Punctuate My Love

Sometimes, reading old love letters is painful. I can't help it - I just linger over every misplaced comma, cringe at all the misused contractions that make me into body parts ("you're beautiful eyes"), and agonize over run-on sentences that could have been easily fixed with elegant semi-colons.

Young Women leaders have drilled into my head that "spouse who understands the necessity of spaces within ellipses (space dot space dot space dot space)" is not appropriate for my future husband list . . .  but surely a comma-conscious man is not too much to ask for?

The Purple Tablecloth

Today while packing up at Kaplan's free practice test event, I folded a purple plastic tablecloth.

I concentrated on the ridges already there, trying to divine what the original tablecloth folder had in mind. Did she want it folded lengthwise inward first? Or maybe she flipped it outwards along the width. Biting my lips, I folded it over and over again, feeling that I was intruding upon my predecessor's tablecloth-folding territory and making too many of my own grooves.

All of a sudden, one of the Salt Lake Kaplan center ladies came over and eased it out of my hands. She rustled the tablecloth, clumsily connecting corner to corner, and shoved it away in the container. The edges didn't even kiss. She laughed, "Oh my goodness, you're not one of those OCD girls are you?"

I vacillated between shock and confusion.

Me with OCD? What is she talking about?

It just never occurred to me that I could fold this piece of purple plastic so casually, completely disregarding the perfect symmetrical ridges that somebody's flawless folding had imprinted. Her total indifference almost seemed . . . sacrilegious.

So, when her back was turned, I took it out and folded it again.

p.s. Today I learned that I hate selling. But unfortunately, I'm very good at it.

The body language of emails

I obsess over emails, not necessarily over their content but rather the delivery.

 

Sentences full of shpelling mistaks, LOL, or .....? I instinctively read faster and skip over them, pretending I don't notice so as to spare my sender any imaginary embarassment.

 

A "I hope your work is treating you well" from somebody I just met? I cringe. Perhaps we didn't hit it off as well as I think we did. 

 

A new animated emocon in an email from my mom this morning? I sat there absolutely shocked. I don't even know how to do that myself. 

 

And a sentence highlighted in bold when I wasn't expecting it? I just about cried.

 

 

 

Mood Ring

I had officially instituted this weekend to be my time to be sad. I had three different plans for tonight. I ended up canceling all three of them. I was even upset that I forgot to wear black today. Depressingly, I wore my fun green top with billowy sleeves, complete with my multi-color tribal necklace. All not very suitable for my self-imposed period of mourning. So I tried to seclude myself as much as possible. Sort of worked. Sort of didn't. I seemed to bump into everybody that I know. I even made a new friend. I then tried the mental isolation trick, aka putting my earphones on. But eventually a note would break free from my pursed lips, and before long I would find myself humming along about how much I love life.

There were some successful sad moments. At times I felt like hiding in the TA office and just crying it out. I wish I had. I needed it. But just at those moments when I tired of repeating conversations in my mind and reviewing what might have been, I would feel a sudden burst of excitement. I was finally, properly, melodramatically sad! Unfortunately that would undo all my previous hard work. After all, it's hard to feel down when you've succeeded at something.

I pity boys. They have to try to understand female creatures like me.

Mahler (not to be mistaken for somebody who goes to the mall)

I'm not the biggest fan of classical music. Well I don't mind it so much if I don't have to sit there and watch it being played. Once when I was attending an hour long student violin recital with my room mate Belinda, I had a sudden epiphany before I fell asleep in the middle of it: I will not let my kids learn piano or violin because I don't want to have to sit through their concerts and pretend to enjoy them. Call me the wicked mother, but at least I will not be a hypocritical one.

Which was why it was with dread that I agreed to go with Andrea to a symphonic concert up in Salt Lake city last weekend. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah orchestra were performing "Mahler's 2nd Symphony" and it was apparently going to be a big deal. As I wriggled into my seat, I glanced at the program, trying to read up on the next two hours of my life. Skipping over all the fancy music terminology, all I could glean was that it was going to be about a hero's funeral, nostalgia about his past, and eventual resurrection. Intense stuff.

Even without lyrics, somehow the music spoke and unfolded the story to me as I could have never imagined it. In my mind's eye, the hero morphed into a courageous but convoluted figure - he was disciplined yet passionate, tender yet crude and his funeral - oh those cellists! Their bows hacked the poor man's soul into pieces, lamenting his passing yet confining him to the bounds of mortality. But wait! The bugles sounded in the distance - could it really be? The choir of angels appeared and summoned fallen soldiers from remote lands and star-crossed lovers from their watery graves and called the most common of the commoners to stand forth to be resurrected.

By the time the symphony ended, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, mesmerized. One of the music buffs we rode back with claimed that Mahler had "made his weekend, no wait, his week, no, his Thanksgiving!" To which, his equally enthusiastic friend upped his game and claimed that Mahler had made his year. While I did not think that Mahler was life-changing, it was probably life-changing for my future children: sorry kids, it's back to the piano for you.

Not wired the right way

I have always thought it is interesting when boys write "Be Mine!" on some sort of a card or say it to me. The image in my head isn't one of red valentine's day hearts carefully cut out on construction paper. Instead, I see clawing hands clasped around my vulnerable shoulders, making sure that I can't run off. There is a sense of possessiveness embedded in that phrase - some sort of jealous frenzy that is waiting to be unleashed. The passion behind it heightens to a whole new level when it is all in CAPS LOCK or when it is accompanied by multiple !!!

To me, those two little words are absolutely suffocating.

Somewhere in my socialization process, I must have missed a couple lessons on how not to think too much when boys tell you that they like you.

Subway

Habits comfort me. And eating at Subway for lunch is one of them. I was introduced to Subway rather late in my life but ever since I took that first bite, I was hooked. I go to the Subway at BYU quite a bit so much so that I recognize a new employee when I see one. I sort of know their shifts. I even know who is better at wrapping sandwiches and who is better at cutting the bread. When I reach for my wrapped sandwich, I normally can tell whether it would be tightly packed or not. I know that I need exactly three napkins if I have a cookie with my sandwich. And of course, I know just how much water to fill up in my cup so that I would have just enough to quench my thirst after my sandwich.

I used to pride myself on knowing my sandwich so well. There was this beautiful precision that I appreciated. But yesterday something changed subtly. I was just reaching for my wrapped sandwich when the cashier interrupted this familiar scene as she looked at me and said, "Wait, do you come here every day?" I mumbled a quick reply and turned away, embarrassed. I felt like my dad that one time when he walked into a Hilton hotel in Tokyo and the bell boy greeted him by name. All of a sudden, I realized that I have gone to Subway one too many times. Somehow, by wrapping around myself the comfort blanket of habits, I have become downright predictable and unadventurous. Over my 6-inch chicken breast on Italian herb and cheese bread that day (the same sandwich that I eat everyday), I resolved that I would do more to put myself out of my comfort zone.

Today, after an hour long of microeconomics, I unconsciously headed toward Subway once more. When the same cashier asked me what I wanted, I held my breath and made a quick decision: Roast beef on Italian herb and Cheese please! She seemed startled. There, I showed her. I could shake things up once in a while too.

It's not as easy as ABC

Buying books was a little difficult for me today. The BYU bookstore has changed the way they stock their textbooks, switching their old by-subject system for a new alphabetical one. With a little sigh, I started singing the alphabet song. The thing is the song rolls off my tongue so easily that sometimes I go past the letter that I'm singing for so I had to sing it all over again. Needless to say, I took forever in the bookstore.

When the cashier asked me for my thoughts on the new system as part of some feedback scheme, I told her that it was fine but I just had to sing the alphabet song over and over again. The sad thing was she just laughed and assumed that I was kidding.

Lack of farmer blood

I used to have this lofty illusion of being the busy-bee early-riser (a.k.a. Chelsea), who somehow manages to do all her laundry, bake some bread, and dust down all the counters before 9 a.m. So I ambitiously signed up for 8 a.m. classes my first semester at BYU. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening (most of the time quite literally). Like all respectable freshman, I partied hard till 4 in the morning, dancing on our mattresses that we had pulled into the hallway, sneaking out to belt out happy birthday to the embarrassed individual, and delivering goldfishes to the boys in our ward. Needless to say, Physical Science first thing in the morning just kicked my trash. I would stagger in midway during class and sleep through the rest of the clicker quizzes. With a habit like mine, even Edison's brightest bulb would struggle desperately.

Eventually I caught on. The next semester my earliest class was at 12.

Then the next semester my Tuesdays and Thursdays schedule started at 2.

And now once again, the night before school starts, I'm sitting in front of my computer, trying to figure out my schedule for the next four months of my life. Can I handle philosophy at 9:30 every morning? Even though I know myself pretty well, so in this case the answer would be a no, I'm still tempted to hold onto my pretensions to be an early-riser. There is just something so refined and I don't know, almost lady-like, about the concept of waking up when the first rays of morning light hit your eyes. I would imagine that Jane Austen stretched contentedly on her bed and came up with new ideas for her books every morning without jerking awake when her sister pounds on the door because she was late for class once again. No, women like Virginia Wolfe, Condoleezza Rice, and Snow White all sound like early-rising go-getters.

Looking back at the BYU screen, I sighed and dropped my philosophy class. I guess there will be no Emily Bronte aspirations for me this time, I'll just have to face reality and settle with being a Marie Antoinette.