Nick made some major life decisions this week! I am very proud of him.

Nick did not slip on the concrete basement steps today and break his fall with his tailbone and both elbows and spend the rest of the night hobbling around wailing that his "ass was broken".

You'll never guess who that was.

P.S. OWWWW

Sharing a podcast on the road to Columbus.

Today was the day where the cocktail of harrowing administrative setbacks, stress of this thorny monster-of-a-paper due in just one week's time, and the immutable monthly ebb and flow of stuff in my bloodstream found me in my advisor's office, crying like a baby, wiping snot from my face with my palm in absence of a tissue. Men don't keep tissues in their offices. At least babies are allowed to cry with their whole bodies, howling spasmodically until their needs are met. Us pseudo-adult women, socialized to know shame, are forced to cry in near-silence, chopping up our wavering speech with embarrassing guttural gasps.

Good news though: even if I magnificently botch this paper, even if I don't turn it in at all!, even if I am stuck taking classes in the summer, even if bills seem unpayable - there's not a thing I can fuck up that will keep spring from coming.

Ana drove to Athens tonight and we drank drinks and ate eats and laughed at things on the Internet. You guys, by conservative estimates, I am nearly two-thirds done with graduate school!

In graduate school drunk researching circles, the double-stemmed cherry is viewed as as a sign of good luck.

FINALLY. I am so sick of figurative bargains.

You have probably heard about Facebook's recent PR snafu with the ownership of information. They quickly retracted their policy of OWNING YOUR ONLINE IDENTITY FOREVER, but I'm pretty certain it's only a matter of time before they quietly reinstate it. It puzzles me how ANYONE will be able to run for public office fifteen years from now without pictures surfacing of them humping a life-size cut-out of Legolas from Lord of the Rings, teeth clenching a disposable red cup. I digress.

So yesterday, when I was trying to find that elusive crystal of focused productivity that hides somewhere in my brain stem, I decided to temporarily deactivate my Facebook account. I was annoyed with my tendency to sign in and absentmindedly click through pictures of tertiary acquaintances for a couple minutes before realizing what I was doing. Also. I was toying with the idea of applying for a job I'm not qualified for, but thought optimistically that hey, maybe just in case, I should make temporarily unavailable that fact that I list "riding my bike home drunk" as an Interest.

When I went to deactivate, all of a sudden I was met with a Come to Jesus message from Facebook: Think of what you're doing! They displayed photos of five friends that I was also tagged in. "Rita will miss you!" "Jon will miss you!" "You will no longer be able to keep in touch with your 461 friends!" Not only did Facebook select pictures of me and the friend together, but the five friends were actually close friends of mine! I'm convinced that they culled a sampling of all the people I interact with on the site with frequency, and from there chose friends that are tagged in photos with me. This was not a simple, careless effort. And its desperation and pleading led me to belly-laugh, in this house by myself, at its absurdity.

It reminded me of every time I tried to kill off "Characters". You see, my brother and I (who I don't think reads this, but if you do, Danny, I can make this story go away if it embarrasses you but I find it endearing! That is all!)played a game called "Characters" which involved twenty or so elaborate, absurd characters we'd invented. Each character had its own accompanying nuanced facial and speech indicators so it was obvious which person or creature you were being. We had a file on our parents' black-and-green-screen Macintosh that we frequently updated with information about each character as it unfolded in the improvised plots we acted out in the universe of the Characters, kind of like a Story Bible on a TV show. (Also, this is why you should just BUY YOUR KIDS A NINTENDO ALREADY, lest they become giant weirdos). I would occasionally get self-conscious of our imaginary realm and the imaginary people in it, "are we getting too old for this?", and have sit-down with Dan where I broke it to him easy that maybe playing Characters was immature. I think we were like 6 and 8, which in retrospect seems a reasonable age to doing this kind of thing.

To change my mind, Danny would craft a one-man farewell montage to make me feel bad for all the characters I was saying goodbye to forever. He'd act as all our characters, affecting them with a forlorn, disappointed expression, then wave a hand over his face saying "pshhh", to indicate their permanent dismissal, before changing into another sad character, etc. I think it's worth pointing out that this routine always made me cry and he would only be able to cycle through a few people before I was saying, "Okay, stop, stop, we can play Characters!!"

So, never you mind, Facebook, I'll be back to send links to Youtube videos to my friends in no time. Probably later tonight.

I feel I must channel my father's go-to admonishment from my childhood here.

Hey, Winter: "It's not funny, and it's not cute".

The seasons are a family, Winter, and your youngest-child, attention-pandering antics are really wearing everybody out. Sometimes being part of a family means taking a backseat while somebody else (like, I don't know, SPRING) gets to be celebrated. CAUSE WE'RE A FAMILY, THAT'S WHY. DON'T YOU SLAM THAT DOOR.

P.S. I lost track of the number of times I snapped out of a pensive thought-storm moment today to discover my thumbnail in my mouth.

The Grown-Up Files, part I.

(Look at me, all too-big-for-my-britches with a masthead up there.)

To confront the notion that candid personal blogging is all about a compulsion to share with the world just how cute and interesting I think I am, I am going to publicly discuss a disgusting, unattractive (and decidedly uninteresting) habit of mine: nail-biting/finger-nibbling.

I didn't used to do this. When I was younger and I would regard my mom's and brother's bleeding cuticles with scorn. (Hey, maybe it's genetics! Not a lack of discipline!)

Every year, this is the New Year's resolution that I make with no intention of keeping; cut this shit out. When I catch a reflection of myself in a mirrored surface doing this I am struck by how, well, dumb it makes me look. When I see other people indulging in this act in public I find it a little revolting.

I've tried, sort of, to stop before. When I paint my nails, I furiously pick at the nailpolish. Chewing gum habitually inflames my chronic jaw pain. And it's hard for me to imagine wearing gloves when I'm not outside (some websites suggest this).

So, out there for the world to judge, my dried-out, gnawed-on fingers at the beginning of their journey towards (healthy, undamaged, presentable) greatness.

'Cause what's a blog for, if it's not forcing you to be personally accountable.

After a week of surmounting (somehow, some way) the batch of Sisyphean tasks required of me to not be kicked out of grad school, I sort of feel like I ate 50 eggs. "Nobody can eat 50 eggs". So to celebrate the fact that I can do life, I present to you a Heartbreak Soup-inspired recipe:

Broke-ass version of Eggs in Hell:

1. Put your roommate's cast-iron skillet on the burner. Accidentally turn the stove up so high that the blue flames threaten to engulf the thing, then turn it down. Let it get stupid-hot. Spray with olive oil spray.
2. Open the refrigerator door to retrieve eggs, only to have eggs come crashing to the floor. Select one or two unbroken eggs and crack over skillet. It should make the most satisfying sound in the world. If the sound leaves you flaccid, you have not let the skillet get hot enough.
3. The eggs should cook through in about 45 seconds. Take them off the burner and clean up the eggs all over the refrigerator door and on the floor. Momentarily remember where eggs come from. Have a brief ethical dilemma. Abandon ethical dilemma.
4.Check the Internet to see what time the show at Casa tonight starts.
5.Figure out if you will be able to get your homework done and work out before then. Use your powers of self-delusion to convince yourself you will.
6. Remember you were making food.
7. Flip the eggs onto a plate. Heat some Newman's Own pasta sauce in your favorite variety on low in the same skillet.
8. Realize you have no bread to make the garlic toast that usually accompanies this recipe.
9. Slice the scallions and cilantro from last weekend when your boyfriend made you dinner.
10. Spoon the now-heated sauce over your fried egg. Lick the spoon and burn your tongue. Lick it again, for some reason.
11. Top with scallions, cilantro and ground pepper.
12. Already begin thinking about the next thing you will eat after this.

Full disclosure: I fantasize a lot about winning a sizable but not insane amount of money ($200k?) and going around fixing my friends' and my own problems with the signing of a check. Bam - student loans paid off. Bam - down payment for a house. Bam - go back to school.

Lately, though, the daydreaming has been on a smaller-yet-still-large scale. If I could just have $8,000 or so to subsist while I complete a cool-yet-unpaid internship, to support me while I write my thesis, etc. Get me set up so I can be hireable and have a roof over my head, too. And maybe an occasional meal. Or beer.

The problem with thoughts like this is that it makes me scared that I'll be punished for my greed with some O.Henry-esque twist of fate. Some man in a dark suit will show up on my doorstep one rainy night telling me that a relative has died in a tragic accident. But wait. There's something you should know. It turns out they were quite fond of you, Evelyn, and wanted to leave you a little of their modest fortune. The amount, you ask? Eight thousand dollars.

SFX: LIGHTNING CRASH

(scene)

Being raised in a religious household, there are some things that will always stick to me. Whenever I see a rainbow, I think of God's covenant with Noah: "Wasn't that a shitstorm? Everything's going to be okay now". And even though I don't Believe, this is something that comforts me, if in a distinctly earthly, mortal way. By the skin of our gritted teeth, we get by, and everything changes and grows and dies and decays.

It's too bad that feeling connected to humanity doesn't get my papers written. But, hey, ain't refracted light grand?

I made a quality-of-life decision to go to Columbus to celebrate Ana's birthday tonight even though I'm mired in papers and reports and research and feel guilty every minute that I slack off and angry every minute that I'm industrious. Don't you die faster in quicksand when you struggle? I digress. In one of those "maybe there is a God and he HATES US" instances, Ana's boyfriend had to leave for Zambia for two years today of all days. Certainly a birthday where drinking is required for both revelry and sorrow.

I don't know if she knows it, but in 2005 when I was a wet baby bird splayed out on the pavement after an unsuccessful nest-jump, she swooped in and sorted me out. So I think that's worth a Tuesday afternoon drive down 33.

So many cardinals hang out on the oak tree behind my house.

Male cardinals are striking, sure, but I'm used to them. It's female cardinals that are capturing my interest these days. Their greenish bodies and red-tipped wings and brilliant scarlet beaks. Unfortunately, they're skittish little sumbitches and I haven't been able to take a photo of them, so this is from the Internet.

I can't believe I'm already talking in goodbye-speak considering it's only February, but I'll miss waking up to the chuckling of birds and the sunrise over the mountains.

I'm not sure how to say this without seeming like an inconsolable child, banging my fists and whimpering that it's just not fair.

Peers of mine with resumes dripping with experience and accolades, armed to the teeth with determination and ambition - only to be left empty-handed after months and months of job searching.

Until last week, the sturm und drang blaring from the news media was mostly bouncing off of me. Of course, I felt for those losing their homes or life savings, but I hardly felt that the United States of America was going to fold in on itself like a dying star.

I'm angry now. Angry at myself for still not knowing which career to pursue (with futility), which connections to be make (with futility). Angry because I can't parse out a way that the economic crisis is my fault. Angry, 'cause, there's dignity in serving and bartending again, but there sure is disappointment, too. I feel cheated. And it's hard to write all these papers right now when they seem for nought.

I think people tend to wrap up negative blog posts with some sort of statement of appreciation for the things they have, reminding anyone reading that they have perspective.

It just started raining and that is bringing me comfort. Ebb and flow.

At this point, does it seem like loathing Valentine's Day has become as cliche and detestable as falling ass over noggin for all the commercialism and faux-romance? For as cynical as I can be, maybe I've just been spoiled by pretty great Valentine's Days. Even if the relationship itself was threatening to buckle, me and flames past and present have managed to have low-pressure, silly fun on this day. Loving each other goes a long way, even if you both sort of suck at it. But I guess I've never had to sit through endless flower deliveries to coworkers as a single lady.

Nick hit it out of the park this year. As fickle and impossible to please as I am, you can't go wrong with making me food. Pretty much putty in your hand at that point.

B and Crys annihilate some endangered species on safari at the bar.

Next year I've resolved to watch all televised Cavs games at bars with friends. You know, to numb the pain of joblessness with beer and King James' down-to-the-buzzer freethrows.

Good ol' 44. I love this weird old house. I'm going to miss it when I move.

Friends of mine recently bought a house. It's a dream realized for them, 23 and about to get married. And now, there are shutters and green lawns and sunlit rooms for them to make everything happen in.

Things like this always bring me back to my obsession with the idea of Home; physical tenements, but also the feeling of belonging, the fluidity of the term, my interest in refugee advocacy, my fascination with expatriation, the self-loathing Midwestern notion that you're just not good enough until you move to a coast, notions of family and roots and all that stuff that is such a crapshoot when you're my age. That said, I am more than happy with marriage and home ownership and chubby baby legs floating out there in the nebulous future, all indiscernible and impossible to comprehend.

Suzy and I have been catching up lately via gchat and she is more succinct and clever than me, as always:

"I mean, I guess they are cheap these days.
If you have the money to buy one and you want one
But what would you do with it?
Live in it? What if you get bored and want to go somewhere else?"

For what's it's worth, this storm did not happen sideways.

I sort of relish the lack of control that massive storms can bring, as long as no one is freezing to death or anything terrible like that. There's something peaceful about the inconvenience of being snowed in, or not having Internet access. Power outages when I was a kid brought Scrabble by candlelight, and I was always secretly disappointed when the lights came back on. Everybody had to get up and be responsible again.

My friend Travis once stated that in Columbus, people worship the darkness, and in Athens, people worship the light.

Yes, this is a party school. In some ways, I think this school is too Party to even fall under that umbrella. It is more than a school with a partying problem - it is a party that sometimes goes to class. Weekend nights - and some weekdays- on Court Street are entropy manifest.

But it never fails. By 10 a.m. the next morning, all the lawns have been combed for castoff red plastic cups. Groups of ponytailed girls are out jogging. The dreadlocked masses are playing frisbee with their dogs. Athens pukes itself inside out like a sea cucumber, suddenly rid of the dark toxicity of the night before. Everywhere people are rising up from mysteriously damp couches, taking two Advil and steeling themselves to go serve breakfast at a soup kitchen. Or run a half marathon. Or hike at Stroud's Run.

While I think the student population of a college town can be like a cancer, choking the town with rich-kid entitlement while also sustaining the town with rich-kid tuition payments, there's something about the resilience of its youth that makes the place so vital. Imagine if the whole world was still drinking and loving and working and believing in things like it was 19.

My last haircut was in mid-December, and I've spent the last few weeks sporting the Sam the Sheepdog look. It doesn't seem likely that I'll be able to get to Columbus to see Aamanda, my haircut person, too terribly soon. So I took matters into my own hands, over the sink in the bathroom, with some sticky fabric scissors. Some things never change. As you can see, I didn't do a terrific job but at least I can see things now.

Also, I bought some new mascara that is positively unsane. It pretty much screams "don't take me seriously", which is I think what most ladies are looking for in a mascara.

Ana sent me back to Athens today with some amazing mushroom onion soup that she made. I'm starting to salivate just typing about it.

Last week, my mom mailed me some space-age fleece earmuffs. Something must happen when you give birth to a child where a part of your brain is devoted to wondering if your offspring is cold for the rest of your life. My ears feel great about this reflex.

It's nice to be cared for from a distance.

Why did I not know about Bananagram, most excellent of word games, until Lauren and Jimmy's party?

Dear Nick,

You are cute. Nice mukluks.

Love,
Evie

At dinner tonight, Nick covertly snapped this picture and then e-mailed it to me with the title "You're beautiful!" Which would be really sweet if the text of the e-mail wasn't "it's true", a reference to that godawful James Blunt song that he likes to wail melodramatically because he knows it pisses me off. Deliberate button-pushing aside, I hadn't seen this dude in three weeks and my companionship tank was running on fumes.

I think a lot of vegetarians get a little shellshocked when they go to a restaurant like Casa Nueva. I'm so used to quickly scanning the dinner entrees for the one thing I can eat, and then putting my menu back down. At Casa, where everything on the extensive menu has a meatless protein option, and it's all locally grown seasonal awesomeness, I feel like an East Berliner after the wall came down. Standing outside the West Berlin shops, staring through the windows at all the things you could just buy if you wanted to, dazed by all the choices.

My German friend, Annabelle, once told me that when she moved to the United States at 19, she found the American habit of love declarations to be bizarre. It's not enough to just love the people in your life, you have to tell them! Reassure them constantly! Not just your family, or your significant other, no, you have to tell all your friends!

This struck me. Isn't it unequivocally good to tell people you love them? This was completely naturalized to me, something I thoughtlessly accepted as The Way Things Are. It was so ingrained in my culture, that funny quicksilver thing, that I could hardly grab hold of it. From Anna's perspective, it seemed vain and unnecessary. Well, of course you love them, they're your family. Telling them all the time seemed fruitless, like telling a bird it could fly, and your love couldn't be measured in words or phrases anyhow. Furthermore, she felt like all this "I love you"-ing going on stateside was linked to the expectation of reciprocity, a compulsive need for gratification. And she's right: what's great about telling someone that you love them, is that a lot of times they tell you that they love you, too.

While it has never been difficult for me to profess my undying admiration for friends and boyfriends (often to a fault), I am no good at doing this with my family. After Anna and I had that conversation, I conveniently adopted her philosophy to justify this to myself. Yes, of course! It's understood! Thanks, Germany! But I can't help it, I'm American, and hesitate uncomfortably at the end of phone conversations with my parents.

What I'm getting at is that Lauren gave me a really beautiful stationery set and I wrote my mom a letter today and I'd like to write letters every day.

Forgive me while I talk about self-improvement.

I have always been the night-before type. Really, the morning-of type. It's hard for me to accomplish things unless they feel palpably necessary, flipping my stomach with nervous excitement. This used to make me feel lazy, unmotivated, immature, undisciplined, and generally bad about myself. Guess what, though? No amount of feeling bad about yourself makes you do things you genuinely do not want to do.

I've been in school long enough to be able to eyeball the amount of time tasks will require. I can estimate how many hours it takes to write an eight page paper compared to a five page paper, etc. In college, I'd spend indulgent weekends goofing off through a darkened lens of School Obligations. Now, I'm on the Planned Procrastination plan. I know and accept that I won't write a paper until a night or two before it's due, and I write down in my planner what day has been chosen as the righteous day for paper-writing and research. This contractual inking of procrastination seems to have the effect of exorcising the Obligation demon until it's appropriate to be worried about it. I sort of shake hands with my future self, having agreed upon the terms, and get back to watching Law & Order and eating Cheez-Its and going to bed early.

Of course it's not as easy as writing shit down. Writing shit down could not have saved my 2005-self any grief. It took me years of getting used to the way I work and creating realistic goals and expectations for myself and "taking kindly the counsel of years".

My house sits on a pretty sheer grade, and my favorite not-really-that-secret spot is when I stand on the ledge of the front porch, there's this thin slice of Athens that I get to take in and it's like heaping each side dish up on your fork for the perfect bite.

The brick alley cuts sharp and steep down to the houses below, the backyard is ghostly-illuminated and the next layer in the pudding is the large rooftops in the foreground, then the smaller and smaller rooftops falling away. Dots of streetlights blaze and the headlights on the highway split the houses from the mountains. The Appalachian hills are dusky but the sky outlines them in perfect black, like a dark t-shirt dunked in water. Orion's belt stacks vertically in knife-points of colorless light.

It is endlessly pleasing to me to see all these things at once, like those children's books with illustrations of cross-sections of the Globe Theatre or submarines.

I really do get along by myself pretty well, persevering like a camel and its hump, and then my favorite people visit, and I think this-this-is what it is to be a person, and when they leave it's like hacking off a limb.