Firsts

Since becoming an adult (or at least reaching the age of adulthood), i have been expected to make contributions to my familys' Thanksgiving meals. Normally, i bake the pies. i'm good at fruit pies like apple, cherry, and peach... not pumkin or rhubarb. Even though they might count technically as fruits under varying definitions of the term, they, in my opinion, do not belong in pastries. [Coincidentally, there are places fruits just do not belong either... for instance, salads. No strawberries in spinach salads, no grapes in chicken salad. Just no. But that's another blog entry.]

But this past Thanksgiving was the first one that was wholly mine. Well, not wholly... Jeff and his brother both contributed to the meal. But the turkey was on me, as well as the cooking. i was nervous because no matter what i do it always seems wrong to his family. And i could just imagine the fallout of giving both boys a case of Salmonella from undercooked turkey.

It all turned out alright, and i had another fantastic time with Jeff and his brother. They are absolutely hysterical together. i laughed until i cried more times than i could count. And then later in bed, i just cried. i missed my family. Terribly. i never thought it would be that bad, but it hit me and hard.

We returned to Wichita for Black Friday, and i broke another expectation of myself. i swore i would never go near a mall on the day after Thanksgiving. But Jeff made me an offer i couldn't refuse: spend an hour and change at the mall and get treated to the new Steven King movie at the cineplex. When we stepped outside to go the mall, it was snowing. my first Kansas snowfall. Just flurries, but they picked up as the evening went on, and by the time we hit the theater, the flakes were big enough for tongue-catching. Still, the ground was so warm and the flakes were so intermittent that there was no accumulation expected.

On Saturday morning we woke up to put lights on the tree, and low and behold... three centimeters of fresh, driven snow all over everything.


First Thanksgiving dinner... first Kansas snowfall. Another weekend of firsts.

my Autograph

i’ve been looking at a lot of pictures lately. Yesterday my uncle sent me the website for my cousin Maggie’s wedding. And just now I stopped by Alli’s blog and saw pictures from a baby shower she went to with her and her daughter, and two of my college friends with their daughters. They’ve all kind of creeped me out, and i know exactly why: their faces haven’t changed.

my little cousin in her wedding dress… with cleavage and a ring and a ten-year-old face. my college friends… Lauren, Beth, and Allison? College smiles. But now they’re holding babies. Their babies!

i wonder what my face would look like to those who knew me, next to a child, or in a wedding dress, or taking religious vows, or running a meeting? Would i look as startling to them as they do to me, or is this an indication of something different, some perception of mine that is skewed or distorted?

i know i feel very much like i’ve just left graduate school… most of what i like to do is the same. i pour over science books, drive around aimlessly wondering ‘what’s down this road?’ and am always on the lookout for the next trail. i was so loathe to leave academia that i just… didn’t.

i know i am getting older, but i just have a sense that it’s not time yet. i am ever so grateful for Jeff, who is happy enough with all my ‘someday’s. It’s not that i don’t want to marry him; quite the contrary. And i know that waiting will make it more difficult for me to have children, but it’s not that i don’t want that either; quite the contrary. There’s just too much to do, and i find myself drawn off of what American Dad would call ‘the path to happiness’ by the perpetual next great adventure. A trip through Arizona and New Mexico next summer…? A move to Portland, or Seattle? Denali? i want to enjoy being young… just a few more years. Taste absolute freedom… just a little bit longer. Be carefree in love, shirk a little more responsibility and have just one more pure experience.

But with me, it’s always ‘one more.’ And i wonder if one day i won’t be alone in my Alaskan cabin with long grey hair and two dogs, looking at pictures of friends sent wirelessly to a photo frame in my living room. i wonder if i won’t pick it up and think, ‘that Allison, she looks too young to have grandkids, if she’s not careful her 70s are just going to slip through her fingers.’

Would that be a triumph? Or the ultimate failure?

Best quote EVER...

So i'm walking around my classroom, minding everybody's business, and i hear one of the girls start talking to her lab partner, about 5... thousand times louder than was necessary for her to conduct her lab properly. So i walked over and said 'watch the decibels, you're distracting others!' And she said (just as loudly as ever, i might add), 'ok, Miss K.... I'm going to take a vow of science!'

i wrote it up on the white board but have to erase it today so that we can do some Ideal Gas calculations. So i thought i'd post it here so i don't forget it. Fantastic.

Joe Cartoon Does It Again