The Queen's Rambles

I have 18% battery life, which means this will be short. I’ve never tried to write an entry at karate before. Usually I am chasing a toddler around, which is not conducive to happy little journal writing. Actually, lately I’ve been running home, sitting there for 20 minutes and running back to karate. When the weather is nicer I spend the time walking around the shopping complex.
Mike is on vacation for two weeks, but so far he is probably wishing he could be back at work. Elsa is a mess. Last night she had a gigantic fart, then was happy and free. Except? She started coughing. And when she would cough a lot, she would projectile vomit all over us. At least we figured out the sound she was making right before the vomit came, so we were mainly able to contain it in the bathroom instead of our bed. Still, sleep? Who got any? Erik, I suppose.
Who is the grouchiest person alive when they don’t get sleep? That would be me. I was going to try really, really, really hard to be a nice, happy, chipper wife and mother this afternoon. Then Mike snuck up behind me and smacked his lips in my ear. I had a little meltdown, complete with crying. Mommy needs a nap.
We’re going to Vancouver later this week, which means we figured out we better be smart and check the weather. Sunscreen and bathing suits won’t be necessary. I need to get fall clothes and raincoats for the kids. Yikes!
I was upset when I was in Kohl’s this weekend and they were almost out of summer stuff, but I was happy today when I needed fall stuff.
Except? The colors for girls this fall?
Oh. My. God.
So ugly and garish, I couldn’t bring myself to buy much of anything. Who loves poison green and orange? Ugh. Not me. I did find her a few things, but it was disappointing.
Of course they didn’t’ have rain coats at this time of year so I had to stop in the consignment shop and see if they had anything. I found a weird little hoodless poncho for Erik and an extremely cute lavender raincoat for Elsa. I looked around at their other clothes and will never understand how they price their clothes. There were a couple of things that still had the tags from the original store. The consignment store prices were higher. Ugh. I only ever buy toys there, generally. It’s worth the price to buy something that’s already assembled.
So summer camp! I am so far off, but I want to write about my college days.
College was a good time for me, even though I would never want to go back and do it again. I went to a very small, conservative Christian college in Oklahoma. I was really scared of the whole college admissions process and set my sights very, very low when I was in high school. I was one of the few really smart people at this college so I got a pretty good deal on tuition. It also turned out to be an excellent teacher school, not that I knew I wanted to be a teacher. When I took masters classes in Oregon later I was really irked because the classes I took as part of undergrad were exactly the same, if not more difficult.
Anyway, there were only 500 students enrolled with about 250 on campus so everyone knew everyone. I was part of yearbook, including editor for 2 years, so I really had an excuse to be up in everyone’s business. I was also part of the spiritual life committee and secretary of our church’s college ministry club. I even went out to the nursing home most Sundays and led singing. If you’ve heard me sing, you’d know just how desperate they were.
I was a student leader and always helped with freshman orientation. I was not popular or pretty, but I had friends and I had my niche. I enjoyed it.

My only problem was my freshman roommate. She was a nightmare. Bossy, pushy, mean, devious. You name it. She would wear my clothes without permission. She tried to control me at every opportunity—a big mistake on her part since I have always been fiercely independent. When I was done with her I was d-o-n-e. After our sophomore year I literally never spoke another word to her. I’m not proud of it, but I was a master at ignoring people.
As a Christian college, we had lots of rules that most colleges don’t have. We were pretty liberal because we were allowed to wear shorts and males and females did not have to have chaperones when they were together. We were not allowed to dance at all, or drink and smoke. We had a curfew. All those rules were just fine with me and I never had a reason to break any of them.
This was the first time I had experience with really fundamentalist Christians. My church in Oregon was very West Coast. Oklahoma was a whole different story. Most of the students were from the Bible belt and had some notions that I considered crazy. They weren’t allowed to go to the movies (but they could rent movies) and they weren’t allowed to talk about aliens (I loved telling them that if God was all powerful he could easily create aliens, which sent them in a tizzy about my heathen ways). There was a lot of hypocrisy which really started to bother me when I realized what was happening.

Pregnant couples who had the right last name or right connections were quickly married off in a nice little ceremony. Pregnant couples who weren’t “Christian enough” were immediately kicked out of school. There was a lot of judgment on any one who didn’t go to the “right” church or who acted a little different. There was tons of hatred towards gays and lesbians, of course. Two girls were basically run out of school because someone decided they were lesbians. The hatred toward Democrats, Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, girls with short hair, girls who didn’t wear make-up and basically any group that believed “Other” was sickening. At the time I didn’t realize just how sickening, but I surely did realize that these people were extremists. They made the transition to atheist later in life very easy.
And now I have to wrap this up, because there’s a screaming baby (I ran out of battery juice at karate) and I am going to go see HP7p2 in about an hour. I have been ordered to have fun. I’m just worried about staying awake.