My Favorite Item of Clothing

Being a committed lover of fashion with an intense designer shoe fetish, you might expect my favorite item of clothing to be a dress or a pair of stiletto heels. I have many dresses and spiky heels that come close to being my favorite, but they will always come in second place to my ratty old UGG house shoes. My house shoes spend more time on my feet than any other pair of Jimmy Choo's ever will, which is why they deserve first place. They are buttery suede in a camel brown color with light tan sherpa fur around the edges. The fur on the inside of the shoes is wearing off in some places and has been completely flattened by my feet. On the left shoe, the fur around the edges has been chewed off, serving as a snack for my dog. They have seen me through the early mornings of high school and the late nights studying in college. I have been wearing them for almost five years and I don't plan on getting rid of them any time soon! 

Something awful I had to eat

Writing about my favorite meal made me think about my second favorite meal which is mashed potatoes. Unfortunately, last night I had an attempted version of mashed potatoes that almost made me want to abandon my love of mashed potatoes (I never ever thought that I would say that!). I love food in general and will eat almost anything, so when I say that something is awful it is certifiably awful. When I stuck my spoon into the bowl of mashed potatoes on my table at the BLUU, I could tell right away that something wasn't right. The bouncy texture of the potatoes wiggled as my spoon dug into them. Despite my apprehension, I tried the potatoes--a substantial mistake. They were chewy! Mashed potatoes are supposed to be velvety and smooth, not rubbery. I am positive that if I had thrown them against the wall they would have bounced like a basketball. My friend concluded that they were made out of the cardboard box that the potatoes come packaged in, not the actual potatoes. I believe her and if you had tasted those potatoes you would too. 

My Favorite Meal

Thinking about my favorite meal is making me hungry as I write, especially because I have been living off of my typical college diet of cereal and pop-tarts. My favorite meal is so delicious that it is one of the things that I look forward to the most when I am driving home. The meal is not some elaborate feast at a fancy restaurant. Its surprisingly simple: macaroni and cheese. Although it is simple, its uniqueness is in the fact that it is a gourmet pre-prepared meal from a small local grocery store in Oklahoma City. My mom knows that I love it, so she always stocks up right before I come home. It consists of oversized macaroni noodles with four cheeses baked on top and some kind of creamier cheese covering the rest. When I put it in the microwave, it sizzles during the last 15 seconds as the distinct cheesy smell sails through the kitchen. The smell assures me that I am in the comfort of a loving home. I guess that makes my favorite meal a comfort food, which is precisely why I love it. It resinates with home. 

Where I was when I first heard...

Its been three years but I still remember exactly where I was and what was going through my mind when I first heard about my cousin Jayce's death. On the night that it happened in April 2006, my family and I attended an initiation ceremony for a peer leader program that I would be doing as a senior the following year. I remember the headmaster of my school giving a speech at the initiation that could have put a caffeine-induced hyperactive 6-year-old to sleep within five minutes. As he rambled through his speech, his raspy voice going in one of my ears and out the other, I just wanted to get out of the lecture hall as soon as possible because I was bored. I had no idea what was going on with my family members in Wewoka, Oklahoma. Now I know that they would have given anything to be listening to a boring speech that night, instead of spending it in the Seminole hospital. 

After the initiation, I went with my boyfriend and my two best friends to Taco Bell to eat dinner. The headmaster's hour-long speech made us hungry enough to eat our arms, and food was the only thing on everyone's mind. I had my cell phone turned on silent mode from the initiation, so I never heard my mom's dozen phone calls and the text message that caused me to almost wreck my car when I read it. As I was driving home from Taco Bell, I checked my phone and noticed all of these calls and text messages. I read the first text message from my mom. It said, "Jayce was killed in a four wheeler accident." The bluntness of those words jumped out from the phone- I had to read them twice before I could fully comprehend what my mom had told me. The reality of the fact that my little 12-year-old cousin's life was cut short did not set in for a couple of days, but I will never forget that moment when I first heard the tragic news. 

My Car

All of my friends call my car the "soccer mom car," and I think that is the perfect phrase to describe it. It is a Lexus RX 330 SUV (the model that has sort of an egg shape) that is black on the outside and tan on the inside. It promise that is the most dependable car in the world. I can see why a mom would want to drive her precious cargo (aka children) around in it, trusting lives in its hands. I have put many miles (I'm not sure of the exact number) on it, constantly driving back and forth between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, but it has yet to break down. "Lexy" as I like to call her has seen her fair share of the I-35 highway. Her dependability is what makes up her inside beauty, but she is physically beautiful as well! The shiny black exterior paint has numerous nicks and scrapes on it, showing off the everyday use of the car. Some people may think that these are annoying marks that need to be repainted, however, I think that they give the car character. On the back windshield is my official TCU parking sticker, a Chi Omega sticker, and a plain TCU sticker. The inside consists of light tan leather seats that are subtly wrinkled and worn from my friends and myself sitting in them. In the back is a clothes rod to hang my clothes on when I travel back to Oklahoma City for breaks and such. The floor carpets have grass and dirt scattered about them with several stains from various drinks as well. Despite all of the wear and tear, Lexy is beautiful and new in my eyes, serving as my faithful companion on the road for the past couple of years. 

The Desk-Throwing Teacher

My ninth grade English teacher was not my least favorite teacher ever; however, I am absolutely positive that she was certifiably nuts. Mrs. Richardson was as thin as a pencil with short dusty blond hair that she kept in a shaggy bob cut. She was an avid Oklahoma State fan and her room was covered in black and orange OSU parafanalia. Everyday she wore a matching pants and shirt outfit that always had some crazy print on it. She was effective in teaching my class of freshman a significant amount of literature-- Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies, and the Odyssey. But, as freshman year progressed I could tell that something about her was off. 

Her frustration with the wild and unfocused boys in my class culminated into a momentous explosion during the second semester. She was attempting to get a class discussion started on one of the books we were reading. After asking a girl named Paige, a quiet but rebelious student, a question and receiving a sarcastic answer, Mrs. Richardson proceeded to scream at the class, calling out individual students on their misbehavior. The dramatic episode cilmaxed at the point when her tiny body picked up a desk and threw it across the room. Along with the rest of the class, I could not believe my eyes had just witnessed a teacher throw a desk. 

My Room at Home

My favorite part about going home is having a room all to myself-- not just any room, my room. When I walk into my room, the fragrance of a candle instantly confronts my nose at the door. The light green walls set relaxing and soothing mood. The first thing to catch my eye is my king size bed. It is relatively low to the ground with a beautiful antique wood headboard with gold hardware on the posts. The fluffy white comforter and pillows tempt me to jump into the bed and never get up again. Against one wall is a refinished white antique dresser containing all of the t-shirts I didn't bring to college. A matching buffet table sits against another wall with picture frames of family and friends from high school sitting on top. My silver flat screen television is mounted above it. A metallic gold night stand table sits next to my bed. It is probably my favorite piece of furniture in my room-- my mom and I found it in an antique shop in Oklahoma City. My room is my favorite place in the world, because it is the only place where I can be completely serene. 

A Family Pet

My family's dog might as well be considered a human member of the family. Louis is a teacup poodle whose personality is anything but teacup size. He is the color of an apricot with curly, wiry hair. He has a slight potbelly from my mom over-feeding him "people food" on a daily basis. One of the funniest things about Louis is that he has very picky taste when it comes to "people food," and he wont dare touch his dog food anymore. One of his favorite foods is cheese-- he will eat any kind of cheese. Often, my mom will put a little pile of shredded cheese on a plate for him and set it on the floor. Louis is basically my mom's second child. 

One of my favorite memories with Louis so far occurred in the summer. We have a pool skimmer that roams around our swimming pool cleaning the surfaces. This past summer, I started noticing that Louis was slightly frustrated with the pool skimmer. He would stand at the edge of the pool, growling endlessly at the skimmer. I thought about it and I realized that Louis thought the skimmer was a dog. It has four wheels and a torso-like part (the tube that connects it to the pool even looks like a tail), and it moves around the pool like a dog. Louis fell in the pool several times this summer because he was angrily barking at the "pool doggy." That is just one of the millions of funny memories I will always keep of Louis. 

My Driver's Test

As one of the youngest of all of my friends (I didn't turn 16 until May of my sophomore year of high school) the anticipation of my drivers test had been bubbling in my stomach for months on end. That fateful day will be etched in my memory forever. On May 18, 2005, I woke up at 6:00 a.m. in my pitch black room nervously awaiting the pivotal moment in which my teenage hopes would transform into one of two things-- blissful reality or shattered glass. Everything leading up to that moment zipped through my head. The nerve racking "practice" driving with my mom in which she would dramatically grab onto anything stable in the car, solving the mystery of the art of parallel parking with my dad, and mastering those illusive and quite awkward lane changes. After primping in my bathroom (Of course, I needed to look good for my drivers test!), I made my way to the kitchen and ate the miniscule amount of breakfast that my jittery stomach could handle. The next thing I knew, a black sedan pulled in my driveway and honked several times, signaling the driving instructor's arrival. I took to the driver's seat and we drove to the Department of Public Service building in Edmond, Oklahoma. 

The DPS building might have been the most depressing environment I've ever experienced. A musty smell consumed the room and the walls were painted a drab gray. Once I had filled out the tedious paperwork, I left the gloomy DPS building for the car that would determine my fate as a driver. In my narrow 16-year-old point of view, this was my defining moment. Moments before the test began, I almost told the instructor that I needed to leave to throw up. The pressure was building and I was psyching myself out. "Pull it together," I chastised myself. My hand crept onto the gear shift (I'm not really sure what the proper name for it is!) and I thrust into drive. I backed out of the parking lot successfully  and performed the commands that the robotic instructor gave me. In my mind, the actual test is a messy blur that I do not remember vividly. I do remember the instructor writing my final evaluation, his pen rapidly scratching against the evaluation form. I must admit, there was an abundance of red ink. Fortunately, I barely passed the test, scoring a 79 percent. My fate was sealed--I was officially a legal driver. No longer would I be subject to the pain of having my mom drive me around. The ironic thing is, now that I have been driving for four years I constantly beg my mom to cart me around like a 15-year-old. 

Truth vs Fact

I think that the last paragraph of "The Karheef" perfectly demonstrates the point that Pico Iyer is trying to get across. It says:

I sat in California and listened to the imprecations and thought back to the driver who had got out in the middle of the night to buy me chocolate, the woman turning to the little girl in the airline office, my sad-eyed guide pointing to the graves of his mother; his sister, the Indian nuns, the British officers. Many of them, I suspected, had friends and loved ones of their own in New York (even in the World Trade Center), whom they must be worried about even now. In the streets the children would be playing tag in the dusk...while we sat in our mansions watching versions of their lives onscreen, and wishing destruction on them all.   

This passage demonstrates Iyer's point that we can watch the headlines on the television and take them in as facts that have been "fact checked" by editors; however, to actually know the truth of these people is to see them as people and not the terrorist enemy. Iyer develops the characters in "The Karheef" to serve as examples of how the people who we view as the enemy have loved ones who have died, live through emotional human experiences, and do simple nice deeds (i.e. the driver who brings Iyer chocolate).  Through each individual encounter, Iyer urges the reader to look past the "enemy" stereotype of the people in Yemen in order to see humanity and culture. Iyer attests to this in his interview when he says that in his account he tried to depict "a rounded and human understanding of Yemen as it exists somewhere deeper than the political sphere and in all that is left out from out headlines."                                                                                               

Second Meeting with Jose

My second meeting with Jose was fairly normal. I was excited that we had finally met up again, because we hadn't met in three weeks for various reasons. Also, Jimmy came along with me. We met at the bookstore cafe again. Jose had begun to work on some of the exercises in his GED book with his other partner. We decided that he would work on math and English with the other partner and science and social studies with Jimmy and I. We assigned several exercises for him to complete by our next meeting on Wednesday. On Wednesday, we plan to go over anything that he has questions about. He seems to be extremely educated so far, because he has had no questions over anything. I think that he will definitely be successful in passing his GED exam. I'm looking forward to our next meeting on Wednesday!

Finally My First Meeting!!

When I met Jose Casaraez for the first time at the TCU Bookstore, I was pleased and excited that I had found a partner who showed up for the meeting. Jose is 22 years old and maintains the grounds at TCU. He informed me that he dropped out of high school during the second semester of his senior year; he almost made it to graduation! After he told me this, I knew that this young man had to accomplish his goal of passing the GED test. Jose seemed determined and eager, as well. Once we had told each other basic information about ourselves, we looked online for a location and date when Jose could take the test; we found several websites that listed information about taking the GED exam in Fort Worth. It was Jose's idea to look for information about locations and dates which told me that he is proactive about obtaining his goal and wants to set a tangible date to achieve it. At the end of the meeting, we flipped through the GED prep book he bought and decided on several lessons that he could work on until our next meeting. Jose seemed naturally sharp-minded and eager to learn, so I am certain that the course of his life will change after he obtains his GED. Without a doubt, he will be able to find a better, more high paying job that will challenge him intellectually. I feel touched and moved to be a part of an experience that will put endless positive changes in Jose's life. 

The Street I Grew Up On

When I close my eyes and think about the street I grew up on, I see rows of one-story houses, each with a perfectly manicured lawn. A variety of brick colors scatters over each house down the street-- my house was the taupe one. I vividly remember the warm, humid summer nights when my dad would take our two family dogs on a walk, after which he would avidly practice his golf swing in the front yard as familiar faces predictably drove by our house. Because of this nightly summer routine,  the house and the front yard felt like a comfortable, fuzzy house shoe. When I think about all of the balmy Oklahoma summers I spent in that suburban front yard, I think about my family and about how, even though we have moved out of our comfort zone into a new house, we still spent this past summer together. It just goes to show that you can change the location of a family as much as you want; however, you can never change the memories and love they share together.