I'm Gonna Go Live In a Cave Where Strangers Don't Exist to Write About

"Make a blog!" they said.

"It will be fun!" they said.

"No one will read it!" I said.

WRONG. SO TERRIBLY WRONG.

Because you will write about a certain club goalie from Utah, and then you will become friends with him and he will find it and share it with the internet and you will never be able to talk to him again.

And then his friend will also share it and then you will have lots of people knowing how embarrassing and awkward you are. AND I AM REALLY EMBARRASSING AND AWKWARD.

So, um, you're welcome, world.

Brace yourselves.

Yeah, Frankie

Since I came to college, I have developed a somewhat unhealthy obsession with hockey. I mean, I always liked it, but now we have a team and I have a suitemate who loves it and essentially, DU is just enabling me. Not that I'm complaining. It's beautiful.

And as any hockey fan ever will tell you, this lockout fucking SUCKS. Only two college games a week, that's all we get to watch? NEVERRRR.

So we go to club games.

And we get sassy.

Because it's club hockey.

And it's allowed there.

The first club game I went to was a couple weeks ago, and we played Weber State. Bunch of Utah mormons. You know, casual.

Of course, I use the term "played" very loosely. I got there at the beginning of the second period, and we were already losing by like seven goals. And I say like because it was a while ago and I don't really remember. But we were not really playing hockey, we were just kind of smacking a black thing around with a stick and skating in circles and being pretty.

(I like how I use "we" as if I'm actually on the team. Lol, as if.)

We were sitting in the student section, a.k.a. our section since we're basically their only fans that aren't related by blood, which is right behind the opposing team's goalie for two of the three periods.

I mentioned that we get sassy, right?

We spent the whole time heckling him and chirping him and just basically being obnoxious, because he could hear everything we were saying and he could react, too, since he essentially had the game in the bag at this point (it was 9-0) and didn't exactly have to pay great attention.

He would turn around and wink at us when he was getting a drink or grin when he was skating around during breaks and at one point we did something particularly obnoxious and he picked up a bunch of snow on his stick and flipped it at the glass.

He was such a flirt. We had good fun. Ah, hockey.

When there were only a few minutes left and we still hadn't scored yet, we started begging him to let in one goal, just one, for us, pleeeease, and then he DID. And he turned around and winked at us afterward like "hey, you're welcome."

Coolest club goalie award.

Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and then (because we have nothing else to do over break) my suitemate Meghan, her friend Laurel and I were planing on going to this week's club games. And Friday at 2 p.m. was Weber State.

So we did what any reasonable hockey fan would do and we made him a sign.

It looked a little something like this:

Then we took it to the game yesterday, and felt super awkward because we were basically the only DU fans and there were lots of Weber fans and some girls were giving us weird looks when we were standing on their side during warmups.

We decided the best course of action would be to wait until he was on our side (we were in JBA, not Magness, and it's a very inconvenient arena. There are no sections behind the goalies, and the home side is technically the away side... I don't know. Club hockey problems) and then we would hold it up when he wasn't doing anything.

Unfortunately, DU actually played well. Which was awesome, but it also meant that the damn goalie was paying attention to the game and not us. What the hell. There were only a couple times when he glanced over, and we were only holding it up one of those times, and he didn't see it. Anger and disappointment.

But, like the dedicated fans we are, we waited around after the game (as awkwardly as possible) and got really (awkwardly) excited every time a Weber player came out only to get equally as (awkwardly) disappointed every time we realized it wasn't him. He was the only one with a beard. Hard to miss.

After we saw our goalie with hair that looks like it belongs in a Pantene commercial (according to Laurel) come out, we decided we had probably missed our man because our little goalie takes longer than a girl in the locker room and there was no way anybody was left at that point.

Luckily, we were wrong! Before we had actually left, when we were standing outside trying to decide on our dinner plans, our good ol' Weber goalie came walking out to his bus holding all of his equipment and looking very sad. He let in two goals and his team lost. It was a rough time for him.

He was so soft-spoken and sweet, totally not what I expected from a guy who would flip snow at the girls on the other side of the glass, but he signed our poster for us. The conversation went roughly like this:


Me: Hey, you're the goalie right?

Him: ...yeah.....

Me: We made you a sign

His teammates: YEAH FRANKIE! GET SOME

Laurel: Because of last game

Me: And we tried to hold it up for you, but you didn't see it

His teammates: OH MY GOD FRANKIE

Laurel: So... will you sign it for us? *holds out a Sharpie*

Me: Sorry, we know you have a lot of equipment and stuff right now

Him: Haha, no, it's fine, sure I'll sign it for you *signs our beautiful poster*

Me: Thanks! Have a good night!

Laurel: We appreciate the goal last time!

His teammates: FRANKIEEEE


We just made that goalie the coolest man on his team. Probably forever.

And if that seems questionable to you, prepare to be wrong.

Suite 403: Making losses easier to deal with since... well, since yesterday.

I'm Gonna Vom On Your Bed

And tonight on Disney channel (and by Disney channel I mean some other channel where inappropriate jokes and swearing are allowed) we bring you a new show...

That's So College!

(I sincerely hope you sang that and then snapped your fingers and made some sassy black girl head movement. That's not racist, it's just Raven.)

The gist of the show is that a lot of things get said that, out of context, really don't make much sense, and in context, don't make sense either! It's great!

We get to do great things like ask Sydney to never say "vom" ever again, and then spend the next five minutes getting a seemingly never-ending string of texts from her just saying "vom vom vom vom vom" until you think you actually may drive to Evergreen and break her phone.

Hear that, Sydney?

Lucky for her, I don't have a car (...yet. Next time).

We also get to internet stalk hockey players, watch videos of their bad commercials that they probably wish nobody knew about, and google their faces on the computer instead of on Meghan's phone so she doesn't get embarrassed in the press box (which has never happened, I don't know what you're talking about).

Tonight's episode: In which a tin of cookies appears, we all move our chairs closer to the table on which they're sitting in order the optimize the cookie-to-mouth ratio, and I do yoga in the middle of the lounge.

And we watch the entirety of Robin Sparkles' video just so we can hear Canadians say "aboot."

You're welcome, fourth floor.

I Just Wanted a Bite

In my room, we bake almost every weekend.

It's pretty much a ritual at this point. Tradition. Routine. Whatever you want to call it.

And we usually make super awesome things, like brownie cheesecake sundaes, or pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies, or chocolate cookies that needed cocoa powder but we didn't have any so we used hot chocolate mix instead, or other delicious baked goods that require sharing.

We make them (I make them (Meghan helps (Sydney watches))) and then we take them around the floor to anybody who's home and make them eat our delicious food or else.

Jokes, we don't have to force them to eat it. They usually just eat it without any encouragement at all. Like the time that the plate left our room with over three dozen cookies, and came back with five. Like that.

This morning I made Oreo brownie cupcakes. And yes, they are as good as they sound. They're so delicious, in fact, that I didn't want to take them anywhere, and instead merely texted the boys on our floor saying if they wanted one they had better come get it, because I sure as hell was not going to be bringing one to their door.

Logan came by twice, both times while I was on the phone with my mom (on separate occasions, incidentally), Jacques got one after we went skating, Kyle just somehow knew there were delicious things in my kitchen even though I don't have his number and showed up to get one. You know, the usual.

Then tonight, my suitemate walks into the kitchen and goes "...Emma? Did you take a few bites out of one of these?"

Umm... no. No I did not. But sure enough, there is a brownie cupcake in our kitchen with two bites out of the side of it... just sitting on the plate with all of the rest.

Boys. You are supposed to eat the whole cupcake.

Who does that? They're like children who don't know that this isn't actually their kitchen, and therefore they can't just leave their half eaten cupcake on a plate and come back for it later.

On the plus side, they loved them and they all said thank you.

At least their mothers taught them something.

Moonlight Shadows

Kids these days

(we’re all kids these days)

don’t know how

to calm

down

child’s minds

two minutes at a time

(and then the next two, and the next

but never the six).

I May Have Shattered Glass In My Foot

Usually when I sit down to write a blog post, I have something specific in mind.

Yeah, bet you didn't know that, did you. Well just shut your sassy mouth. Because I do.

Tonight I just felt like this night / this week / this past month and half has been too weird not to be shared (I may have taken a subconscious cue from the Bloggess).

Just the other day my friend and I were talking about the fact that people we know now for all of their quirks and oddities seem completely different from the people that we met during those first few weeks of school, though they are in fact all one and the same.

I, for one, never would have guessed after that first weekend out to dinner that my floor would end up being this fucking strange.

But they are.

And it's great.

Some people seemed sort of intimidating and now I realize that they're just goofy little children (Nemo...) and others seemed so mature and above my level of humor when I now realize that they too are, well, goofy little children.

Seems to be a trend around here.

My roommate and I enjoy baking, and it's pretty much a Saturday trend for us now, which is great for the rest of our floor because, well, they're boys. And they eat. A lot. And when I keep my door open, not only can they eat a lot, but they can eat any time they want.

Sitting on my bed, talking to my mom on the phone, somebody scooters into my kitchen (yeah, that's a commonplace verb around here), takes a cookie, says "see you around!" and proceeds to scooter around the floor in circles for the next ten minutes. Normal.

They're having some recruits staying with them again this weekend, and the first question I get is "will you make them something good?"

Lucky for you, we're making cupcakes.

You're welcome.

Anyway, I am eventually getting to the shatter-glass-in-the-foot thing.

Tonight my roomies and I were just watching movies after creating my fifth social media account (why do I do this... I don't even have friends) while the wind was valiantly attempting to tear down the building. Like, since when did we live in Wyoming. Anyway.

A couple of the guys decided that what better place to do video chat roulette with total strangers than on Sydney's bed, so that became part of our night as well.

May I just add, while we're on the topic, that the boys on our floor talk so loud. It's like they're afraid that if they don't yell, their voice won't actually carry through the microphone to the people they're trying to talk to.

Just add a few decibels, Jacques. You won't even need a microphone any more for that person in Brazil to hear you.

So we're watching a movie, they're screaming at some poor soul over the internet, and the wind is pretending it's a tornado.

Which I didn't think it was, but apparently it succeeded momentarily because next thing we knew, there was the sound of shit falling and glass shattering coming from our kitchen.

It managed to blow open the windows that we didn't think to lock (since when did you need to lock windows?) and push our dish drying rack onto the floor, shattering the one glass that was in there all over our kitchen.

Mind you, not much of a feat seeing as how our kitchen is about the size of a couple tables and that's it, but still.

We swept it up but let's be real, we were distracted by Jacques obsession with letting the wind blow up his shirt and Andrew's obsession with taking off Jacques' pants.

(Really guys?)

((Nice boxers, Jacques.))

I just went into the kitchen a couple minutes ago to get water (homework makes me thirsty) and of course, being me, did I wear shoes?

Nooooope.

I think I may have glass in my foot.

Builds character.

Welcome to Your Stage

The trees dance on the other side of my window, the people swirl around the sidewalks and funnel into the fishbowl that is the green. They buzz up and down the barricaded streets, opinions flying around in the excitement, until they all end up spectators to history while I sit with my guitar, in the eye of the storm, hearing only the moaning of the buildings and the jittery energy that hangs captive in the air.

Invisible Noise

Fewer steps

to the stairs

but in the end

haven’t you walked

more?

Lens Distortion

(I wrote another one tonight too, but that's queued up to post tomorrow. Lucky you.)

Girls in plastic cases

flash long hair and smiles.

Elbows stuck at permanent angles,

fingers bound in plastic;

skirts barely brushing skin,

heels forever raised.

Wings are turned to blurs

even when still,

seen through plastic and glass

and a million rules.

Spoken Last

Fluctuating silence

trampled by a parade

of words

while the clouds lose

their shape

in the forceful wind:

slowly disheveling acute smiles

into

a traveling man

opening his bag of

tricks

to find it no more

than a knapsack

lined with stained canvas.