In Which All The Panic Became Something Good

I don't know if you guys saw my tweets this morning, but they went something along these lines:

"It's really fun finding out that a fact you made a lot of decisions based around was wrong. #Not."

"My life has become one round of misinformed decisions after another."

"我不知道。(I don't know.)"

This is because (to make an excruciatingly long story short) I found out that learning Chinese has been a total waste of my time, career-wise, because international treaties (I want to study international law) are written in French. And while, yeah, they're translated into Chinese, that's really not the dominant language of international law and I really need to learn French to make it anywhere.

Uhm. Cool.

I panicked when I found that out. Mostly because I've wasted a year learning a really difficult language that I apparently don't need and now I'm too far into my major to switch to French. Also, I'm required to study abroad to graduate and I was already working on applications to go to China for eight months in January and yeah I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT IF I DON'T NEED TO.

I mean, don't get me wrong. Spending eight months abroad would be amazing. But... I'm very much a home-person. I need my family and my friends. I was terrified to go for that long alone. If Mr. Man could come, okay, maybe I could handle that, but 8 months without him or my family or my friends? No. NONONONONONONO.

Not if it's not worth my time, at least. And apparently, it's not.

And then there are all the other decisions I made based on the China-for-8-months-thing -- like signing a lease that only goes from May-Dec because I won't need a place Jan-Aug, but now suddenly realizing that HOLY CRAP I NEED A PLACE TO LIVE.

I talked to my mom on the phone for multiple hours about all this today. We've got it pretty much figured -- I'll keep the lease I have and just move into my own place in January instead of going to China. I'll still go to China in the summer for 10 weeks to fulfill my international requirement to graduate, but now that I'm not spending a whole semester there I'm actually going to graduate on time instead of a semester late like I was going to have to. Which is a HUGE relief.

And, and, here's the best part: Because I'm going to be here that semester, I don't *need* to take a lot of summer school like I was going to have to to make up for basically taking a hiatus (one of the issues about going abroad 8 months was I could only take 1 class while I was there, instead of 5 I would have in the US). But, if I do take 2 classes during the summer, just 2, then I can actually get my minor in psychology like I've been wanting to and STILL GRADUATE ON TIME! I love psychology and have been wanting to study it but was going to have to stay a whole 'nother semester to do so, putting me at graduating a full year late.

So, RECAP: this morning: I was a double major graduating in December 2012. Tonight, I go to sleep a double major with a minor in psych graduating in May 2012.

Well, I Always Did Want to Flip a Car, pt. 3

I just realized that I never explained what the heck the title of this series of posts meant. (Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if this makes no sense to you.)

You guys are going to think we're sick.

Here's the thing -- Mr. Man is kind of a thrill-seeker. And I'm sort of an adrenaline junkie. Meaning, we do stuff like jump off the roofs of our houses, and take 150 foot free falls at carnivals, and both of our "back-up life plans" have something to do with being stunt drivers. So, while, yes, the wreck was terrifying. And yes, B-Fray did get hurt and that's awful. And yes, it was dangerous, and horrible, and we're beyond lucky to be alive. But, looking back, the actual act of flipping, of being totally off the ground and not controlled by gravity, was kind of... fun. Once I knew I was safely on the ground, and still breathing, and not harmed, and B-Fray was still conscious and okay, I could admit that it was kind of cool that we walked away from that unscathed, kind of like in an action movie.

And so, when we got home, and had a moment to breathe, and knew B-Fray was safe in his bed, Mr. Man looked at me and said, "Well, I always did want to flip a car."

So that's that story. Now if you want to see photos of the Jeep post-wreck, Mr. Man's mom had to take some for insurance and sent them to me. If you don't want to see them, I'd navigate away from the page now.

My view from inside the car. Thankfully, they cleaned up all B-Fray's blood.

This was the only window that stayed remotely intact.

Yeah. We're lucky to be alive.

Well, I Always Did Want to Flip a Car, pt. 2

Before you read this, ready part 1 here. Sorry it's so long, but it's just a lot that happened.

...When I finally uncurled myself from my huddled crouch, there was a bar on top of me; part of the roof that had broken off. I pushed it aside, and reached for the boys in the front, trying to make sure they were moving, conscious, alive.

I can’t remember exactly what happened next. I think Mr. Man asked if everyone was okay and that’s when we realized B-Fray was bleeding pretty hard. The next thing I knew, I was on the phone with 911 people, telling them where we were, trying to get them to us. At some point, we realized my door was jammed shut, and Mr. Man asked me to crawl into the front because I was shivering pretty violently and he was shaking because he was terrified. I sat in his lap and he wrapped his jacket around both of us and we both talked to B-Fray, comforting him and ourselves.

The cops arrived first. Then the firemen. Then the ambulance. Mr. Man, who was remarkably entirely unscathed, got out to go talk to the police, and the firemen came to B-Fray and I, doing a preliminary check up before the paramedics could get there. I remember being incredibly calm: I was comforting B-Fray, talking to the firemen, telling them to get him help first. I remember making a joke, even. That’s how I always am in emergencies; I’m the best person to have around, honestly.

At some point, they asked me to step out of the vehicle. I walked to the side, completely alone, and leaned against the barrier that we’d crashed into just minutes before. That’s when what had just happened hit me. I was looking at the road, noting that there was more broken glass than snow on the ground. I was staring off at where Mr. Man was telling the cops exactly what happened. I watched the paramedics get B-Fray out of the car and take him into the ambulance; he was being supported on either side and looked woozy. I stared at the Jeep, and marveled that we’d survived at all. B-Fray’s side was completely caved in, both bumpers were gone, my door was dented in, and all the windows were busted out. I broke down and started crying.

A fireman noticed, a nice guy with kind blue eyes and a bushy blond mustache, and he put me inside the fire truck, telling me to keep warm. They let Mr. Man join me pretty soon, and we stood in there together, hugging each other, answering questions as we were asked them, but basically just trying to keep from falling apart. He called his mom, got her to come pick us up, and soon, the paramedics released B-Fray to come sit with us. What had looked super nasty was really just a flesh wound, and while he needed to go to the hospital, an ambulance wasn’t necessary.

He was covered in blood though. It was down his face, all over his clothes, matted in his hair that hadn’t been ripped out. I made a joke that he should take a picture of himself, make it a little more zombie-like and use it for his Facebook profile picture around Halloween. It was the first time he or I laughed afterward.

As the firemen found our stuff, they brought it to us in the car – my purse had ended up on the other side of the highway, everything still in it except the set of diamond earrings Mr. Man gave me for Valentine’s. Mr. Man’s radar detector, one of his shirts, B-Fray’s wallet. They were so sweet, so helpful.

Mr. Man and I finally took a moment to look ourselves over – I had a few bruises from hitting the door and the tire jack hitting me, and we both had a concussion and could feel some soreness from whiplash setting in. I looked at the Jeep again and realized that our lack of injuries should have been impossible.

A cop came and gave Mr. Man a ticket: “unsafe speed for the weather conditions” which was utter BS if you ask me. Then, they gave all three of us a ride to IHOP, which was right across the street from the hospital. We walked B-Fray over there (why the cops didn’t take us there, I don’t know). By then, it was past 3 am. We stayed with him in the ER until 6, where we watched Lilo and Stitch with Mr. Man’s mom and B-Fray’s dad. That was the first time Mr. Man smiled, and it was then that I finally started feeling like we would be okay. At 6, Mr. Man’s mom took us back to my car, and Mr. Man and I went back to his apartment.

He was asleep in moments, but every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the car, flipping over again. I started shaking, and I didn’t sleep much that day. At 8, I (finally) called my mom and told her what happened – they were upset I didn’t call sooner, but happy I was alive. When I told them how damaged the car was, they were shocked we weren’t more hurt.

I still am, honestly. As I write this, my head is hurting at about a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, which is pretty good for 36 hours after a concussion. I’m still pretty sore, especially in my neck, and I’ve noticed quite a few small but pretty distinct bruises on my back and arms. B-Fray is up and about, doing well, and Mr. Man has a slight headache, but is 100% fine otherwise.

We shouldn’t be this okay. Mr. Man went to the impound lot and looked at the Jeep one more time with the insurance guys, to see if anything was salvageable (it’s not). He called me after and told me we were beyond lucky. We shouldn’t have walked away so close to unscathed. We shouldn’t have walked away at all, honestly. If I’d been driving by that scene, I would have expected the people in the car to have been taken away in an ambulance, if not care-flight-ed out. We were so lucky, guys. So, so lucky. And I still can’t quite believe it.

(img cred. No, we didn't take a single photo of the accident.)

Writer's Workshop: Maya Angelou

Remember how last night I was pretty much having a mental breakdown about this weeks' prompts? Yeah, well, I figured out what I'm going to do... Basically combine all/most of them into one post. ARE YOU READY FOR THIS AWESOMENESS THAT WILL GIVE YOU THE JEALOUSIES*?

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” ~ Maya Angelou

I think I have a really weird concept of what "home" is. Last May, I said this on the subject: "...home is not a place but a time and a feeling."

Which, I think for the most part, I still feel. And, I kind of think goes with what Maya was saying there -- I long to be simply accepted, no questions asked, and I feel like there's no single place where I can get that. I get that through certain people, like my parents and their friends, or Mr. Man, or The Cynical Optimist. When I see them, and we sit down for dinner or coffee or whatever, I feel like I'm at home no matter where I am.

To some extent, I also feel very at home when I'm snowboarding on a quiet mountain slope, or when I'm writing in a coffee shop and surrounded by people I don't even know. That too feels familiar, unquestioning, accepting.

I'm sure a couple of psychologists would tell you that I lack attachment to places because I didn't have a stable home life as a child because we moved around a lot and so I didn't create long lasting social bonds with anyone outside my family until I was like 10. Factor in all the ridiculous amount of travel we did and how insanely huge my family is... I'm a social deviant waiting to happen!

Maybe I'm okay with that. Because I LIKED moving that much. The act of searching for a new place to live, even at a young age, felt familiar, home-like -- much more than the actual living there. It was fun for me to go to the next neighborhood and peek into the previous owners' life through all their pictures on the wall and the way their bedroom was set up. And when we planted down in North Texas and stayed in the same house for 12 years, I got restless A LOT. I still get restless if I stay in the same place too long. That's why every time I refer to the apartment on this blog, it's always "the apartment," not "home," because I'm already so BORED of CS and it's not homey to me.

At the same time, I long for the accepted feeling I had in high school when I had this, admittedly less-than-stable, huge group of friends, but it was at least CONSISTENTLY unstable. I could COUNT on one of the guys dating another guys' ex-girl and another cheating on his girl with one of my friends while she in fact was cheating on someone else, and rumors being spread between the 10 of us girls, and DRAMADRAMADRAMA. And as I merged into another (much) smaller group, I could count on the fact that by being the only consistent girl in it would lead to every single one of the guys having at least a brief crush on me at one time or another and it causing some drama, minor as it was. But I could also count on video games and racing our cars on public streets and sneaking out at 3 am for trips to IHOP, and they felt like home too.

But, that's how I met Mr. Man. And if that's not a stable social bond that feels like home, I don't know WHAT is. Because, when Mama Kat put it as "the heart that just wouldn’t quit," the woman knew what she was talking about. When I was 15, that boy burst into my life and demanded that I love him, hands down, no questions asked. I may have been in denial and fought it tooth and nail for over a year, and I may have gotten scared and run away when I was 18, but my poor heart never really had a chance. And he knew it all along, so he just bid his time until I finally CALMED THE HELL DOWN enough to be ready to admit that no matter what my head says, my heart won't quit running toward him; that wherever he is, that's home, his arms are home.



*The Jealousies: That feeling when you get when you read a really awesome blog post and think "WHY DIDN'T I WRITE THAT?!"

Thankfulness

Hey, remember me? I'm that person that sometimes used to blog here. Yeah, that's right, Valorie. Uh huh. Yeah, I'm alive. Where have I been you ask? Oh, well, that's a pretty long story. How about I try to catch you up while I catch up and list the ten things I was thankful for this Thanksgiving?

I'm thankful...

1. For my family. I drove home last Tuesday to surprise my parents (I was supposed to go home Wednesday) and earned a scream from my mom, who was on a conference call with her boss when I walked into the house. We then drove to Arkansas to visit my Dad's family and stayed there until Saturday, which was simply wonderful. I have a big family but I rarely get to see any of them because we're all so spread out. Like a dummy though, I didn't take a single picture the whole time so I can't show you them. Lame, eh?

2. That I don't have to write another paper this semester. No, seriously, I actually silently said thanks for this at the lunch/dinner table on Thanksgiving. I really do love to write, but I *hate* writing research papers. My only one this semester was due last Monday -- now I just have to wait and see how I did.

3. For my friends. I saw most of the ones I'm really close with over the few days I was there -- it was wonderful. Very few of my close friends actually go to A&M, and I don't really have the money (or the time) to be driving all over the state of Texas to visit all of them. Though I do have plans to visit Cyndi in Houston next semester. I'm excited. :)

4. For dayquil. I've been sick on and off for the past week, so dayquil has been a life saver; without it there's no. way. I could have gotten out of bed for classes today or last Tuesday. Though, if we're honest, the liquid dayquil tastes awful. Absolutely. If anyone involved in the production of dayquil is reading this: step it up. Also, why is it burnt orange? That's pretty much the worst color ever. (Gig 'em, Aggies! [Yes, it was necessary.])

5. For Black Friday. I got some pretty suh-weet brown "leather" boots that day. As well as a really bad a set of 10 picture frames for $12 bucks. And a couple cheap-y necklaces that will break by the end of the week, but that's okay because I paid less than $5 for them, as well as a purse that better not break by the end of the week, though I did pay less than $20 for it. And a bulletin board, though I'm not actually sure why I bought that since I don't know where the heck I'm going to put it. Caught up in the shopping fever I guess.

6. For Barnes & Noble coupons. They send me some pretty much once a week, but last week there was an email for 50% off and another for 40% off waiting in my inbox, like a little reminder that it will all be okay, that the world isn't coming to a halting stop before exploding into a fiery ball of doom. Needless to say, I made a trip over there immediately, and now have a copy of Superfreakonomics and a beautiful leather bound journal that will eventually be used for #55, once I can bring myself to destroy it (which is, of course, the whole freaking point).

7. That I'm still in school. During my catching up with all my friends, I was caught up on all the old high school gossip (don't look at me that way, you do it too), and I realized just how many people that were supposed to go off to college and become successful lawyers and doctors and teachers and whatevers... are now bums, smoking pot and doing nothing with their lives. The most important thing any of them do is wait tables and play at the coffee house on Tuesday nights. On the one hand, it's like, 'okay cool, do what makes you happy.' But they're not going to be young forever, eventually they'll need to make more than $7.50/hr. Maybe I'm being judgmental.

8. That I haven't actually quit Mary Kay yet, though I still have every intention to. I'm actually going to have a big 25% off sale starting on December 1, which I'm extending to you guys through this website. I just feel like it would be easier to sell all the product than return it to the company. (If you have any questions about the sale, feel free to email me -- beautifuliconoclast [at] gmail [dot] com.)

9. For extra credit projects in my Chinese class. And for going to class on Tuesday even though most of the class skipped and finding out that I have an extra credit project. I'm already half done with it and I only spent about an hour on it last night, so it should really work out. The fact that it's giving me somewhere between 1 and 5 points on my final grade it pretty stinkin' wonderful. :)

10. THAT IT'S ALMOST TIME TO START CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS. I love Thanksgiving, really, it's one of my favorite holidays (right after Halloween), but there's just something about the Christmas season that really makes me happy. But, I do really hardcore believe in not celebrating Christmas before December 1, so it DRIVES ME CRAZY when corporate America is like "oh it's November 1? It's almost Christmas! Put up the decorations now! We've got to suck consumers dry before the holidays really even start!" Consumerism isn't even what Christmas is supposed to be about... But that's for a whole different post.

Does that catch y'all up enough? How were your Thanksgivings?

thanking God for small (huge) miracles

Today, I'm being thankful for small decisions that turn into big miracles.

It was about 7 pm. Cyndi and I were on the end cusp of a good shopping trip in downtown Dallas. As we were leaving the store, we decided we were thirsty and needed to get a drink before we headed home, but we didn't want to stop at a restaurant. There was a gas station just down the block and we talked about just stopping there but for no identifiable reason we didn't and kept going until a block later we hit a KFC. We pulled in, got water, left; nothing fancy, no fuss. The detour cost us about five minutes.

Fast forward about fifteen minutes in time. We're on the highway. There's not a lot of traffic so we're listening to music and chatting, just kind of enjoying each other's company. Suddenly, about three hundred feet from the fork between the highway we're on and the highway we're about to merge on to, traffic just appears, almost as if everyone has stopped their cars at the same time, kind of the same way people walking pause briefly when they hear something shocking. Then cars start pulling into the left two lanes, a few are crossing over the double white lines to switch highways, and Cyndi and I are confused -- this is like a three lane split-off that has had about ten signs announcing it for the past five miles, people cannot possibly be confused. But, at least the line of cars in still moving, albeit slowly.

Silently, we both start speculating about why there's traffic (or at least I did). It's not that traffic is uncommon in the DFW area, it's just that we're not on a one lane road nor is it rush hour, so it seems out of place. Cyndi is the first to suggest that maybe there was an accident, but I discredit it because there were no lights or sirens or anything. Just then, we see a man in scrubs jump out of his car and run up ahead us and almost simultaneously, I hear sirens approaching us from the back of the line of cars. I scramble to pull as far into the lane to my left as I can as a cop comes barelling around my car, screeches to a halt about fifty feet in front of us, and jumps out, following the direction the man in scrubs disappeared to. Now Cyndi and I are fairly certain that it's an accident but we (or, just me, maybe) aren't worried because there's no ambulance.

That changed quickly.

An SUV in front of us shifts off to the left a little and we get a view of the carnage in front of us. Yes, carnage. That's the only word that can really describe what had happened. I don't know how it happened, but another SUV has somehow flipped over -- judging by the damage to the car, it hit another person or rolled a few times. The car is smoking and a strange liquid is trickling out of it from near the shattered driver's side window. Good Samaritans standing by have pulled someone out of the car and are standing around him/her and the doctor as others work on pulling more passengers out of the wrecked vehicle. The cop and another bytander are waving the cars through, presumably trying to get us moving so that the ambulance (which we could hear approaching) could get to the victims. As we drive through, I realize what the strange liquid trickling out of the driver's side of the car is -- blood. A very large, very real puddle of blood. I'm forced to drive through it on my way between the two men waving us through and as I drive by the upside SUV I can hear that it's engine is still cooling down, meaning it had stopped moving sometime in the past five minutes. As my eyes pass over the whole scene once more, the image is seared in my memory.

After a second of driving on open highway, Cyndi and I look at each other. And it hits me -- that very easily could have been us. We arrived before the cop and the ambulance, who have an average arrival time of five minutes. Five minutes. Those five minutes when we were going to KFC instead of the gas station for no reason? Yeah, those five minutes potentially saved our lives. If we had gone into that gas station and gotten on the road five minutes earlier, we could have been in the way of that SUV when it flipped. We could be laying in a hospital somewhere right now, if not a morgue.

Days like today remind me that there is absolutely no such thing as a coincidence -- everything happens for a reason. We may not always see it, but today we did. The only reason Cyndi and I got home safely was because God kept us from going to that gas station and getting on the road any sooner. Without that small miracle, I'm not sure I'd be here to hope that the passengers of that car received treatment quickly and are somewhere safe, recovering from their ordeal.