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Oh, the fair. Since I was ten years old and fresh out of third grade, it’s been the sparkling highlight of my summer, even my year. Silly city folk may not understand the appeal of 14-hour days in the stifling heat and the constant odor of eau du livestock, but I live for it. Especially now that I am older and I can roam around the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds, alternately catching up with friends who are also in 4-H, checking out the other projects, and taking care of my own animals.
I used to exhibit other things besides livestock – I did sewing my first year, then home environment the next, and then just settled down and turned in an art project each summer for about five years. But as other areas of my life started to infringe upon my 4-H time, I trimmed my projects down to just one, Beef. I’ve been showing beef steers and heifers for 10 years now, and I’ve found that I’d rather deal with them than any amount of thread, paintbrushes, or home décor.
I’m not gonna lie – its kind of a big deal, this livestock project business, especially when beef cattle have to be trained and taken care of for almost a year. It used to be I would spend entire Saturdays throughout the winter working my calves, breaking them to lead with a rope halter or brushing their hair. But again, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to prioritize. Now, most of the work happens in the summer, when I have more free time and less worries about how dirty I get.
I’ve always taken pride in the fact that, despite my animals sometimes weigh upwards of 1300 pounds, I can usually drag them around the show ring with little ado. Recently I was looking through some old pictures for my graduation open house, and I was shocked to see a picture of my first year showing in 4-H – I was barely five feet tall and showing a Simmental steer that held its head about a foot higher than my own, not to mention that Mask (as I called him) weighed something like 1250 pounds. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Now – I think it’s a little sadistic. What if my little Masky-poo decided he wasn’t going to be nice and stand still? What if he wanted to just kick me for fun?
In fact, when I was in seventh grade, I raised a calf from birth – I bottle-fed it with milk formula and walked it from a small outdoor pen to the barn every night. Justin (that was his name, after Justin Timberlake from N Sync, a Gelbvieh steer, was my little teddy bear. But guess what happened when I got to the fair after nearly a year of taking care of him? He jumped up and down and kicked a poor little third grader in the shoulder during the night show. Five minutes later, once he was tied up in the beef barn, everything was fine.
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much I’ve toiled with them, leading them around in the barn lot or the backyard – they might still want to run around a little in the show ring. At least in sewing my skirt didn’t decide to tap-dance during judging. Full Post »
I logged into my Notre Dame account today and saw the best little email headline ever: “2007-2008 Housing Assignment.” I’ve been dying to find out where the heck I’ll be living next year, my anticipation growing as all my friends either picked their roommates themselves or found out their housing assignments at orientations back in June.
The wait has been especially agonizing because Notre Dame’s campus places a lot of emphasis on the dorm community. Freshman are placed randomly in a single-sex dorm, and are expected to stay in the same one all for years, or at least until they move into off-campus housing junior or senior year. With no Greek organizations, the dorms are the sororities and fraternities, developing fierce identities and even fiercer rivalries through intramural competitions. Comparing the different dorms at Notre Dame to the houses at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books is a pretty good way to describe the atmosphere and the connection students feel to their respective dorms.
I originally wanted to be in Badin, a small dorm that was originally a men’s hall before the school went co-ed. I stayed with some girls there when I visited the school in February, and part of the reason I fell in love with Notre Dame was because Badin just exuded a sense of “collegeness” – the old, traditional kind, with high ceilings, wooden staircases, old-fashioned doorknobs – silly things that inspire intense devotion in someone who is obsessed with aesthetics.
When I found out that room assignments were completely random, I was not a little bit afraid I would be stuck in the “Mod Quad,” the group of dorms built in the 1970s that are big, square, beige, and kind of ugly.
Luckily, though, I landed in McGlinn Hall, home of the Shamrocks (only the best dorm mascot ever for a school whose icon is a leprechaun). Although McGlinn opened in 1997, it looks a lot like the older dorms as far as architecture goes. Unlike those older dorms, though, McGlinn has air-conditioning, a laundry room, an exercise room, several large lounge areas, and easily accessible fire escapes. And … it’s very close to the dining hall! But that’s okay; I won’t gain any Freshman Fifteen with all those treadmills just three floors below me.
Besides the textbook tour of McGlinn, there is one other teensy detail that will impact my life next year – I’m in a “quad,” meaning I have three roommates. One is from Nicaragua, one is from Pennsylvania, and one is from New Orleans by way of Taipei. Pretty diverse, huh? I’ve already found them all on Facebook and I’m pretty excited about our room arrangement – two bedrooms connected by a center, social space. Some of hometown friends respond with disgust when I say I have three roommates, but I’d rather have that many than one or none, if only because I want to meet as many people as I can.
Another plus to having three roomies? One person can bring the fridge, one can bring the TV, someone else the futon … you get the idea. Full Post »
Ugh. I cannot believe summer is almost over. I go to school in a month! It just seems like the more I do the less I savor time. I don’t like complaining at the injustice at the universe, but come on! Can’t someone just slow it all down? My summer so far has been consumed with work, 4-H, a road trip, obsessively organizing for college, and trying very hard to see my friends before we all split up and go our separate ways.
Mostly, I’m overwhelmed by everything I want to do, not everything I’ve done. I’ve never been so few days away from the 4-H fair and felt so inadequately prepared – not even the year I was in Russia for the whole of June. It’s been three and four weeks since I’ve some of my closest friends simply because I’ve been so busy or so freaking exhausted. Complaining is tedious and sad, but I would very much like to complain until I turn blue – too bad it doesn’t do much to help my time management skills.
I guess I’ll have to get used to this feeling of time slipping through my fingers – my mom continues to remind me that I’m going to have ungodly amounts of work to do at Notre Dame. Thankfully, I won’t have to do any frightening intense three-hour chemistry labs. Why, you ask? Because students majoring in the College of Arts and Letters (or as most Notre Dame students call it, the College of Arts and Leisure, or Artsy-Fartsy, or many other things I don’t think are appropriate for this blog) only have to take “topical” science classes. Because I am neither a raving lunatic nor particularly adept at chemical titrations, I jumped on this opportunity to study science but in a very language-artsy kind of way. The topical science classes focus more on the ethical, environmental, or historical impacts of science than the actual experimental implementation of it.
Basically, what I’m saying is, I’ll be doing a lot of reading, discussing, writing, and thinking next year in place of mixing acids and bases or blowing up stuff. I’m not too bad at reading, discussing writing, or thinking, you know. I can ramble on here for paragraphs and paragraphs! I can talk on the phone! I can decide what shoes to wear in the morning!
Now, if I can only apply those skills to my freshman seminar … Full Post »
I’ve finally been on my first road trip!
I know, I know, how exciting. I’ve certainly ridden interminable distances with my family – to Disneyworld when I was two, to Mackinac Island when I was 12, to West Virginia when I was 16. But with only another teenager in the car? Nope.
On Sunday morning, my friend Kaylie and I climbed into my mom’s Toyota Sienna (great gas mileage, not so great cool factor) and set off for Lebanon, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis. Our friend Kelsey goes there every summer and some holidays to stay at her dad and stepmom’s house, and this summer she invited us to come for a few days. Well, I was all for it – until June turned out to be a monster. Kaylie and I couldn’t find three or four days free of work, holidays or 4-H. Finally, finally, we settled on July 8th through the 11th.
The actual driving part of this road trip wasn’t all that exciting. I drove halfway through Illinois, and then we stopped for nourishment (for the stomach and for the closet) at a Tanger Outlets mall, wherein I introduced Kaylie to the wonders of Pizza Hut cinnamon breadsticks and Coach outlet stores. Kaylie then drove the rest of the way to Kelsey’s house. We didn’t do much on the drive besides listen to Switchfoot and chat, although I couldn’t help myself and had to read some more of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
When we finally got to Kelsey’s house at 3 pm Illinois time, it was excruciating humid, so we immediately jumped in her pool. Later we went to her friend’s graduation party (yes, in July), but sadly all the graduation cake was gone by the time we got there. So, yes, after the graduation party, we went to Schnuck’s grocery store and bought cake mix. And we made a cake. It was awesome. We then proceeded to eat very large pieces of said cake while watching High School Musical on DVD. It was a typical girls night.
On Monday, we got up bright and early and set out for Six Flags St. Louis. Kelsey took us just past downtown St. Louis so I could snap dozens of the pictures of the Arch. We got to Six Flags and ate our Lunchables and Swedish Fish while waiting for Katie, Kelsey’s future roommate at Purdue. Katie is basically Kelsey’s long lost twin sister – she is also from St. Louis, has blonde hair, is tall, is going to study engineering, and has most of the same mannerisms and expressions as Kelsey – it’s a little creepy, actually, especially when they were randomly assigned as roommates.
The four of us had a great time at Six Flags, dragging Kaylie onto the Batman and Mr. Freeze rides and making sure she enjoyed them. It was disgusting hot, so late in the afternoon we went to the water park and got thoroughly wet and cold before a storm rolled in and we decided to bail. We said goodbye to Katie and went back to Kelsey’s to eat some more funfetti cake and watch The Devil Wears Prada and (cough) Ghost Rider.
And even with all of St. Louis’ many attractions – the Arch, the zoo, etc – the next day we just hit up a suburban mall in typical girl fashion. Nothing like buying jeans on sale to reinforce your friendship! We came home Tuesday night to meet Kelsey’s dad and stepmom, who just returned from a business trip. We had some of Kaylie’s Indiana sweet corn and Kelsey’s dad’s hamburgers for dinner, and then the three of us settled down for one final movie, Aquamarine, only the most deliciously cheesy preteen chick flick ever.
Wednesday morning Kaylie and I had to take off so I could make my Queen Contest meeting. Everything went smoothly, as far as packing up the minivan was concerned, until I asked Kelsey’s stepmom Ellen to take a picture of us. As if my entire monetary life came to a dreadful halting stop, I felt the wrist strap on my camera catch on my class ring, saw the beautiful little black box jerk away from Ellen’s outstretched hand, and heard it fall to the concrete garage floor with a sickening metallic bouncing sound. It was the only bad thing to happen the entire trip, and of course it happened at the very end.
Okay, so having my newborn camera severely injured and unable to focus or flash really sucked, but its not really that important because, hello, what a great three days! Its so awesome that I can finally travel on my own, feel confident about it, and be all spontaneous and make funfetti cake whenever I darn well please! Okay, so maybe that last part isn’t that spectacular, but, man, is funfetti cake good. Full Post »
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