Won't You Be My President?

Mike Huckabee is good. While the other presidential candidates are slinging muck, furrowing their brows and sounding stern, Huckabee is making himself as easy to love as eggnog. He has a new commercial out in Iowa that features a close-up of him in a red sweater, in front of a Christmas tree. He says that while campaigning is important, we all need to take time to remember what the season is really about—celebrating the birth of Christ, and spending time with friends and family. He wishes all Iowans a merry Christmas, and smiles with the perfect mix of serenity and confidence. It warms my heart.

I'm not voting for him, but his commercial sure makes me feel nice.

Asolutely, Completely, Really Very Bored

I am so supremely bored. I'm in the throes of a funk that makes me want to cut my hair, buy all new clothes and paint my fingernails black, just for a change. The sight of my regular breakfast cereal makes me sick, and I can't stand my normal morning routine.

It's the Christmas season! Why am I bored? Maybe because I am waiting for Christmas to get here, and to be with all the people I love, and the waiting is so dull and monotonous. And of course it's winter, which always makes me go a little crazy.

Everything is the same, and I am sick of it! Just a few days ago I blogged about how much I hate change. That is true too—I am scared of big changes (and small ones). But sometimes I just get so bored and restless that I itch for a change of any kind and feel like I must absolutely chop my hair off really short before I go completely insane!

But I don't want really short hair. Or pierced ears, or black fingernails. It's a change of scene that I really want, and a change of occupation. And while right now I crave them, I'm sure I will be terrified when they come. In a way, that's comforting.

What I Want

My blog is narcissistic, I can't hide it.

I want a room with bookshelves on at least three of the walls.
I want to wear a pink dress.
I want to go on a long bicycle ride that lasts for miles and miles, like an all-day adventure trek.
To eat sushi by the ocean.
Take a rainforest canopy tour.
Write a book.
I want to stand on a high green hill in the Yorkshire Dales, where it's always windy.
I want to own every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
To study the Bible regularly, and really read it, not just flip through the pages
To be stronger, physically and emotionally
To do ten push-ups, the real kind (I used to be able to do this, so I know it's possible!)

Cake

It's December, and all I want to do is put on my flannel pajamas and burrow under a blanket on the couch, maybe with a hot cocoa, or better yet an Irish coffee. I want to be warm and cozy and safe. I want to turn on all the lamps, every glowing bulb, and flood my little apartment with yellow artificial light. The Irish coffee will warm my lips and belly with the subtle heat of whiskey, and the canned laughter from a TV sitcom will relax my facial muscles until I'm smiling along.

Maybe I'll even bake a cake, a dense, chocolaty one with gooey icing and chopped walnuts on top. It would be the perfect counterpoint to a crisp, chilly evening. It's been a long time since I've made a cake, but I'm sure the recipe is still in my box, covered in butter stains.

Baking a cake seems like the beginning of a story. Who is the cake for? Will it taste good? Will they like it? But I don't have time for a whole story right now, so I will just put on my pajamas and go to bed. Maybe I will leave the lamp on for a while.

Returns

Every spring I have a variation of the same dream. In the dream, the location changes, but the plot is always similar. I'm usually at my parent's house, sometimes at college, sometimes at my current apartment. The sky is gray, or green, and the wind whips the trees into a tangle of bouncing limbs. A rumble starts in the distance, and I go to the window, where I see a tornado, sometimes far away, sometimes imminent, but always scary. I try to hide somewhere, pulling blankets over my head or burrowing under a table. Before the tornado hits, I wake up.

Isn't it strange how our brains return to the same old things? I sometimes feel like I'm stuck in a cycle of repetition, destined to repeat past mistakes and entertain dusty ideas. The same thoughts keep cropping up, like weeds that struggle to the surface even after a liberal dousing with Roundup. A few of the most persistent include the wish for bigger breasts, the need for more motivation, curiosity about whether or not I would look good with short hair, the desire to work harder, be less lazy, and the thought that no matter how hard I try I will never be as likable as I want to be.

Rip them out, replace them with roses of good thoughts, repeat. That is the cycle. I think the good thoughts return again and again too, but we don't remember them as well. Thoughts like, I'm beautiful, loved, intelligent and friendly. It's important to replay the nice thoughts. My favorites include getting my masters' degree in the mail, getting off the plane at Heathrow airport on my first trip abroad, and the feeling in tummy the first time my boyfriend told me he loved me. So even if tornadoes return every year, my happy thoughts will ensure I'm not blown away.

Snow Tastes Good

Snow is just frozen water, but it has its own smell, its own taste. I know because I used to eat snow. When you're a kid, there's something wonderful about licking a handful of puffy, sparkling white flakes. It's like eating glitter, only colder. I hardly know how to describe the taste, and can only say it tasted like minerals, like fresh, brilliant water. Maybe it absorbed the flavor of chimney smoke as people tried to stay warm during the biting Iowa winter.

Today, when I cleaned the five inches of perfect, virgin snow off my car after work, I resisted the urge to touch my tongue to the soft layers. Next time, I think I'll give in and see if snow still tastes the way I remember.

Rules

A life in the 21st century is a life without rules. There are no guidelines for how to get a date, how to get a job, where you should live, how you should treat people or what kind of relationships you should pursue. There are lots of top ten lists, lots of tips and strategies, but no yardstick by which to measure your life. We have no rules, just goals such as "make a lot of money" or "fulfill your dreams." But I often wonder which goals I should chase, and how I should gauge my progress. If you have suggestions, please let me know.

The only real advice America has to give is "go to college." Then everything will be okay. Oh, and don't do drugs or get pregnant too young or smoke. But we know that college is hardly a ticket to the good life. It takes so much more, and sometimes I think it may take more than I am prepared to give.

Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I want a quick fix, a set of rules to tell me exactly what to do. Then everything would be easy. But more than rules for how to live, I want to know what my goal should be—money, love or helping the poor. Those are the choices, right?

Jello Salad

It's ubiquitous at every family holiday, at least in my family. Not part of the meal, per se, but also not a dessert, and definitely not a real "salad," Jello salad exists in a separate culinary realm. It's the tiny throw-pillow on a bed covered with shams. It's the baby's breath in a bouquet of roses, the gloss applied on top of lipstick. While not strictly necessary, and perhaps not missed when it's gone, Jello salad is comforting, sweet and oh-so American.

You start with Jello mix in your favorite flavor—strawberry, cherry, lime, orange or raspberry. You can't really screw it up, so choose whatever you like. Popular additions to the Jello base include fruit (mandarin oranges are often de rigueur), nuts and marshmallows.

According to the JELL-O Web site (that's just plain Jello to you and me) congealed salads became popular as early as the 1930s, but today they remind me of post-World War Two housewives and the days when vacuum cleaners were a novelty. No longer cool, Jello has become kitsch.

But it's not Christmas without cherry salad! It's not Easter without orange salad with chopped walnuts, marshmallows, grapes and mandarin oranges from a can. And how could we celebrate July 4th without strawberry delight, a strawberry Jello and cream cheese concoction poured over sponge cake and chilled? No matter that I'm too full anyway and pie is waiting. The taste instantly reminds me that though most days are just ordinary, today is a holiday.

My Favorite Jello Salad Recipe:

1 package cherry JELL-O
I can cherry pie filling

Make JELL-O and pour into a glass dish. Pour in pie filling and spread around. Chill.

Change

I don't like change. The things on my desk at work are still arranged the way I set them up on my very first day. I've been working at my job for 18 months. I want to get a new car, but I can't bear the thought of getting rid of the old one. That red Mustang is me, and I can't let it go.

I can't let it go off to strangers, even if it doesn't have side airbags, anti-lock brakes, front-wheel drive or a trunk that stays open without my arm for a prop. I love it. It's the same thing when I bring clothes to Goodwill, though less intense. I remember all the good times I had wearing those outfits and I can't stand the thought of never seeing them again.

But, I tell myself, you are young. This is the time to experience new things. I don't want to become rigid. So I am embarking on a slow path toward embracing change. Today, I moved the little green frog that sits beside my computer monitor. The frog now rests on top of some books. I'm not sure of I like it as much, but I will leave it. For a while at least. Next, I have big plans to put a new hand towel in my bathroom, and maybe throw away some of the magazines taking over my coffee table.

Airport Kisses

This is the sweetest thing. I almost started crying.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/dolgin/8airportkisses.html

Twister!

If you watch or read any kind of news, you will hear that a tornado hit downtown Iowa City last night.

www.cnn.com

It missed our apartment by about two blocks. The Chezik Honda dealership on the corner of Highway 6 and Mormon Trek is a mess. Cars are flipped over, the building is ripped apart. Downtown is a disaster. I could only suppress my curiosity until 6 a.m. this morning when I drove downtown to look around. The ped mall is strewn with trash and a lot of buildings are missing roofs. Most of the stoplights fell down.

As your official Iowa blogger, I have images for you.

I took these bottom two images along Riverside Drive.

The photo with the CLOSED sign shows what's left of the old Dairy Queen on Riverside.

Iowa-tastic

I like to provide tid-bits of interesting Iowa news.
For your enjoyment: Fairfield Ledger story

Famous Cheese

Blue cheese is, essentially, moldy cheese. In America, the best blue mold happens to grow in Newton, Iowa, where Maytag Dairy Farms has been turning out Maytag Blue Cheese since Duke Ellington's "Daydream" was a hit on the radio.

In 1941, the first wheels of Maytag Blue aged in underground caves. Cheesemakers produced the cheese by hand, stirring big vats of curds and testing the curd firmness with their fingers.
Little has changed, except now the cheesemakers wear hairnets.

I got to wear a hairnet myself when I toured the cheese factory to write an article about it for my master's project. You gotta love a master's program where there's no thesis and instead you can write quaint stories about cheesemaking in small town Iowa. Ahhh, graduate school.

Surprisingly, to me at least, not many Iowans know about Maytag Blue Cheese. Come on people! It's been in Oprah's magazine. It's been on the Emeril show. Maybe Iowan's don't even know about O magazine and Emeril. Don't you people get cable? I've decided Iowan's don't watch enough TV. It's one of our few outlets to civilization--we need to up the tube-time!

Workers still cut and wrap all the cheese by hand. The work rooms looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All the workers in white coats and hairnets would move quickly, not saying a word. The cheesemakers stirred big stainless steel vats of goo. I kept watching for Oompa Loompas.

If you've had blue cheese salad dressing you have no idea what actual blue cheese tastes like. That's what I discovered when I tasted a hunk of the huge wheel I felt I had to buy to reciprocate for them being so nice and letting me see the curds and whey in the vats. For the first couple of chews it was delicious--cheesy and tangy and creamy. But after swallowing I was left with an aftertaste of cement basement floor. That's mold for you.

Trouble in River City

I am such a pansy.

Really, I am. I've never smoked weed. I've never blacked out from drinking too much. I've never worn shirts cut too low to be decent. I am, overall, a master of self-control. I like my life clean, simple and healthy. I am too sane for my own good.

I've always wanted to do what was right. In elementary school the teachers instilled a holy fear of drugs into me, and I vowed to "just say no" when the moment came. They assured me the moment would come. I pictured myself in a parking lot surrounded by kids with long hair. One greasy hoodlum would hold a joint in my face and antagonize me, but I would walk away with my nose in the air. Alas, that moment never came. In small-town Iowa, no one ever offered me drugs. Sure, people took them. But my friends didn't, and no one would have been stupid enough to offer me drugs anyway. They knew I was too straight.

I went to college in clean-thinking, God-fearing Pella, Iowa. No one offered me drugs there, either. I knew people who did them, even saw them doing them, but no one solicited my participation. I would have said no, but it's still nice to be asked.

Spring is near. My yearly case of spring-fever is starting early, and I want to rebel. Along with most people, I sometimes want to do something out of character. I want to dance on tabletops. I want to get a tattoo. I don't want to do drugs--my holy fear of them is still intact. But I want to do something. I smoked a cigarette for the first time a couple days ago. Well, not really smoked--I didn't inhale. I'm still a clean and healthy pansy at heart.

Wheels Go Round and Round

Yesterday it finally hit me that I'm graduating in two months and have no job. This fact didn't hit me as a wave of pure panic, just as a fact that hadn't yet occurred to me. I think I should be more nervous about it, but I'm pretty serene. I don't know why. I think about how I've freaked out so many times in the past and it's always turned out fine, so why worry this time? Something will turn up. I am not merely a leaf being blown in the wind.

That said, I did take some time yesterday to think about what I should do when they kick me out of the University of Iowa. I thought about it on the bus, where I do most of my good thinking. The bus is fun. I can watch people, and the same people usually get off and on, so I can watch them over time. I know when the lady who smells funny is going to get on, so I try not to sit near where she will sit.

While thinking on the bus, I decided that if I can't get a job, I might move to Des Moines and try to be a freelancer for a year. I would of course be trying to get a job at the same time. And I could work some crap job too, I suppose. I don't want to live anywhere smaller than Des Moines, for now at least. If you want things to happen, you have to go where things are happening. Not that all that much happens in Des Moines, but it's the whole big fish small pond idea.

Not that I'm a big fish. But I could be a lot bigger fish in Des Moines than I could in Chicago. My sister wants to own Des Moines. She wants to go into commercial real estate and fight her way to the top. I want to go into journalism and fight my way to the top. Maybe we can own Des Moines together. Or at least rent a two bedroom for a year.

That's what I thought on the bus.

Narnia Rap

This is really old news, but it's still crazy-funny. If you haven't yet seen it, check out the Narnia Rap.

Sweet Lips

Celebrate Valentine's Day by reading this article on the history of the kiss.

XOXO!

One of the best stories I know

Disclaimer: I can never do justice to this story, but I will try anyway.

My sophomore year was the most exciting year of high school because it was the year of the Cat Killings. You might have heard about it--it was on the national news and Dateline and crap like that. Four senior hooligans--you know the type--got liquored up, broke into a local animal shelter and bludgeoned about twenty cats with baseball bats. It was not pretty. Uproar followed and animal rights activists and television crews invaded our town. However, the Cat Killers got off pretty easy in the end, and I'm not sure what happened to them in the long run. They are probably working at K-Marts or selling cars. The only Cat Killer's name I can remember is Lamansky, because it pertains to this story.

As I recall, the Cat Killings happened in the summer, and that fall we had this new English teacher named Mr. Volmecke (VOL-meck-y). He was straight out of college and used to wrestle and was in fact a wrestling coach at our high school. This is the only time I have heard of an English teacher doubling as a wrestling coach. He had black hair and big shoulders and thought he was Cab Calloway. He was always saying, "That guy was one cool cat," and other jive talk that sounded ridiculous. Needless to say, I didn't like him and mocked him at every opportunity. I mean, this was the guy teaching us Julius Caesar.

He didn't like me either but I don't blame him. He could sense my loathing. But don't blame me because I was just a smart-ass sixteen-year-old who had my own problems. I had skinny legs.

So it's homecoming. There's a big pep rally on Friday afternoon in the gym that we're all forced to attend. Mr. Volmecke has been asked to speak and is doing so, insanely. He's in full jive-talk mode, saying the football team was going to be riffin' on those yard-dogs and whatnot. He waved his arms and his eyes burned with hysteria. The crowd was into it and yelling and stamping. Volmecke screamed, "And I want you guys to cheer like crazy when Lamansky takes some cat's head off!"

Silence.

People sat down, slowly. Volmecke, unaware of the Cat Killings, had used his hep-talk to describe a player, another student named Lamansky, not the Cat Killer, making a great tackle. It was an unfortunate choice of words because hardly anyone had had Volmecke in class and most people thought he was indeed referring to the notorious Cat Killer. Gradually, titters of laughter burst out around the gym, and Volmekce got off quick. He only stayed at our school that one year. But people still tell the story of the Cat Killers and how Mr. Volmecke put his foot in his mouth in the most glorious fashion.

If you want to know that I didn't make this up, click here.

Some days I feel like the only thing I'm good at is looking cute.

Some days I feel like I suck at almost everything. My career goals seem the insane dreams of a megalomaniac. My interpersonal skills seem so lame I wonder how I managed to survive so long. My writing stinks. My cooking is terrible. Even my speaking voice seems low and scratchy.

I feel like one of those bimbos on Jay-Walking who is only good at looking cute. Maybe the energy I expend on clothes selection and hair is inversely proportional to how talented I can be in other areas. Something to think about. This whole scenario is of course based on the assumption that I do look cute. If you think otherwise, please don't let me know. If it's really the only thing I'm good at I'd hate to have that last shred snatched out from under me.

Wishing it were Summer

I wish it were summer in Iowa. I wish my fingers would burn when they touch the steering wheel of my car. I wish the heat would hit me like a wall when I step outside. I wish for warm hazy evenings when the sky is purple and pink at 9 p.m. and lightning bugs blink in the fields. I miss summer smells of mown grass and grilling burgers. I miss tank tops and my hair in a permanent ponytail. I wish for hot asphalt that shimmers and mornings so bright the grass looks electric.