Category Archives: Utterly and Completely Random

Jul 30 2 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

The Serenade

I dabbed my fingertip along my running mascara. “Well, now I know what I’m blogging about tonight,” I sniveled in between giggles.

Just a few minutes prior, Katie and I were waxing poetic and engaging in our typical twenty-something navel-gazing. And with good reason - Life’s dealt my roommate a bit of a blow in the past week, one that’s probably going to be a catalyst for a lot of change at the Cockpit. Things are going to get shaken up for the next couple months, but I have a feeling everything going’s to settle where it needs to.

Whoa, Vaguetown.

[Sorry. I'll fill in the blanks in the next couple weeks.]

My point being - we weren’t exactly the picture of cheer and light-heartedness. However, it was a beautiful Indianapolis night, and we knew that if we stayed inside, we’d just be depressed and moody.So we opted for picnicking and people-watching on The Canal. I was mindlessly popping grapes into my mouth and spying on an obese family in a paddleboat when I saw a dude walk up in my peripheral vision.

I’m used to this when I’m with Katie, the dudes walking up. Um hi, have you SEEN my roommate? This happens all the time. It’s like that line from When Harry Met Sally, “People were always crossing rooms to talk to Maxine.” I turned my gaze to size him up. Alright, what does this clown want….

The lad was a tall and lanky blonde, wearing some Ed-Hardy-esque t-shirt and black board shorts.  He wasn’t unfortunate looking, but certainly way too young — no more than 19 or 20. Before I could predict his angle - asking for a cigarette? Commenting on our butterkase cheese, perhaps? - he blurted this:

“Now I’m going to sing you Justin Bieber’s ‘One Less Lonely Girl’…”

But it was so rushed, and all I could think was - “Justin Bieber what now?” — before this dude LAUNCHED INTO A SERENADE.

I AM NOT KIDDING YOU. This kid literally started SINGING A JUSTIN BIEBER SONG TO US. This one:

Nearly choking on a grape, I whipped my head around to look at Katie, who was already glaring back at me wide-eyed and shocked.

There’s gonna be one less lonely girl
I’m gonna put you first
I’ll show you what you’re worth
If you let me inside your world
There’s gonna be one less lonely girl

It was out of tune and rushed and kind of mumbly. “THERE’S GONNA BE ONE LESS LONELY GIRL,” he ended his song by saying, almost yelling. “AND IT MIGHT BE YOU.” He pointed at me. “IT MIGHT BE YOU.” He pointed at Katie.

And then he walked away.

After scooping up our slacked jaws from the ground, we looked down the canal, expecting to see a group of friends that had put this kid up to this. Surely it was a lost bet, or a bro hazing. But this dude just met up with an older gentleman, seemingly his DAD, who seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing as they continued on their walk. UNBELIEVABLE.

“What…just happened?” Katie whispered.

“I…I don’t know. I don’t know.”

We were crying from laughter and disbelief.

Thanks, Universe.

Edited to Add: PS, Universe? If this is the “Knight in Shining Armor” as predicted by my tarot cards….NOT FUNNY.

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Jul 27 1 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

AWESOME TUESDAY THINGS

How’s that for a title, huh? Jesus.

We’re on Day 27 of NaBloPoMo, and some nights the ol’ idea factory is lookin’ pretty spare. If you have anything you want me to write about…PUT EM IN THE COMMENTS, ‘cuz SERIOUSLY. DAY TWENTY-SEVEN.

—————————————————-

Tuesday didn’t start so good. . . .

I wasn’t even sleeping. I was just watching the Demetri Martin special on Netflix when I decided to hit the hay, sat up, and in a split second realized - oh, I actually feel really close to the edge of the bewwwaaaahhhhoooofff. I had my MacBook in my hands, and so instead of catching myself, I held it up like a child, like, “NOOOO NOT MAH BAYE-BEEEE” (I’m Claire from Lost in this scenario.) Who needs a shoulder, or a hip? Not me.

It was just after midnight, so I figured Tuesday had it in for me. But then I heard “Night Moves” on my morning commute, followed by “Pass the Dutchie.” (You know - on the left hand side.)

BUT IT GOT EVEN BETTER:

I MADE A FAYGO ROCK ‘N RYE FLOAT, PEOPLE:

When’s the last time you had effing FAYGO ROCK ‘N RYE. A DECADE, RIGHT? This float was pretty  boss.

OR HOW ABOUT THIS?

We’re getting close to Laundry Day, and by close, I mean, every article of clothing I own is strewn about, dirty. Tonight my jammies had to come from the recesses of my closet, from the Stack of Shirts that I No Longer Wear But Keep Carting Around with Me with Each Move For Some Reason.

AND LOOK WHAT I FOUND:

AW YEAH.

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Jul 17 0 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

Totally Phoning it In.

A couple people have asked me where I pulled this quote on my facebook profile…

on my homemade valentine’s day card,

i would write I LIKE YOU in sparkles and glue,

only my handwriting is so bad,

all my K’s look like V’s,

but we decide that’s better anyway — I LIVE YOU.

It’s from a slam poem (I’m serious) by Big Poppa E called, Falling in Like.

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Jul 13 0 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

Cockpit Girls Won’t You Come Out Tonight

No.

Not tonight.

Katie and I are holed up on the couch. We’re tired. We’re stressed. We’re nursing our neuroses.

We’re cracking open the wine,

drinking it from those collector’s holiday glasses you’d get at Long John Silvers in the early 90s.

I get the feeling a lot of us are.

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Mar 04 0 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

One of These Days…

One of these days, when I’m driving to Michigan, I’m going to visit James Dean’s boyhood home and burial place in Fairmount, Indiana.

Until then, I’ll continue wondering what he thinks about the roadside billboard he shares with Garfield the cat.

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Feb 21 0 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

Two Truths and a Wine

Here are three truths about my current location.

1) THIS is in the kitchen:

2) There are little to no high-glycemic foods in said kitchen.

3) I am watching the USA v Canada hockey game.

IF YOU GUESSED MY PARENTS’ HOME IN MICHIGAN, YOU GUESS CORRECTLY!!!

1.) My mom drinks boxed wine. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this before, but this is just one of the ways my mother is unintentionally hilarious. She typically drinks Franzia Chardonnay, but she went out of her comfort zone with this Crisp White. “It’s much too sweet,” she said, after taking a sip. As if the Chardonnay tastes much better. As if she’s not going drain the whole box.

2.) Re: Low-glycemic foods. My dad is a type-II diabetic, which means sugars are few and far between in this house. Like many Americans, I’m conditioned to want something sweet after dinner. When I asked my mother what was on hand, she told me about the Schwan’s frozen yogurt in the freezer. Groan. Is that even palatable? I started scouring the cabinets for sugary condiments - syrup, cocoa, anything. “We don’t keep that stuff in the house anymore!” my mom explained. But, deep in the recesses of the pantry, I STRUCK GOLD:

BRENT’S KENTUCKY BOURBON CARAMEL SAUCE.

THIS HAS REAL BOURBON IN IT AND YOU CAN TAAAASTE IT.

OBSESSED.

[Crappy blackberry quality!]

3) Naturally, Michigan = we’re watching hockey. My mom keeps cheering every time the announcer mentions a player is from this state, and has been randomly referencing when the US hockey team beat Russia 3439483 times.

The more I watch this, the more I’m getting the urge to don hockey gear and get pushed up against the boards. That’s not even a euphemism - I just think it looks really fun.

Okay. It might be a euphemism.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: As long as Apolo Anton Ohno is tweeting, there I shall be.

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Jan 26 0 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

So damn foolish.

“Do you think it’s too late for me to learn the french horn?” I texted my friend Jordan, recently.

[I was getting that old familiar feeling of listlessness,  which never fails to cultivate this desire to throw myself headfirst into something completely new, and challenging, and random. Mostly random. When I was seven, I felt destined to play the french horn.... until a member of the Grand Rapids Symphony let me try. I couldn't blow one note outta that thing.]

“No way!” He responded. “It’s never too late. Reed instruments are sexier though.”

Been there (read: nine years of clarinet). I think what he really meant was the saxophone, specifically. I mean, I’m sure there is an instrument fetish for everyone. I’m sure there are “Bassoons are for Lovers” clubs or people who get turned on by oboe solos. But I think the lot of us can agree that the saxophone is universally the sexiest of the reed instruments. Part of me wishes I would have chosen that, versus the clarinet. You can’t really bust out the clarinet on the street corner and look cool. Although, I might resort to that, now that I’m unemployed. (Note to self: Remind parents to send clarinet.)

ANYWAY. The whole point of this entry is to get to the following - whenever anyone mentions the saxophone, I think of the instrument hanging from someone’s neck “like a golden fish.” I knew I had stolen that phrase from a poem, which I just now found. And I’m posting it here, because it’s beautiful, and I never want to lose it again.

Nightclub

By Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o’clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

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Dec 02 3 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

GIVE US A TV SHOW, ALREADY.*

I just bought eight yards of green sparkly tulle to make a tutu for a Christmas party on Friday. It’s an ugly sweater Christmas party, but honestly? I always have a hard time with that theme. I don’t feel cute in someone else’s gross sweater; I’m sorry.

I know, I KNOW - that’s the point, Ugly is in the Title, Kriscunas, I get it. Regardless, I’m going for gaudy/tacky/cute Christmas outfit. And I’m going to WURK IT.

So Bess is going to be red, and I’m going to be green, and we’ll arrive together and probably share a dish-to-pass, so those lesbian rumors are just GOIN’ STRONG.

At lunch today:

Jenn: There are going to be single guys at this party, right?

Bess: Yeah, I think s-

Jenn: Wait, I’m sorry. Who AM I? Is that a question I need to ask, now? “There’s going to be single guys there, right?” What am I, a “Cathy” comic?

Bess: “BWAH! WHAT?! I LIKE CHOCOLATE!”

Jenn: “AND COFFEEEEEE!”

* IN DEVELOPMENT: Jenn and Bess’s TV show. We were sold when the King Tut exhibit came through Indianapolis: Bess and I MUST get to Egypt. But how? We didn’t have any money. We needed to use our feminine wiles talents. We decided on a show that we’d pitch to The Travel Channel which would chronicle our adventures trying to get to Cairo.

Working title - “Two Girls, One Tut.”

We need to get moving before “Two Girls, One Cup” is no longer topica— oh wait.

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Jul 28 1 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

Everything You Need to Know About the State of My Life You Can Learn from My Library Books

books

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May 14 3 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

If you hold your ear up to the monitor, you can actually hear my moods swinging

STATUS! I’m still trucking along.  Stomach? No longer in knots. Eye? No longer twitching.

Overall feeling is still one of crappiness, a general malaise, if you will, but THAT’S OKAY. I know it’s going to suck for a little while. I’ll get back to being the witty chick with tons of pluck; I always do.  I just have to remember how to be that girl again.

My guess is that it’s going to start with gratitude. I need to grasp that concept better, or things are just going to go to shit. I don’t know if any of you experience this, but sometimes I log into my Facebook newsfeed, and find myself envious of friends’ lives — lives that I don’t even want?

I’m jealous of your engagements; I have no desire to be married. I go green with envy over your pregnancies; I don’t want a baby. I covet your freshly-painted suburban houses; I despise the suburbs. I want to steal your dogs; I….okay that’s legitimate. I really want a dog.

But I don’t want your lives. I want the quick snapshot of happiness that you’ve chosen to share, in piecemeal, on a stupid social network. I’m sure there’s a twelve step program for this kind of delusion. Until then, it’s probably a good idea to just shut the eff up, log off, and praise jeebus that I have an incredibly blessed life without the bells and whistles of “adulthood” that I’d rather pass on in the first place.

I’ll start by fishing for compliments. Are you not so proud that I’ve written fourteen days straight? I did get writer’s block a few days back and so I started going through some old photos to maybe jumpstart something.  I came across a series from my trip to London, which made me miss my BFF Matt Wilson. I haven’t seen him for a year and some change (he’s at Columbia being awesome all the time), and our telephone skills are crap.  I planned on posting this lone picture and caption:

I wish you didnt live so far away, sometimes.

I wish you didn't live so far away, sometimes.

But I didn’t. Why?  Because he e-mailed me THAT DAY.  Because he’s going to be in Grand Rapids next weekend.  And sure, he probably planned this well in advance, but I like to think that I summoned him with my thoughts.  That’s some Secret Law of Attraction Oprah shit right there.

I guess I’ll end this  non-sequitur by saying: let’s hang out in Grand Rapids next weekend.

THE END.

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May 03 1 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

Let It Bea.

I believe the Pink Lady Salad was originally named for Jackie Kennedy.  But today, I made this jello in honor of our dearly departed Bea Arthur.

Bess/Matt/Sarah are having a Golden Girls-watching marathon, and I was told to bring an “old lady snack.”  I thought of what my grandmother brought to funeral luncheons, and this came to mind.

I love recipes from the 50s and 60s because ALL the ingredients come from the interior aisles of the supermarket — processed, boxed, unnatural.  It’s the American way.

Pink Lady Salad

(Jenn’s Grandma’s version)

  • 1 envelope dream whip, prepared (you’ll need milk + vanilla + that electric mixer which you FINALLY get to use)
  • 6 oz cream cheese, softened (don’t you even THINK about using reduced fat or fat free. get EXTRA fat if they have it.)
  • 3/4 cup maraschino cherries, drained, chopped (Reserve 2 TB juice)
  • 1 can pineapple wedges, drained, chopped (Reserve 2 TB juice)
  • 1/2 lb miniature marshmallows*

Blend cream cheese, cherry juice and pineapple juice. Add cherries, pineapple, marshmallows.  FOLD in prepared dream whip.  Refrigerate. Enjoy with friends.

*Not shown in picture, as I totally just realized I forgot to mix them in as I was typing that, and now that I’ve gone and added them, I’m too lazy to take a another picture.

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May 02 0 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

May 2.

“ Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Sensible Thing”

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Apr 28 1 comments
Utterly and Completely Random

Fight or Flight or Bite.

Disclaimer: This entry doesn’t really make sense. I’d say it’s stream of consciousness but the term “stream” makes it sound so lovely and poetic. It’s less “stream” and more…”spitbubble.”

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Aforementioned: My fight-or-flight switch is turned permanently to flight. Also? I’ve added a new sector to the acute stress response, “bite,” wherein I repond to stress by eating everything in my line of sight.  Lately I’ve been eating so much KFC that even the Colonel is like, “Woah. Slow down, darlin,’” so I’ve cut myself off from drive-thrus. Most of the food in my house is local and organic, but did that stop me from eating a POUND of roasted asparagus just now, no, it did not.

I can only think of one time where “fight” may have kicked in, and that was when we threw a party in the Villas and  a gaggle of boys got into a fight on my couch and we had to kick them out.  (I would link you to my really old blog entry about it, but the more I read my archives the more embarrassed I am by them. Even though this event occurred a mere five years ago, I read my college Self as a different person altogether.  I also learned the hard way that no matter how adorable and naive your Old-Self seems, people will STILL MOCK YOU FOR GOING TO THAT HOWIE DAY CONCERT. And my old entries are like little sisters - I can mock them all I want, but the second you judge them, I get very defensive. That said, I’m sure you will enjoy the following excerpt, with golden phrases like, “drinkin’ Jimmy’s rum” and  “drinking from the tap because they are ghetto” and other, like, various colloquialisms, like.)

March 3, 2003

I’m drinkin’ Jimmy’s rum, and trying to numb the fact that this is an incredibly lame party. So Heather’s like, “hey, when the first keg gets tapped, let’s call it a night and get out of here.” (it was that bad.) Then these really young looking kids walk in. And I point it out to Brad: “hey, that kids looks twelve.” And he agreed. So these SAME guys start drinking straight from the tap because they are ghetto and don’t have a measly three bucks to contribute. Heather is watching them do this, as one of them remarks, “Hey, don’t two bitches live here?” To which she replied, “YEAH, one of those bitches would be ME. Cups are three bucks.” They shrug her off and continue, and some guy tries to defend us, like, “Hey, man, that’s not cool.” The fifteen-year-old put on his sunglasses, which just invited mockery from the other guy, and they start pushin’ each other around on the back porch. So we yell at them to take it outside, and they disperse and reassure us that it’s okay.

It wasn’t.

Next thing I know — there’s ten guys brawling on our couch. There’s blood everywhere, and the two young boys have blood allllll over their faces. It was disgusting. My heart racing, my fighting reflexes kicked in as Heather and I are screeeaaaaming at the top of our lungs for them to get the hell out of our house.

So that was kind of “fight,” in that I didn’t run away like a little bitch, but really, I was just worried about getting blood on our couch.

For the most part, though?  I’m all about flight. Right now, the break-up has got me itching to travel the world on a solitary journey, which is probably the most cliche thing to feel at a time like this. I’m kind of obsessed about renting a villa in Europe.

Also? Whales. The whole origin of this entry came about via the following pathway:

“I need to find a source of strength.” –> “Hm. I wonder if I need to find a power animal or something.” –> *Googled “how to find your power animal* –> “Power animals apparently come to you in dreams, sometimes. I dream about whales alot. Maybe whales are my power animal.” –> “YES, DEFINITELY. THE WHALE IS SOOOOO MY POWER ANIMAL” –> *somehow gets to whale videos on YouTube* –> “I want to go whale watching.” –> “I HAVE TO GO WHALE-WATCHING, LIKE, NOW.”

Which, sure, I like whales and all, but I have never felt this URGENCY for whale-watching, like running away and whale-watching was going to solve my problems, and make me less sad, and make my stomach not feel like it’s eating itself.

I am so going to read this in five years and laugh at myself.

THE END.

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