awkward MPD moments

So I just called a supporter, hoping to ask them if they would be willing to coordinate a group MPD appointment by inviting people from her church that she thinks would be interested as well as setting up the event etc. Unfortunately she was not there so I left a message. For those of you who have experienced a voicemail message from me will know that I suck at them. This one was not long-winded, but just.... awkward:

"Hi Esther, this is JW and I'm calling with a favour or proposition to ask of you...." I pause and think of the meaning of 'to proposition someone' and then laugh and correct myself, "Er.. not a proposition, that's awkward. Anyways, ___ is my number and I'll try again another time." As I hung up the phone I was beet red. I looked up the meaning of "proposition" to find that it does have multiple meanings; my instincts were right and in correcting myself I had made a bigger fool of myself than had I just left it. Awesome. I knew I should have stuck to the script. 

the end of the.... telephone receiver?

I know I've been talking a lot about this, but it's because it's all that's happening. Me battling my laziness & procrastination. I admit: I'm a fool. I'm illogical and ridiculous and I waste time. This week I had a few pretty good appointments with some solid referrals. One potentially could lead to some MPs which is neat. 

Today after a conversation with my dad and through reading a few chapters of some book about breaking bad habits, I realized that I'm making this all much worse and longer than it needs to be. And then my dad and I watched The End of the Spear. Talk about reinforcing the point that my MPD is really not that big of a deal. You know, since it doesn't involve martyrdom. I hope it's smooth sailing from here. I pray. 

adventures in driving

Wednesday I drove to Elmira where my dad's family is in order to do some MPD. Thursday morning I had an appointment and right after that I had to pick up Angela from her North Africa STINT debrief. The week earlier we discussed how to get there, which consisted of her telling me the name of the place, me searching it on google maps & getting the map. 

Thursday at noon I left St. Clements to drive to what I was led to believe was a retreat centre just south of Guelph. That was true, but not quite what I had in mind. The following was the map I had found in my quick google maps query:

maps wouldn't let me embedd a map, so here's the link to where the wrong directions brought me & where I needed to go. 

So that's pretty easy, I figured. But when I arrived at 12:30 sharp, I found I was in a residential area with nothing like a retreat centre in site. I had no address. All I had was the name of the place that was in an email on my iPod. It seemed as if I was screwed. So having NO CLUE where this thing was I stopped at a gas station and asked if they recognized the name. Being that it was a Christian retreat centre i figured they probably didn't recognize it. They didn't. They did recognize Puslich, ON and gave me directions to that. 

Ok, I realized at this point that I was on a bit of an adventure.

I got to the lights, drove to the next set of lights and found that there was not a gas station like the man had said. I continued on until I did find another gas station and went in for directions again. The guy pulled out a map (funny, you'd think I would have just bought it off of him since it was a store and everything) and showed me where I was. I had gone in the opposite direction the gas station guy had told me. Minor details. So I was twice as far away from where I needed to be. He gave me directions and as I drove I started forgetting them. I knew I needed to turn left in to the 34 & get to Brock St. but where the heck did I turn? My first left? The first stop sign? I took the first left and drove until the next main road. I found myself on hwy 6. Not where I wanted to be. I went down there and took what look like maybe it was the right road. I ended up back on the road I had turned off of that got me to hwy 6. Ugh. somehow i managed to weave my way to the original place that got me onto the 34. 

ANYWAYS, I got VERY LOST. And I still had no idea where this place was. I somehow managed to remember that where I needed to go was south-east and relatively near to the 401. I didn't mean to get onto the 401 but the road i was travelling on just turned into a turn-pike going east on the 401. haha oops. I took the first exit and found myself at a red light turning waiting to turn left. At this point I was soooooo frustrated and still had no idea where I was going. It was 1:45. I had been driving for almost 2 hours. I had previously prayed for a sign -- a physical sign or something else. 

And then there the sign was, in all it's glory. A van pulled across my vision as it turned left in front of me. And there she was, Selina one of the STINTers in the van. I knew that she had come from the direction that I was planning on turning away from. So I ended up turning right - driving, and miraculously found the place. Reunited with Angela!

For amusement sake I will show you the ridiculous route I took in getting to the place:

The pink lightning bolt is where I had my Selina sighting. I'd also like to point out that the purple line is not even the directions the 2nd gas station dude told me to go. He told me to take the 34 straight to Brock St = I wouldn't have a) seen Selina or b) really gotten to my destination like I had hoped. So the getting-lost thing was to my advantage... sort of. 

a lot of you have done this already and can laugh at me/empathize

When I said previously that I was excited to do MPD, let me say for the record that I was ignorant. Sure, sharing my vision is fun and working closer to my support goal is also great. But picking up the phone and calling people to make appointments is hella scary. HELLA SCARY.

that is all. 

i'm gross and no one will want to marry me after i post this

I procrastinate. You all should know this by now.

This means that I have been known to let cleaning slide a bit. My room gets quite messy, and this year so did my mini fridge. having 5 girls in one home means that the fridge is bulging and really doesn't fit everything. So I kept my food in my mini-fridge in my room.

I had a pretty busy semester, lot's of things happened as you know. I'm not really sure when this happened, but one day I opened my fridge and it was starting to smell bad. And then i closed it and thought to myself, "I should clean that out. I'll do it later." Time passed. I don't know how long or when this was but eventually I vowed I wouldn't open it again until the end of the semester. This was mainly because moments before i had opened it and the smell filled my entire floor of the house. It was still cold and I couldn't open the windows. So I made the vow, and while I did it it occurred to me "wow, that's going to be foul. The end of the semester is quite awhile away." But I did it.

So moving day came and I was going to get Julia to help me carry the fridge down the 2 flights of stairs outside. "Do you have a hose?" she asked. I didn't. I realized i REALLY needed one, and so then I just opted to wait until getting home to clean it out. I duct taped it up. The following day when kevin & I lifted it into the trailer, juices were leaking out of it onto my hand. Gross.

So I wasn't planning for that trailer to sit outside in the hot sun for 2 days. When I finally unloaded it at my dad's place on the Wednesday (we moved Sunday) it was... an adventure. I thought it would smell so bad it would make me want to hurl. It was actually not that much worse than it had been when I closed it - which is a testament to how gross I had let it get when I first shut it.

I did document it however. Just cause I'm freaky like that. Do not scroll down if you are eating or have just eaten. Just don't. Also, you will probably lose all respect for me. I guess I can deal with that.

that's the fridge when I first opened it

That was spaghetti. I don't really remember what was in it that made it do that

that was a head of broccoli. yum!
that was a green pepper.

Now the question is: will you still be my friend?

3 things

These past few weeks of saying goodbyes has given me lots of opportunity to share with my friends the things I appreciate about them. Likewise they have often done the same. These sentiments have been interesting to me. The first time it happened I was kind of shocked and a bit offended; the thing my friend liked about me was something I wasn't particularly fond of. As it turns out, this same thing is something a few people like about me. Several people have said the same few things they like about me -- Ally reiterated #2 today in an email when I was asking her to help me make my calling statement for my Vision & Calling presentation that I will be giving over and over and over this summer. So here they are in no particular order, the things people seem to appreciate about me:

1. my bluntness. Although this often is something people hate but love about me. I tell the truth whether they like it or not and usually they don't like it at first and then they get over it and appreciate that i said it. However, this is also something that I can use very stupidly and say things I know I should re-word to be more nice, but in my emotional state I don't. It's definitely an aspect of one of my weaknesses.
2. my honesty. This one confuses me the most. But #1 confuses me too; 90% of the time I don't even know I'm being honest or blunt. Well, honesty is a little bit more obvious when I'm doing it, but I really don't know how to not be honest. This is just a concept I don't understand. I assume Ally was referring to me being particularly honest in my calling statement, but I really don't see what's so abnormal about it.
3. this is the one that is kind of annoying & I don't know what to do with it. People really (apparently) appreciate my sketchy/"twisted" sense of humour. I admit it, I do have a sketchy/twisted sense of humour. When my friend first mentioned he loved that about me, I was replied sarcastically "i'm glad you'll remember my sketchy humour and not my character." It's kind of true, I would rather people think "Wow she has integrity" rather than "Oh. my. goodness. she's so sketchy!" But he pointed out that my character is revealed in how my sketchy humour is limited -- unlike some people he knows who seem to have no boundaries to the things they'll say.

Anyways, in thinking about this it has made me a little bit more comfortable with myself. I just need to make sure I know who can handle it and who cannot. Read: do not make references to Dane Cook's joke about punching babies in front of new mothers. I NEARLY DID THIS ONCE haha. oh man. I'm so dumb sometimes. I just really need to develop a filter of thinking before I speak. Which is why I often say the things I do - I just don't think and then I end up saying things like this (however, I still will not admit or deny that I said that in DG *cough*. But it has been nicknamed "Big Girl DG" for a reason haha. eek).

this one's for you ang

Queen's C4C has a spring retreat every year. Usually we go to Camp IAWAH. They have this closet of dress up clothes that we got into. Look at the result:

FYI: that pink jumpsuit is 100% silk! SO AMAZING.

Chronicles of the semi-all-nighter essay writing extravaganza

5:09 am
So I have this paper for my Globalization & Cities in the South (Global South = the non obsolete term for 'Third World" or a more PC form of 'developing countries') due at 4:00 pm today. You might note the ridiculous hour this was published at. It's currently 5:19 am. I spent all Friday and Saturday in the library doing research for this paper, all sunday at church/cleaning my house/entertaining guests of fellow student-friends staying in Kingston for easter. It was very good times. I went to bed at 10:30 (didn't fall asleep until about 12 thanks to a coke i had around 8-9) and woke up at 3 to start writing this paper. START. It's 15 pages. did I mention it's due at 4. So, in order to facilitate a mind-break every so often I am going to chronicle the adventure that is this paper writing expereiennce. Yes. that's how i spelled experience. I tried to change it like 4 times but i decided to leave it as raw evidence that my essay will be horrifie. i mean horrific.

So, since 3am I have written: 2 pages (which isn't too bad, but i'll def have to step it up to at least 1.5 pages an hour), had 1 hot-cross bun, one cup of hot chocolate, one slice of left-over SO YUMMY ham (shout out to NA people who are tragically ham-less this Easter... hmm, perhaps what is more tragic than not having ham is being a few of a handful of Christians in the country. sigh.), 1 slice of rye bread. 1 advil, which by the way, wasn't quite enough.

6:13 am
Can I just say that Honey Ginseng Green tea is really weird tasting with 2 spoons of sugar. like .... SUGAR CITY. woot page 5! go jess! 10 more to go and I have about 8 hours.

7:50 am
So far this has been the best essay writing experience I've had under the circumstances (read: of this year). Somehow, I managed to pick the perfect (creepy - i just wrote 'perfect' as my music said 'perfect') volume of music, and the perfect (ugh it happened again!) music. A friend lent me his New Pornographers CDs specifically to listen to for essay writing. So far this one is one of my favourites. Also, I'm currently drinking green tea. Like the colour green. (the last tea was so abysmal, especially as it cooled, that I abandoned it quickly). We have a huge bottle of mint Torani so I decided to try some with English Breakfast Tea. It's weird. Makes my tongue feel all minty tho. That's fun. OK essay writing,..... also, that HAM IS SO GOOD. (on page 9/15)

10:00 am
12/15 pages and I still haven't written my intro or conclusion. This rocks! I might even get to nap and shower. I almost said nap & sleep ha. Ok, so that tea was ROTTON. I abandoned that one too. I'm such a waster! But it was seriously heinous. I've switched the music to MIA now. Hussel, jess!

12:00
DONE. 8 hours 15 pages. I'm kind of a big deal. My house smells like rich mahogany. I own many leather bound books. no seriously, Jesus made this paper happen.... and Mandy who did some of my research for me and gave me the idea on Friday at 4:00 pm haha. so nuts.

i can haz cheez burger.com

the peak of internet stupidity has captured my heart:

i do not promote drug-use or other illicit behaviours...

Something you should probably not say in the DG you're leading:

"Yeah, I can really relate to that. Like you, I really disrespected most authority in my life, especially my parents. They'd tell me to do something and I'd be like "how about no?" But I mean, it wasn't like I was out doing really bad stuff. I wasn't off snorting crack off of... the body of some girl...."

I will not confirm or deny that this actually happened. Generally speaking though, I do need to learn to think before I speak.... and to not opt for shock-value.

I neeed to think before I speak

so last week i was madly writing this essay that I had only 24 hours to do. I really wanted to express myself in this certain way - i was trying to say something along the lines of 'distributing information' and i knew there was this one word that explained it. So I typed it out, but because I had been in the habit of looking up words I wasn't positive of the meaning - I looked it up.

I had used the word inseminate instead of disseminate. Wouldn't that have been the most embarrassingly awkward thing if I had handed in an essay talking about the 'insemination of health information in rural Africa'? I didn't actually remember what the real word (disseminate) was until I read it in one of my readings yesterday.

dumb things: the week of nov 25-dec 1

So this weekend I've said and done some pretty stupid and embarrassing things. I'll let you in to my really embarrassing and stupid wold. I think I've decided that this is going to be an ongoing series documenting my stupidity for your entertainment.

Thursday night, as I mentioned in my last post, the ST girls were making cookies for the guys. It was supposed to be a surprise, so when I blurted out in excitement at the ST meeting "Ooh! I have the recipes!" and Mathias asks, "What are you making?" I reply with what I think is a covert answer: "Love. We're making love." And then Amanda chimes in equally oblivious to what has been said, "And I'm bringing the music!" haha so awkward and funny. I really need to learn to think before I speak.

Saturday night we stayed at Lydia's, and I got to experience the excitement that is going to the washroom underneath a skylight, which is SO SKETCH by the way. Sarah totally freaked me out and threw pennies at me through this hole in the wall and I thought someone was dropping money on me from the skylight. I was soooo freaked/sketched out, I thought someone was watching me pee. But no one was there. Whew. I realize it's really really dumb to think that money is dropping from a skylight, but who can think rationally when thinking they're being watched whilst relieving themselves?

Early Saturday morning Julia and I were sleeping on Andy and Loni's air mattress at lydia's place and the thing has a bit of a leak. By early morning she and I were struggling not to do the awkward touch-each-other-while-sleeping thing but its really hard at this point because the air is slowly leaving the mattress and we're sinking towards the middle. Half asleep, I kind of realize that this is not worth the struggle and so I roll over and spoon Julia. In the morning she tells me that at the time I had said to her, "Just embrace it." As I became the big spoon. lol man, I should be locked up.

I was just reminded of another stupid moment that I had while reading for a class. One of my readings was called "Clapp: Africa, NGOs, and the Waste Trade" and I thought to myself, "What the heck does an STD have to do with NGOs and the trade of toxic waste?!" And then I realised that "Clapp" wasn't in reference to an STD, but the surname of the author.

good idea: riding an elevator. bad idea: the following...

So I was going up to the third floor of Stauffer library today to get a book and I was kind of energetic about it. Alone in the elevator I started jumping. It was an excellent thigh work out until right before the elevator stopped and the gravitational force shifted a bit and it seemed like I was floating for a split second. I freaked out and fell weird on my toes (like ALL my weight on my big toe crumpled under my feet). And then I felt really stupid. I had been, after all, jumping in an elevator by myself with no one else to egg me on.

It just seems so much weirder than my normal iPod elevator dancing. Cause who can really keep dancing to JT singing My Love inside? WHO?

p.s. this post has caused me to start a new tag: i'm stupid and embarrass myself.