80 Prompts: 1. Name something that you lost or gave away that can never be replaced

I stumbled upon this journal writing prompt site the other day and I decided to give it a shot blog-style! Woohoo!

Here goes:

Name something that you lost or gave away that can never be replaced:

As funny as it may seem, this item would be a little rubber rat that I had in kindergarten. The story behind the rat goes like this:

When I was a little kid, my paternal grandparents lived in the same town as my family, so my brothers and I were over at their place on a near-daily basis. My grandpa was something of a prankster (to put it mildly). One of his greatest joys in life was teasing my grandma through various practical jokes. One day, he hid a little rubber rat in a house plant in their kitchen, hoping that my grandma would find it and that he would have the unparalleled pleasure of hearing her scream.

As luck would have it, I was vising my grandparents that particular afternoon. While I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating frozen orange juice cake with my grandma, I noticed the little rat in kitchen plant. I pulled it out and showed it to my grandma. She was a little surprised by it, but I'm sure years of living with my grandpa had sort of dulled the shock of finding such little treasures about the house. We decided that the little rat should stay in the kitchen and that the house plant would be his home.

When my grandma died a few months later, I took the rat home with me; I'm not really sure what happened to it beyond that. It may very well have been confiscated by my parents, since I had the unfortunate habit of bringing the rat to school with me (it sort of scared the other children), but I can't really recall that happening. Now it's just one of those weird, childhood memories that pops up every now and then. So, yeah, an irreplaceable rubber rat.

So...what irreplaceable thing have you lost or given away?

Things I Have Learned or Need to Learn as a Senior Being an RA to Freshmen

So, I'm a senior this year, and a first year RA for freshman ladies. It's insane, awesome, painful, invigorating, sapping, exciting, and nerve-wracking all at the same time. All that I can say is that I love my ladies; they're a really great bunch.

There's a lot to learn, and a lot of fun to be had.

1. Everyone likes chocolate

2. Chocolate keeps people happy

3. Just because people say they are interested in doing something doesn't mean that they will

4. Everyone loves vanilla Tootsie Rolls too

5. Have patience and take your time to deal with a situation. Hasty decisions and words don't help anyone.

6. Remain calm, calmness goes a long way and is worth the energy.

7. Calmness takes energy

8. So does patience.

9. Both are necessary

10. Rules must apply to everyone

11. 10 can suck a lot, but it will be better for you in the long-run

12. Taking care of yourself is important.

13. Sleep when you can.

14. It's okay to lock your door for a little while if you need to.

15. Find safe people to talk to.

16. Don't bottle things up

17. Do your best to not procrastinate

18. Refresh yourself

19. Take the time to be a human being (that's what you are)

20. Be with your friends when you can

Linguistical Days and other stufff

Well, for starters...I am not a morning person, so 8am class is a little hairy for me at times. It's difficult to think about second language acquisition and it's related theories when you are basically a three-toed sloth. I make it to Articulatory Phonetics around 9am (the walk outside usually clears away the rest of the sleepy fuzz...although knowing that the phonetics classroom is infested with spiders keeps me awake as well). I listen to whoever the TA for that class is that week say words with phonetic sounds that I didn't even know I could make. Then I get to write the symbols for those sounds on the white board (all of this time I am also keeping an eye out for spiders...anything within a 6-foot radius of my body will die underneath my shoe, not kidding). Then I go to either Sociolinguistics or Syntax and Morphology, depending upon the day... Sociolinguistics is a really interesting theory course that explores the connections between language and culture. Syntax and Morphology is a pretty neat class too (it's basically grammar on steroids...just forget about English grammar, though...it will not help you very much...).

That's all for now.

~C

Early-morning madness...

The fact that I am a night-owl has never been so well rewarded as it was this morning: I was strolling into my bedroom and noticed flashing lights through the curtain on my window. I ran to the main room of my apartment to discover a flock of cop cars in the parking lot of my apartment. I promptly knocked on my roommate's door and we watched the scene unfold together. Not long after, I received a text from a friend, asking if she could come down to watch too. She and her roommate came down. At this point, my third roommate woke up and came out to see what was the matter. The five of us stood and watched the 10 cop cars arrest 1 guy. It was scary...and awesome! I am definitely not tired anymore...

a random memory...or the little girl with no shadow

There was this children's museum in my hometown that had all kinds of interesting things. One of them was this giant green box that filled the middle of a giant room. People would walk inside of this green box and pose while a person on the outside pushed a button. The light would blink inside of the box and the people's shadows would be frozen on the wall. I remember going in and leaving my own shadow on the wall. When I left the box, I was afraid that I would never get my shadow back. This made me sad, thinking that I would go through life without a shadow. Then I looked at the ground and it was still there.

Saturdays...

I've always thought that Saturdays were really weird days. They are like this strange, in-between day that you never really know how to spend. You feel like you waste the day if you sleep in too late, but you feel like you waste your resting time if you get up too early.

Since they are such weird days, I usually devote a portion of them to some sort of art or craft project, a portion to homework, and a portion to whatever else I feel like doing. Arts/crafts and homework are pretty standard, though...

Since it is April already, we decided that our window snowflakes should come down and something more colorful and season-appropriate should go up. Today my roomies and I are making coffee filter sun-catchers. They look pretty sweet, drying on their newspaper

Last Saturday I spent the afternoon dyeing some wool yarn fun colors with kool-aid. It worked out pretty well, as far as I can tell. It isn't bleeding color when it gets wet, which is really great. I attempted to dye some cotton with kool-aid as well. That did not turn out so well, since you need a special kind of fiber-penetrating dye for it to work.

Here's a lovely photograph of how it turned out...I'll post pictures of the mitten-things when I finish them. :)

A few Saturdays ago I made a kite...that was interesting...I haven't gotten it to fly yet, since I have decided to only fly it on weekends, and there hasn't been a windy-enough-weekend-day yet. Soon, though...very soon...

So, now you have a picture into my Saturdays...sort of... I'm going back to dishes, dinosaur mac and cheese, sun-catchers, and homework. Hope you have a great day too!

P.S.

What do you do with your Saturdays?

Unphotographable

I found this really neat website called "UNphotographable." It's this really cool web page by a person who is both a photographer and a writer. This site is dedicated to the moments when this person didn't have a camera, but wanted to capture a particular moment that he or she experienced. I think it's wonderful!

http://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2010/03/foreclosed_fron.shtml