Quietly Disruptive Saints

Sometimes, we aren't the most engaged people in Sunday School.  We fall asleep, we play games on our kindles, we doodle and write various notes to each other.  But at least we find ways to entertain ourselves without disrupting others, right?  It's the thought that counts....  Ok, not my best excuse, just roll with it.  Today, Katie and Marina and I wrote a story together to keep us awake.  We each wrote one word and then passed it the the next person.  I started with "Dear," and then Marina went, and then Katie.  I tell you this so if you see a particularly strange or concerning word, you can use your math and pattern skills to determine which of us is the culprit.  Or, you know, not.  That would be an incredible waste of your time.  Go make us some cupcakes instead.


Dear Prudence,

Don't forget about th'Alamo!  Everyone will kill small indigenous Irish elephants, unless Batdog viciously intervenes.  Should the battle prove lasting, gather all bears.  They always attack enemies, hurling hula hoops toward medium sweaters, bursting bubbles, and cinderblocks.  Luckily, bears are very susceptible to brainwashing.  Unluckily, they tend to have short-term attention spans.  It seems that you only benefit if you curl Elizabeth's limbs.  Weird.  Though dolphins inevitably revolt, bears are essentially victims of the dolphins.  Grotesque conspiracies arise due to widespread elephantitis.  Sick specimens are transported due to contaminated blood.  Avoid drinking unbleached blood.  It causes telekinesis, but also leprosy.  When hallucinations end, grab your compass.  North is bad.  Run East, but only if bears limp with elephantitis.  The sunrise signals safety.  Roll left if moss grows under walrus graves.  Roll backwards determinedly.  Don't jump diagonally, else incite the wrath of superhuman children.  They smell like rotten rutabagas and mushrooms, beating acidic pulp into orange sippy-cups.  Obviously bears enjoy pulp-free OJ, thus superhuman children torture them with forced pulpy OJ.  Luckily children aren't able to escape if there are cookies.  Trapping them is simple, especially when oreo's are available.  Remember to remember the Alamo.

Love,
The Hunchbacks.

I'm good at breaking and entering. Or others are just bad at locking doors.

Our building, good ol' Glenwood Number 4, is the furthest one from campus.  It's so far!  Once I even get to the Glenwood parking lot I have to walk past 3 buildings just to get to ours.  Sometimes my subconscience gets impatient, and I become sure it can't be that far.  So I unconsciously turn into the third building and go into the matching apartment there.  The first time this happened was during the first week of school.  We were still unpacking, and there were boxes and dishes and misc. items all over the kitchen. We all left that morning vowing that we would organize when we got home.  Well, when I walked into the apartment after school, everything was clean and tidy, and there was even a vase of flowers on the kitchen table!  I froze, thinking to myself, "Wow!  My roommates have been busy!  I wonder who got the flowers!"  As I continued to walk through the entry way, however, something felt off.  The couches were in different spots, and the decorations that we had haphazardly put on the wall that morning had disappeared.  That's when it hit me.  This was not the apartment I was looking for.  I quickly exited that apartment and shut the door, then walked out of the building like nothing had happened.  When I finally got to our building and entered our real apartment, there were the boxes and dishes and a distinct absence of flowers in a vase.  Home, sweet home.

This has happened numerous times since then.  You would think that I would learn that we live in building 4.  Actually, no, let's be real here.  I'll never learn that, but you would think that the owners of the apartment I keep walking into would learn to lock their door.  I've met them now, they're very nice.  They were pretty convincing when they pretended to understand why I can't figure out where I live, even after 3 months.  I'm sure we'll soon be on first name basis, and then they can give all my information to the psych ward and have them come pick me up.  They know where I live and everything.  So, if one day I just up and disappear, I'm either at the matching apartment one building over, or in the psych ward.  Either way, please come get me.

The Story of Why I'm Not Allowed to Go Back to the Library. Like, Ever.

There are two places in the library where I study.

1. The periodicals, my favorite place on campus.  Open, well lit, lots of windows, some trees (real ones, I kid you not), and plenty of space.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time focusing, so if I need to study hardcore, I can't stay in the periodicals.  There are too many people and far too many loud librarians who think loudly refilling the printers with paper is an hourly task.  In such conditions, I peace out and head upstairs to my second study spot.

2. The carrels on the opposite side of the south elevator on the fifth floor.  There are just two, they face a wall, and they are very hard to find.  Seriously, you go around a corner, then around another corner, then around another corner to find this little nook.  There is even a window to gaze out of when I feel stir crazy.  The big problem?  There is no local outlet.

Luckily, I'm a problem solver.  There is an outlet about fifteen feet away, and if one doesn't mind disturbing the tranquility of the fifth floor, you can shove the carrel over to sit by an outlet.

One lovely Tuesday, in an attempt to get into study mode, I went to the fifth floor and started to set up camp.  I started pushing the desk to an outlet when everything went smerfishly awry.

One of the legs of the desk broke.
(In my defense, I'm pretty sure that thing was structurally unsound before I got there!)

So there I was, panickily holding up a desk that was getting heavier by the second, with no idea what to do.  And the longer I stood there, the more hysterically funny the situation got.  Do other people get into these situations?  Seriously.  I was just standing, supporting the desk, trying so hard not to burst into laughter, doing my best to look completely innocent whenever someone came near.

Although the leg was precariously loose and threatening to snap, I managed to wrangle the desk back into a moderately reasonable position against the wall.  As soon as I was convinced it wouldn't fall over, I high tailed it out of there and have since resolved to avoid the fifth floor

I'm still trying to decide if I should a) never speak of this again, b) leave an anonymous note for the library staff about the broken carrel, c) show up in a carpenter's disguise (complete with mustache and toolbelt) and attempt to casually fix the problem on my own, or d) break the other legs (in for a penny, in for a pound).  

The Bathroom.

Now of course it wasn't anything like this.
The monster was yellow.

Sometime this week, I realized that in the last nine weeks I've been working at this call center, every time I use the bathroom on the main level, I always go to the exact same stall.  Don't ask me why, I can't explain it.

When I noticed the tendency for the middle stall, I decided to smerf things up.  I went a different stall... and found some sketchy toilet paper on the handle.  So I went back to the safe, standard stall.

The next day, I tried to break routine again by going to a third stall.  Nothing was wrong with the toilet, but it felt all wrong. I actually felt claustrophobic, and became convinced that the stall was smaller than the usual stall.  Then I counted the number of tiles across the front of both stalls and compared- exactly the same.

That was when I realized I was standing in a public bathroom, staring at the floor in front of the stalls, silently counting the tiles with my feet.  And looking like a nutter.  Business like usual.