Amanda Goes East (and other stories)

You can tell that you're a bad blogger when you so seldom write that when you do, you feel the need to explain to your readers what has prompted this miraculous event . Luckily I noticed and analyzed this urge before I began, and have come to the conclusion that this is MY blog and I'll write as I please.

So far my summer has been an on-going vacillation between absolute boredom and extreme activity. Sometimes I'll go 3-4 days without getting dressed or talking to anyone at all. You start memorizing the schedules of your favorite tv shows, sleeping, and doing crazy things like trying to become interested in knitting. I got through about a foot of my new scarf before I gave up on that madness. There can seriously be no more mind-numbing process than knitting....but at the same time...I love knitted objects like sweaters and scarves. If only I had a machine to do my knitting for me...or an elderly relative who had nothing better to do... Or maybe if I was just faster, and could double-task while I knitted. If I didn't have to look at what I was doing or pay any mental attention to it I'd probably be a knitting fiend.

Yes, I honestly have nothing better to do at the moment than rant about how much I hate knitting.

However, when I'm not losing my sanity by sitting home alone for extended periods of time, I'm left with no time at all. I've found that weekdays I am a social outcast, and weekends my company is highly sought after. Is there no happy medium? Can't I just be liked all the time? Or at least take precedence over silly things like jobs?

An example of this is the last 5 days: Starting on Wednesday (an unusual occurance..generally I don't do much until Thursday or Friday) my friend Sarah hijacked me and took me to Eagle River to watch a movie. Hijacking is perhaps not the right term, but she did have to work pretty hard to convince me to get off the couch and out of my pajamas to go see a movie. Unfortunately, we were too late by the time we got there, so we had dinner at McDonalds and went back to my house, resulting in Sarah spending the night, and the pleasant discovery that a how-to guide for opening champagne with a sword actually works (Sarah happened to have a sword). Thursday progressed as usual -- I woke up at the crack of 1, ambled down to the kitchen and computer, then stayed there until bedtime. Now on to Friday (where the real fun and sleeplessness begins): Sarah was having a garage sale to get rid of old clothes (conveniently all in my size) and other objects from storage, and I volunteered to help. I got there a little after 9 am and put a whole lot of clothes on hangers. Unfortunately, we missed a lot of the garage sale sharks due to our mutual disinterest in mornings. We did, however, manage to catch a few haggling stragglers right at the beginning. You know the type -- where $3 for a pair of designer jeans that have barely been worn just isn't good enough, it's gotta be $2. Luckily normal people started coming by after that, and business was good..until 1 when it started to rain. Then we packed up and hung out until 6. Then we drove to Anchorage to have dinner with Sarah's parents and some family friends...which ended up lasting 3 hours and involving a whole lot of food (which I regretted in the morning, but appreciated at the time). Exhausted, Sarah took me back to my house for pajamas and any old objects from the garage that I'd like to donate to the garage sale....but we ended up just spending the night at my house again.

Saturday started off the same way (except some loser tore down Sarah's garage sale signs, so we had to make new ones...garage sale drama sucks). We quit around 5, and since Sarah was just going to donate the unsold clothes to goodwill, I got to pick through for anything that I liked. After hauling my new wardrobe to the car, I checked my phone. To my complete shock, I found that I had 1 text message, 1 missed call, and 1 voice message. After checking all of those (and trying not to stay awkwardly long in Sarah's driveway) I discovered that my good friend Mark was coming to Birchwood, and perhaps to my house later that night. The message said he was leaving at 5:30, and it was 5:50 when I listened to the message..somehow I figured he wouldn't have left on time, so I called back anyway. My suspicions were correct. After confirming that a visit was indeed in order, I finally went grocery shopping (I'd been putting it off for at least 3 or 4 days). I knew that I could survive another day on ramen and spaghetti o's, but I was pretty dubious about the contents of my kitchen being able to support a boy. It was quite fortunate that I did go grocery shopping, because it turns out Brett came too, and even my fully stocked kitchen barely survived the onslaught of two very hungry young men. It would have been really sad if my guests had starved to death...especially because their parents probably would never let them come over again if they had. For dinner we went back to Birchwood (a church camp in Eagle River), and Mark's mom was nice enough to make us grilled cheese. Dinner was followed by an exclusive Mark/Amanda walk around the lake (which used to seem like a huge deal at 12 [like you'd almost think you'd have to pack a lunch to make it around], but at 21 it's really a pretty short walk). That was nice, because it can always be odd to see old friends. Sometimes you have to rediscover what it is about a person that's made you stay friends for so many years, which in our case seems to be easy conversation...and that he's not afraid of bears (that is a very important quality in an Alaskan friend, because I happen to be very afraid of/worried about bears).

Today I went back to Birchwood to help with a building project. There I developed both a fascenation with and hatred of a product called Blueskin. Basically it's tar on one side, and water-proof blue stuff on the other, and you stick it on the sides of the building. I feel like there are so many interesting thing you could do with it...like make hand-shaped cutouts and climb up things or something....but when it's being used for its original purpose, it's super annoying. After that I came back to Wasilla and was feeling particularly productive, so I stopped and got a haircut that I've been putting off for a while (don't worry, nothing drastic, just cleaning up the ragged ends). Now I am back to my original control center (the couch) and have no plans at all...except for a hike at some still unplanned time before the 7th.

I've also started thinking about the future. Funny how being by yourself will do that. After staunchly denying any interest in further schooling (I've read enough books and written enough essays for at least 2 lifetimes), I've changed my mind and am definitely going on to grad school of some sort. I'm still tired of school, but I've come to the decision that for what I'm interested in, it's mandatory that I get a higher degree. Now I have to decide where and what I'll study. The question of where is completely up in the air, but possible majors are Slavic languages or International Relations/Studies/Something like that. After that my idea is to join the foreign service (unless I get a better offer, which is entirely possible). I've also given the military some more thought. I'd pretty much decided I wasn't interested in any of the job options there until a friend told me about Foreign Area Officers (http://www.faoa.org/main.html), which intruiged me. I really like that they'd include a graduate program and further language training, and I'd be starting on a career track rather than doing ambiguous scholarly things which may or may not be able to get me a future job. With an interest in Russian/Slavic languages and living abroad in general, it's pretty much inevitable that I'll either end up working for the government or the military. I'm sure no matter where I go it'll be interesting, and I'm just as interested as everyone else to find out where that will be.

Life....it's tricky..but in a good way usually