whether he believes this to be true or not, I find myself mentally bearing all the responsibility for Sparta. At the end of the day, Sparta is my pet that I have brought into Stuart's life. Nutmeg, we bought and decided to buy her together. Sparta is like a furry kid from a previous marriage. He was part of the package of dating me whether Stuart liked it or not. Luckily, Stuart adores Sparta and vice versa. In fact, the whole reason Stuart and I got to know each other for we started dating was because he started coming to the apartment more to see my crazy, dog-like cat that liked to play fetch and use the furniture as a jungle gym. The fact that he liked my cat was one of the characteristics I found attractive about him. 

Hamtaro

Today was a rather unlucky day (it is Friday the 13th). I am under the impression that I have strep throat and might have to go to the doctor's soon before it turns into something worse. I feel completely useless as I've slept all day or been lying about on the couch unable to focus on whatever TV I've been watching. Hopefully, I'll get better within a day or two and I continue enjoying my summer with Stuart. We have so many plans, so many adventures we want to have together.

12. Going Bovine

Book 12: Going Bovine by Libba Bray (A)

Ok, this is now one of my favorite books!! What an awesome story!!! For our six-month anniversary, Morgan bought me a gift card to my favorite bookstore City Lights. I took a chance in getting Going Bovine, which took up the entire monetary worth of the gift card, because it had a cover of a cow carrying a lawn gnome and as I scanned the first page of a boy talking I thought to myself, "I like this kid." And, I'm so glad I bought this book!! It was hilarious, awesome, exciting, unable-to-put-downable.
In modern day Texas, a boy in high school is just trying to survive being an outcast. His parents are on a rocky road to divorce, his sister is Little Miss Perfect and dating the recently-turned ultimate Christian football player, and this boy... Cameron... just wants out. Then, he founds out he has the human version of mad cow disease.

In the hospital spaced out on morphine, Cameron has a hallucination... or is she real... of a punk rocker angel named Dulcie who tells him that there's a cure. He just has to find Dr. X and save the universe from dark matter. Along with a Latino dwarf who is OCD and a hypochondriac and a lawn gnome that says he is the Norse god Balder... he travels across the lower United States in search of Dr. X, a cure, and what it means "to live."
Every page is a laugh! Every chapter has a new adventure. Every moment you fall more and more in love with these crazy, multi-layered characters. Some of my favorite moments include the gang making up their own sarcastic bumper stickers:

"My honors student sells drugs to your honors student."

"I know you're stalking me."

"Please don't tailgate: body in trunk"

"Quantum physics has a problem of major gravity" (292). 

Magazine Publishers Weekly compares the book to Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as Going Bovine is bizarre, fun, and also innocently sweet.
Says Cameron as they near the end of their journey: "We sit staring out at that vast ocean, Gonzo and I, just watching the sky colors drip into the sea like a giant percolator, making something sweet and strong, something to keep you going when all you've got left are fumes.
"Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hardwired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find out, missing, trying again - each of us playing our parts in the others' plot lines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it...
"We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got the other moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered, whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it.
"And if it's a cockroach? Well, that will be the happiest f***ing cockroach on the planet. I can tell you that" (434-346).

Works cited from:

Bray, Libba. Going Bovine. New York: Delacorte Press, 2009. Print.

11. Hurricane: The Story of a Friendship

Book 11: Hurricane: The Story of a Friendship by Dorothy Whitney Ball (B)

Hurricane is one of those slow-moving stories that doesn't have a significant plot, but more of a theme. I choose it as a book to read to Morgan, knowing he'd enjoy a simple story of two boys growing up in the South. Obviously, he was able to identify with it more than I was as girls are completely absent in the book.
Two boys, one white (Davey) and one black (Luke), are the best of friends growing up in the bean-picking part of Florida during the time in America's history when racial tensions were at their highest. The two boys refuse to conform to anyone's idea of race or friendship. They stick together through the trials and tribulations of growing up, battling Davey's grandfather of allowing him to play with Luke and the town's perceptions of black people are lesser than the white majority. In the end, Davey, Pop, Luke, and his family must all come together when a hurricane threatens Florida.
Published in 1964, the book was a bit too simple for me. Morgan seemed to enjoy it and looked forward to the nights I got to read it to him. The only exciting part of the book was the last two chapters when the hurricane hit. Before that, it's just random happenstances that the boys go through that proves how "awesome" and "amazing" Luke is even though he's black (according to the thought processes of the town's white people) by having him save a neighbor's house from a wildfire and helping Pop when the old man slices open his foot with a hatchet.
I definitely missed the age group boat on this one. A good book... but not necessarily for someone who just read The Children of Men... as bad as that was.

Photo of the Day May 9

SO MANY KITTENS!!! These are two of the five kittens that are at Catman's cat rescue shelter! They are so incredibly cute!!!!!
The little tricolored black one is named Inky and the other is Leo. Under the chair I'm sitting in you can see little Gus, the shy one, on the right! Not pictured are Carrot and Chessie. Inky is definitely my favorite - she's audacious, curious, and so playful!