Apr

28

Kids These Days!

Filed Under fond memories, school | 1 Comment

1) There are new signs posted in every class detailing what your course of action should be if there’s an active shooter on campus.

Accompanying those are the awkwardly detailed discussions led by the professors which include information about which pocket their key ring is in and which of their keys to use to lock yourselves into a room should they be unable to do it themselves and which also include phrases like, “There’s no safe place in this room, but try to get as many people as you can into this corner.”

Another particularly uplifting portion of the poster warns us that we will have to deal with an ethical dilemma if, after locking and barricading ourselves into our classroom, someone should happen to be trapped in the hallway. We apparently need to be prepared to choose between helping them and keeping ourselves safe.

2) We got an email today confirming that a student on our campus has tuberculosis. Immediately upon reading this email, I was haunted by the memory of one of my friends giving me one of my favorite compliments I’ve ever received.

At a get-together, I wasn’t fond of some canoodling going on across the room on a couch because it was between a guy who was engaged and some random girl who was not his fiance. So, being a vigilante of sorts, I picked up a dart gun (wow, this post ties in together better than I’d originally thought) and shot one of the little suction cup darts right in between them, effectively preventing them from being lost in each others’ eyes any more. “Wow,” my friend exclaimed, “you went all Doc Holliday on that!”

And it was true. I had gone all Doc Holliday on that. But now I’m just hoping all comparisons to Doc Holliday center around my being a Great Bringer of Justice instead of a Great Dier of Consumption.

Feb

25

Baby Animals

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Everyone loves baby animals, right?

I’ve always loved baby animals and I’ve been in this game a long time. I’ve been around long enough to see greenhorns get burned out from the sheer adorableness of it all. I’ve seen old friends burst into a puddle of goo from a baby animal that was cuter than they could handle.

Not me, though. I’m an old pro.


This snapshot was taken during the rigorous training sessions of my youth. In order to understand a baby animal, you have to be a baby animal.


Notice how young I am, yet I am totally old hat at handling baby animals. Some squares like to delicately cradle a kitten while supporting their weight to give them a sense of security. Not me. I like to casually throw one over my arm before posing for pictures. Kittens love that.
Note: The “squares” to whom I refer are also pictured.


Look at the expression in my eyes. It’s clearly saying, “If only I was surrounded by 500 more of these bunnies, that would be awesome.”

Jan

24

Kindie

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While stuck in bed battling Mr. Tum-Tumnus, I reminisced back to a simpler time in my life, but one which has some very strong memories.

Kindergarten.

We sat at little round tables with about 4 other students. I remember when one of the boys at our table threw up and all of the rest of us looked at him, and he looked at us, and we thought he’d just eaten glue or something because we were not the most astute kids on the block. But then we were evacuated to another table, where we all sat and shook our heads and marveled at how we just thought he’d eaten glue, but it turned out to be so much more grave than that.

And then there was the time another girl at my table accused me of not really watching Lamb Chop’s Play-Along. And I was livid. Absolutely furious, because that is the equivalent to character assassination for a kindergartener. She and I were friends throughout high school and I reminded her of the whole incident, which she’d conveniently forgotten. We laughed about it, and then I said, “Hush Puppy THIS!” and I decked her.

I’m fairly certain that it was mere days before I started going to kindergarten that I was informed that there is, in fact, a difference between a “K” and an “X.” Luckily, this lesson stuck, or else you might be reading “El Blog De Xalin” right now.

Oct

15

Caramel Napalm

Filed Under fond memories, school, sorority stuff, university farm | Comments Off

It’s becoming more and more obviously autumn outside, and with the change of seasons comes a wide variety of delightful things. Colorful foliage, crunchy leaves on the ground, cool days with golden sunshine, sweaters, bonfires and the list goes on.

For the girls in my sorority, this list also includes Corn Maze. One of my favorite memories of my sorority was when I was a sophomore. I’d just taken on the position of 2nd Vice President, which means I was in charge of teaching the Membership Candidates (”MC’s”) everything about the sorority, as well as helping them organize a professional event, a sisterhood event and a fundraising event.

We decided that we were going to make caramel apples and hot cider to sell on the quad and at Corn Maze for our fundraiser. This was probably not the best decision, but I was inexperienced and had idyllic views of what exactly we were capable of accomplishing.

The first attempt at making the caramel apples happened in the kitchen area of the classroom building at our university farm. I was in there with an MC, strictly following a recipe she’d found. The caramel was a wonderful, rich golden color and we held out breath as we dipped the first apple into it and lifted it to let excess caramel drip off into the pan before setting the apple down. And then we exhaled loudly in what probably sounded like a series of screams and expletives as all of the caramel dripped off except for a very thin layer.

Thinking that maybe it required multiple dips, we dunked the apple into the warm caramel again and again, only to see it drip almost completely off time after time. We decided that maybe that caramel was a little too warm to properly set, so we put the apple down onto a cookie sheet and lovingly spooned some caramel onto it. The caramel ran off and pooled around the apples in the bottom of the tray.

At this time, another member of our sorority came in and glanced at the recipe.

“This recipe is for caramel ice cream topping,” she said.

“What?!” we shrieked, not believing her.

She pointed to the top of the sheet where, very clearly, it stated that the recipe was, indeed, for caramel ice cream topping. We studied the sheet. We wanted to ask how we, two smart girls at a college that constantly touts its high academic standards, could have missed it. We wanted to check and see how much money we’d just wasted in supplies. We wanted to gnash our teeth and cry about how we were running out of time before Corn Maze and we didn’t even have a recipe.

Instead, we said the only thing we could say:

“Huh,” The MC said.

“Huh,” I agreed.

We did eventually find a caramel recipe that was simple, easy and made amazing caramel apples with a thick layer of creamy, gooey golden caramel that actually stuck to the apples. After making approximately 5 million of the things, though, my apartment was covered in caramel, I was covered in caramel, I had caramel stuck on my eyeballs and a bad case of Caramel Lung, so I threw the recipe away.

At times, in my sleep, the memories of the caramel come to me. Sometimes it’s a dream and sometimes it’s a nightmare.

Oct

6

Bye-Bye Time

Filed Under dogs, fond memories, school | 1 Comment

Those that know me know that I spend a lot of time driving. This is partially because I go to school 5 hours away from home but still manage to go home most weekends (unless I know that Lil is planning on hanging out with me, in which case I would rather just stay at school…just kidding, Lil. Or am I?).

A good portion of my driving time, however, is logged as a personal chauffeur to a rather cantankerous old man who bugs me about it relentlessly and makes my life hellish if I don’t do it. No, I’m not helping out an elderly neighbor. I’m taking Bradley for his Bye-Byes.

Somewhere along the lines Bradley has developed an intense love for riding in the car. An “intense love” the likes of which some junkies have for heroine. Sometimes, after a full 24 hours without a Bye-Bye, I’ll come back to my apartment and find him curled up on the bathroom floor, shaking and in a cold sweat. So I point out to him that dogs don’t sweat and ask him if he just wetted himself down in the shower and he pretends to be in shock and unable to answer me.

Yes, he goes on a Bye-Bye every. Single. Day. You don’t want to be around him if he hasn’t gotten his daily Bye-Bye. Or rather, you don’t want to be me around him, because he knows that I control the Bye-Byes, so he prances back and forth, sashaying about wildly and pausing only to stab me in the hip with his nose.

I actually have video tape of the Bye-Bye Dance, because people didn’t believe me that he ever pranced or sashayed, let alone jumped into the air. The reason I haven’t ever uploaded is pretty much two-fold:

1. In the background, I’m saying, “Do you want to go Bye-Bye? Hey! Bradley? Do you…WANT TO GO BYE-BYE?!” in perhaps the most annoying voice ever. If I can find a way to cut the audio or put it to some song like, say, “O Fortuna,” I just may upload it.

2. As stated above, I keep questioning the poor dog’s desire to go Bye-Bye while, obviously, ever fiber of his being is screaming, “Yes! A thousand times yes! I WANT TO GO BYE-BYE!” I would probably be called in for animal cruelty.

As he’s gotten another year older, the Bye-Bye Dance has been modified slightly. His hips aren’t what they used to be, so now instead of leaping and galloping around the room, he rears onto his back legs for a moment, lands, and wiggles his butt rapidly.

Sometimes Bradley decides entirely on his own that it’s time for him to go Bye-Bye. In his mind, he generously allots me two outings on my own before he should accompany me. On days when I come home in between classes often, it’s nearly impossible to explain that he can’t come along, and sometimes he forces his way outside onto my porch and I have to physically drag him back inside.

Today I went to a surplus auction for random stuff my school was getting rid of. I spotted a big TV with a VHS and DVD player on it and I smiled lecherously at it and looked at it with elevator eyes and bought it for $13. This deal was lost on Bradley, who couldn’t believe I would actually dare to go somewhere without him — on the weekend! — regardless of how much room I needed in my car.

I’ll leave you now with a prime example of the Bye-Bye Face. This face says, “Did you just say…what I think you just said?”

Oct

4

The Trials and Tribulations of Huckleberry Finn

Filed Under ferrets, fond memories, school | 2 Comments

Huckleberry Finn has a slightly swollen eyelid thanks to an encounter with Bradley’s teeth. (Do we all remember Bradley’s teeth? They are about the size of Huckleberry Finn, even when they are not upside-down.) Fortunately it was a learning experience for everyone involved, including lessons like:

  • Bradley doesn’t like to share his kibble.
  • Biting at ferrets is not OK.
  • When you hear Bradley growl, launch yourself off of wherever you’re napping and run to save whatever furry creature on which he is mere moments away from declaring a jihad.

Another close call in Huck Finn’s life was when I was vacuuming my apartment and he decided that he was going to sniff the brushless tube that was passing along the floorboards. This, of course, resulted in his little face getting sucked into the tube for the split second before he ran like hell.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the great literary work, has gone through some trials, too. It’s come under a lot of fire in part due to the use of the n-word in it. We discussed this issue at great length in high school.

Recently, I was a discussion leader in my Ag Ethics class along with my friend Shipley. Our assigned reading for the day was a number of pages out of a Wendell Berry book which was on reserve in our library. Shipley went to check out the book and run copies since it was on a 3 hour check out limit. When we went to read the articles, we were a little surprised at their content. For one, there was an entire section dedicated to the n-word and how we’d turned the land into our [n-word], the rivers into our [n-word] and on and on, not to mention the awkward metaphor about marrying the land and much, much more.

We laid on the floor and sobbed a lot because we couldn’t really fathom just how awkward our class discussion was going to be. Shipley and I had to meet a few times in order to try to hack out some discussion questions, because we just couldn’t get very far in the reading before being blinded by our tears. The reading was so random. It didn’t even fit into our class and it barely made sense on its own.

Luckily, our professor had sent us some questions from a previous year that he thought might be helpful. We clung to those like we were adrift in a violent sea and they were our life preservers. The bad part, though, was that even those didn’t make sense! Things weren’t meshing, and finally we decided to check the library’s website once more. Much to our surprise, there were two Wendell Berry books on reserve! Shipley called our teacher and asked him which one we were supposed to be reading.

He’d assumed that there would only be one book by Wendell Berry book on reserve, and so had not included the title when he’d written out what we were supposed to read. To our overwhelming jubilation, we’d been reading pages from the wrong book all along. Shipley hung up and we celebrated. It was like Mardi Gras, if Mardi Gras involved girls in pajama pants going to the library armed with highlighters.

The new reading was verbose and kind of boring, but in our eyes it was the most perfect verbose and kind of boring reading ever.

Oct

2

A For Effort

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My nephew, Rhys, got baptized this past weekend. I received a phone call earlier in the week requesting my presence. Marissa said that Rhys really wanted me there because I’m one of his favorite aunts. So I mentally tallied his aunts for a moment, and came up with a grand total of 4, not including any step aunts, which he just acquired at the beginning of September. I hesitated to ask for clarification as to how much of a favorite aunt I was, because I feared a response like, “Well, you’re definitely in the top five.”

So I made a fool-proof plan to wake up early and drive the almost 2 hours to attend the church service. I set my alarm, tried to go to sleep, checked my alarm about a million times, and finally dozed off, only to wake up a full two hours after I’d planned.

So I was 45 minutes late to Rhys’s baptism, which meant I didn’t actually see the baptism at all, but I did show up for communion. I rolled out of bed and was on the road in ten minutes. I felt a nearly overwhelming sense of welcoming as I walked into the sanctuary until someone clarified that no, I was not a local hobo looking for salvation, but rather Rhys’s aunt.

I felt bad about the whole situation and I couldn’t help but remember back to a conversation I’d had with Rhys several months earlier.

I’d told Rhys a few times that one of the boys in his class was the son of my high school Ag teacher, one of my favorite teachers ever. The topic came up again one evening as he showed me his class picture from school and told me who his friends were. Once again, I explained about the boy’s father being one of my favorite teachers.

“Hey, yeah, he said his dad worked at the high school!” Rhys said. He sounded incredulous. Incredulous in that a way that clearly said that he was amazed that pieces of my story were checking out.

I imagined my nieces and nephews sitting around and chuckling, shaking their heads as they said, “Oh, that Aunt Kalin and her stories.” And they would smile off into the distance until one would grow serious and say, “Her mind really started to go once she hit 20.€” And they would duck their heads for a moment and stare into their tea. Or whatever it is kids drink these days.

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