Waiting is Sometimes Necessary

So it has been a while since I've had anything to say on here. Quite a lot in my life has changed. I have grown accustomed to thinking that the things that have occurred and the things that I have realized have all impacted me negatively. And today I have realized that is just backwards thinking.

Perhaps the catalyst of my sad semester was the death of my Granddaddy. I really love my Granddaddy; always have and always will. He was always my encourager; he thought I could do anything I wanted to and do it perfectly. As I sit here writing this, so many memories are running through my head.

I remember him being so proud of me at my high school graduation that he cried. He always told me how he looked forward to my college graduation. He made it to the beginning of my senior year of college; I wish he could be here for the end. And I remember when my mother and I would sit in the living room and watch those silly wedding shows on the girly channels, and he would see what we were watching and tell me how he couldn't wait to see me walk down the aisle as a bride. He obviously didn't live long enough to see that, since I am currently as single as possible. I would give anything to have him there on that future day. I really love my Granddaddy.

Perhaps the most striking memory I have, and the one I cling to more than anything right now, is the memory of his last words  to me. I came home one Friday near the beginning of this semester. That night, Granddaddy became very ill, and my Mama decided to take him to the hospital. He didn't realize at first that I had even come home; he didn't see me until I helped him into the car. I had to pick his feet up off the ground and put them into the car, because he was too weak to be able to pick them up and put them in himself. As sick as he was, he smiled when he saw me.

He said, "Well Carolyn, how is school going?"

"It's pretty tough right now," I replied.

"But you're tougher," he said. Adding in, "goodbye," and, "I love you," it was our last conversation ever.

The next time I was able to come home from school to see him was the next weekend. I visited him in the hospital, but he was not really able to talk. He tried, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying. He knew I was there, though. But that visit is not what I really choose to think about. I prefer to remember those words, "But you're tougher."

After Granddaddy died, I did not handle it very well. I really felt the loss; it was a huge hole. It still is. But particularly soon after his passing, for some reason I began to question my past decisions and their implications. I have tried to stay a Godly woman, although I fail to always do right, just like every other sinner on this planet. And when I was questioning my past decisions, I thought that perhaps I had not done right according to God's plan. (Now let me just say that I do not know God's plan. I do not know if I did right or not. But I do know now that God can work with it; after all, He is God.)

But then, I turned to God in a new prayer. My prayer for a while was, "Lord, either give this to me or take away my hurt from not being able to have it. It doesn't matter which one; I just want to be happy."

I feel like that's a fairly common prayer for people to pray. It's easy to say those things when you regret decisions made in the past and desire a happier future. But it's a fallacy. It's pretty elementary, actually. I remember it being in Sunday School lessons from when I was a child. God's three answers to prayers are: yes, no, or wait. And I was reminded of that today, while I was in the student section at the Iron Bowl.

I can't exactly figure out what at the Iron Bowl reminded me of God's promises, or why I felt compelled to put it on the internet for folks to read. But either way, here it is. God told me today that He has a future for me. He just ain't telling me what it is yet. It may or may not be what I have wanted, or currently want. And He told me not to even worry about that anymore, because He's got something for me; I just have to be able to wait. I can still worry about decisions I made, but I have got to be prudent in my sadness. I am here where I am and I can't change that.

Waiting is sometimes necessary. I have to wait right now to find out where to go next, what to do, and how I can be the best woman I can be. So what I need to do is look forward to my future; my meaningful future.

And that, my friends, makes me happy.

Who broke Carolyn Kate's arm??? Oh, Carolyn Kate did.

When I was four years of age, I was a very active child. I loved to run; I loved to play. And no attire could prevent me from running or playing, even Sunday church clothes and an impending nap time. So, as I was running to my room after arriving home from church, I didn't think anything about it. I probably should have, though.

Multiple factors played into the breaking of the arm scenario which is about to unfold. First, I had removed my shoes. Second, I was wearing stockings, which provide little to no grip between my foot and the floor. Third, we don't have a carpeted house; the floor of my family's home is mostly tile, with some linoleum around our bedrooms. Finally, I was running. Those factors, when added together, can potentially be hazardous. And of course, I slipped in the hallway outside of my bedroom,  landed smack on the ground, with my arm twisted and somehow underneath me.

Well, of course I did not handle that situation well. I have worked in a nursery and I have ample babysitting experience. I'm not much more aware of how children are capable of making bad situations much worse. Now, since I was only four, there are gaps in my memory from the time of the fall to my arrival at the hospital. I remember my parents trying to figure out what happened to their screaming child. I remember getting an ice cream treat, which I thought was grand. And I remember waiting in the emergency room.

Now, allow me at this point in time to explain that I was a pretty happy child. I was precious, of course. And like a lot of children, I would be happy and play even while injured. I don't get it now; if I broke my arm today I would whine and milk it for all it's worth. But apparently I was playing in the car on the way to the emergency room. This led to my mother scolding me, and trying to figure out if I really was hurt or if I was putting on an act. It was difficult to tell, because my arm did not have an obvious break in it and there was no blood, or gore, or other telling signs of a ghastly wound. But I was also very sensitive to scoldings, and I reacted very strongly to them. I hate to get in trouble. And as a child, I hated it even worse. And since I was a fairly good child (oh, how different than my little sister, ha ha ha), I did not require frequent punishment and therefore handled normal, very mild punishment as though it were the end of the world. This fussing in the car was no different.

So we arrived at the hospital, and after waiting what felt like a thousand years in the emergency room, it's finally my turn to be examined. As they're asking me routine questions, I say, at some point, that my mother was angry at me. Little did I know the consequences of those words. Remember, good child = rare punishment. Rare punishment = inability to cope with normal consequences. Scolding at play = consequences. Inability to cope with scolding and questions from nurses = trouble for mommy.

And to top it all off, my arm had been fractured near my elbow joint in such a way that if it had been maliciously twisted by a person, the same results could have been achieved as were achieved by the simple slipping and falling upon my arm.

Let me just say right now that my mother has never injured me in her life. I rarely had to be spanked, and even the few spankings I did receive were very mild. I guess the doctors did not know that, though. And so they began to question her.

 "Mrs. Carolyn's Mom, did you twist Carolyn Kate's arm?" Well, this did not go over well, and my mom vehemently denied everything.

"If you twisted her arm, just tell us."

"I did not twist her arm!"

I am sure that I am glad that I did not witness that glorious scene. Anyway, in the end, my mother was cleared of the offense. They were able to figure out the real story from what I said, that I had broken my arm by slipping and falling, and my mommy continued to be able to not-hurt me. And, I got a hot pink cast out of the deal. I'm sure I looked adorable with it (of course), and I was able to use it as a paper weight in preschool (which I thought was fabulous, because no one else had a paper weight for their coloring sheets).

The Worst Day of My Life

In August of 2009, I had the worst day of my life. I don't remember the specific date, but that is only probably because it was so terrible and dramatic. Allow me to preface this story with a little background knowledge about why this day was so absolutely awful.

My family has generally only kept one pet at a time. This allows us to shower all of our love and adoration onto one lucky creature, and therefore allow it to live the most privileged life an outside pet can live. Girl, a black labrador retriever, was my first pet. She "ran away" to live with someone else when I was a little girl. When I was 7 years old, we were given a little gray tabby kitten, Tiger. Tiger was a mild mannered guy, very sweet with me and my sister. He was smart; he knew he had to be sweet to us because we fed him lots of food. He was not so sweet with the vets. He's the only cat I've ever heard of who had to get muzzled to go to the vet. He grew into a really, really, really fat cat. He weighed somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds, and he was predictably very lazy.

So on this August day, back in 2009, my family was spending one of the last weeks of summer together. We planned on taking a day trip to go out of town, but that morning we noticed that Tiger was breathing extremely heavily and very quickly. My mother measured his respiration rate, and it turned out to be like a million breaths per minute. Using our brilliant deductive skills, we figured out that something was wrong. But what? We had to take him to the vet. Mom gave me the task of getting some of our older towels to put in the cat carrier while she was outside making sure it was clean. This is when things started to get really, really dramatic.

I head to go outside to the carport, where my mother was waiting. As I shut the back door, I heard "RUN, CAROLYN! RUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNN!" I heard this awful, shrill, squeaky scream.

Little Sister, who was already outside, and I started running. Little Sister was holding our dying pet in her arms, and he was being bounced up and down while we gallop halfway up the driveway. I turned around, to figure out what I'm running from.

It's a bat. A BAT. In the middle of the day. And it had been trying to crawl into our home while I had opened the door to come outside. When I shut the door, I had closed it upon the bat's leg. That was when things started to happen in slow motion.

The screaming bat managed to wriggle itself free from the door. It started flying around in frantic circles and zigzags. I initially assumed it was only doing so because it was hurt. I'm sure getting its leg closed in a door did not feel very good. However, the bat saw me, or heard me, or smelled me, or something else equally scary, because it then started to fly at me. I began to run, because the bat was still flying very manically and was not actually zooming straight at my head at that particular moment. It was chasing me, though, and it chased me and Little Sister (still clinging to our freaked out, half-dead cat) all the way up our driveway, up the front sidewalk, and to the front porch.

Little Sister and I got inside the house, and shut the door. The bat kept flying around our house for half an hour or so, and even banged up against our windows.

Inside, we were all freaking out. Tiger was on the floor on his side, eyes wide and mouth open, gasping to avoid suffocation. Little Sister and I are practically in shock. Here's about what he looked like:

My mother was talking about all of us probably having rabies. The conversation went something like this: "blah blah blah Dead Cat blah blah Bat blah blah Rabies blah blah blah Was Anyone Bitten or Pooped On? blah blah blah Vet blah blah blah Can You Believe We Were Just Chased by a Bat???"

After around half an hour, we made our way outside again. We had to get Tiger to the vet, because unfortunately the jostling he received during our retreat was terrible for him. We packed him up and rushed him to the vet. He couldn't even meow by the time we got him there, and his nose was no longer pink. Essentially, we walked in, showed him to the vet, and suddenly the clinic from a small town veterinary clinic to  an emergency surgery pet-saving wonderland. They were all like, "We need to get him into surgery, asap!" So they whisked him away. We got reports that went something like this, "We are having to slice open his belly; this is bad and he might die at any moment," and "He just died and we performed miracle kitty cat CPR on him and brought him back to life."

It was very dramatic.

Thankfully, Tiger did not die that day. He held on for a few weeks longer. If he had died that day, I think it would have been too much. I mean, really? I don't know if you can understand the fear of being chased by a potentially rabid, definitely angry, injured, manic bat in the middle of the day. I'm surprised I did not wet myself. That bat was bent on revenge. But then to have your only pet almost go to Kitty Cat Heaven on the same day? Dreadful.

The Almost Crisis

I don't have a parking pass that allows me to park on campus during the day. I was running late and did not have time to wait on my school's transit system before class started this past Friday. So I parked across the street from campus on a one-way street right beside one of the local bars. I paid the meter for an hour and a half and walked the short distance to my classroom.

After class, I nonchalantly walked back to my car. It had been a wonderful day thus far, and I had little to worry about... until I approached the car.

There is was: little, covered in pollen... with a huge dent and yellow paint scraped all over the black paint on the left side. I just stopped in my tracks, visibly stunned. It was awful. Someone had scraped up the car and then left without so much as leaving a note! After regaining my composure (somewhat), I approached the vehicle. In my panic, I didn't remember what to do since the person who had hit the car had left the scene. I decided to just get in the car and cry and call my mommy, like any rational adult would do.

As I get to the driver's side, I reach down to open the door. That's when I realized that this door was missing it's handles. The handles on the doors of the vehicle were gone. As in, I could not find a way into the car. There was nothing for me to open the door with. After standing there for a good minute or so without coming to a rational conclusion of what to do, I start to cry a little bit. That's when I noticed that through the back window, there were books and bags that I don't own sitting in the back seat. I go look at the vehicle's tag. It's not my tag.

It's not my car. I looked around, and sure enough, my car was sitting a few cars down from this poor vehicle. I happily walked down to my beautiful car and there's not any (new) damage on it! I still feel really terrible for that person who owned that other car, though. It was really not funny at the time.

I'm going to tell a little tale about my childhood... and how traumatic it was.

Do you remember how as a child it was so cool to talk about your parents' age? Yeah, so do I. And so when I was in Kindergarten I went home and asked my mother how old she was. And because she is a sweet mommy, she told me that she was 99 years of age.

So the next time when my peers began discussing the age of their parents, on the van ride to our after school care, I volunteered the information that my mother was 99. I thought I had won the prize - I had the oldest parent. I was so cool. And so happy.

But then this girl turned around and said something along the lines of, "your mom is going to die when she turns 100." I suppose that is how a young one's logic functions. 100 is the limit - there is nothing after 100.

So I took this new information presented to me as the absolute truth. I believed this with my entire being, and I was sad. I seriously thought my mother was going to die on her next birthday.

When I got home that evening, I threw myself onto my parents' bed and became hysterical. I was sobbing and inconsolable, and my mother was trying to figure out why. She finally figured out that I was sad because I thought she was going to die on her next birthday. Which was apparently hilarious to her. And my father.

It was finally explained to me that my mother wasn't 99 years old,  and even if she had been she probably wouldn't have died on her 100th birthday. Didn't matter to me then; I was quite distraught.

Moral of this story: don't lie to your kids, unless you want something really funny to happen.

Pink Babies

I realized the identity of Smelly Guy today. I was just sitting in class and he walked past me to his seat and his stench just hit me like a wall. And the grossest part is, he doesn't even sit directly beside me. He sits like three seats away from me. Gross. I feel bad about the poor people sitting beside him.

On a totally different note, I've decided to describe how awesomely literal I was as a small child. My practicality was showcased by my names for my dog, blanket, and stuffed animals.

I got my dog when I was one or two years old. She was a black labrador retriever, and I LOVED her. I played with her and played with her, and oh! the joy that was my dog. So what is a perfectly creative and intelligent little child to name her beloved dog? Girl. Yes, my dog's name was Girl. She was a girl, so no other name made more sense. Girl has since gone away to Puppy Dog Heaven, but she will always be remembered.

My childhood blanket was absolutely perfect. It was yellow and square, and not too big and not too little. It was perfect for holding at night when I went to sleep when I was a little girl. And, you know, um, well, maybe when I was like, uh, um, well eighteen years old, too. But anyways, what's a girl to call her beloved blanket? Yellow Blanket. Duh. It was a blanket, and it was yellow. It makes sense, okay.

So I think you might be catching onto the idea. Well, I'm about to throw you for a loop!

Not really.

I had three more stuffed animals that may or may not still reside in my room at my parents' house: Hard-face Pink Baby, Mushy-face Pink Baby, and Pink Bear. Guess what color they are! If you guessed pink, then you're a genius.

Hard-face Pink Baby and Mushy-face Pink Baby were once both the same. They had soft stuffed bodies and a soft stuffed head, but their faces were like a soft rubbery-plastic material. One day, my family went on vacation to somewhere. As we got out of our car at the hotel, I unknowingly dropped one of my pink babies onto the parking lot and walked off without it. That was one of the most traumatic nights of my young childhood. When I was a little girl I loved my pink babies more than I loved my life, I think.

Well, my parents were about sick of hearing me sob about my lost pink baby, so gave a last-ditch effort to rescue their precious baby's babydoll. They went to the front desk of the hotel, and that perfect lady at the desk told them she had found it the night before and took it home to her daughter or granddaughter (I can't remember which one, and at the time I did not care one bit. No one was gonna take my pink baby). Anyway, that blessed saint returned my doll to me the next day.

But the doll had been run over in the parking lot, and had tire treadmarks on her. And her face was mushy. Thus, the difference between Hard-face Pink Baby and Mushy-face Pink Baby. I secretly loved Mushy-face more than Hard-face, but I would have never told Hard-face that.

I also had Pink Bear, who may or may not have come to college with me my freshman year. But even though it may or may not have lived in my dorm room freshman year, it is important to remember that it was only freshman year. Just clarifying.

Smelly Guy

In one of my classes there is a guy who stinks. I mean, he is smelly. And I can't figure out who it is, because the stench seems to hit me from all directions. It could be a girl, I suppose. But there's mostly guys who sit around me in this class, which is why I think it's a guy. So I wrote a poem especially for him:

Hey Smelly Guy, who sits next to me in class

Your total stench makes me need a gas mask

I understand that you smoke, and that's okay

But maybe you should cut back from 20,000 cigarettes a day

I'm not asking you to smell like delightful flowers

I just wish you would take showers

Because my nose is not but a few feet from your disgusting body

And trust me, no girl's gonna think you're a hottie

As long as you smell like rotten beans

Please, oh please, get clean

My speech anatomy test got moved to next Tuesday, which is a great! My week just got ten billion times better when I found that out! Since my paper and language acquisition became deleted off of my to-do list yesterday, I have slept approximately ten much-needed hours.And I did laundry. Bonus points to Carolyn for productivity!

When reviewing my former posts, I realized that I have used excessive punctuation. I always feel the need to use excessive punctuation when relating things on this blog. However, when I go back to review it I feel like it looks a little ridiculous.

As though I talk like this: "OH. MY. WORD. UR LIKE SOOOOO CRAZYYYYYYY!!!!!1!!!1!!! LIKE WHY WONT U TALK TO MEEEEEEEEEEEE??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!?!?!???!!???"

Which I don't (unless provoked).

Here is a pretty picture:

I HAVE RECENTLY EXPERIENCED A FEW PROBLEMS

Let me just relate to you the problems I have experienced.

It all started last week on Tuesday. I was required to write a short paper for my Critical Theory of Literature class. So I write one on Plato and turn it in, because that is what I thought my syllabus told me to do. It turns out that I was quite wrong. My synopsis was supposed to be on Aristotle, which I realized much too late. And when I got my paper back, it was practically screaming at me, "CAROLYN, THIS IS EMBARRASSING! I AM ASHAMED TO BE YOUR PAPER!!"

However, my professor was very kind and allowed me to rewrite the paper and still get a grade on it, even though points would be deducted from its grade for being late. I probably would have rewritten it anyway and turned it in, even if it didn't count for a grade, because I don't want to look like the class idiot. It was only a page or so, and not worth very much of my grade.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that he allowed me to rewrite the dang synopsis and email it ASAP. So on Wednesday, I wake up and write this synopsis prior to going to class. However, I don't have time to proofread it, and I decide I will just do that later. So I go to school, I see some friends, I have some fun, and then later that night I start proofreading the paper and when I get ready to email it, MY COMPUTER DECIDES THAT WORKING PROPERLY IS STUPID.

After some tears and frustrations, I do get my paper turned in, and after like a week of not having a computer, it finally returns to me. I didn't know what to do with my spare time without my computer. What is a 20 year old to do?? Color? Play card games? Rescue hundreds of puppies and kittens from shelters, like I have the money for that??? I swear I am not an animal hoarder.

Anyway, those are not real problems. They were embarrassing and annoying, however.

On a happier note, my tests for this week are over. On a less happy note, I have two tests and a paper due next week.

Allow Me to Clarify

I believe that the title of this blog needs to be clarified.

"Werecows" does not, in fact, mean that we are all cows. Instead, it refers to a variation of the traditional werewolf. I'm not sure what inspired my parents to invent the werecow, but I do know that it was a genius move when it came to Little Sister.

My family resides in rural Alabama, and our home is in the woods. Little Sister and I grew up hearing about wampus cats and other scary creatures who lived in the woods, so hearing about werecows really didn't seem that far-fetched to Little Sister. By this point I was old enough to question the legitimacy of werecows, but honestly, I can't remember if I believed my parents or not.

However, werecows roaming the forest in search of people to destroy seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to Little Sister. Sometimes, when she was in bed and my dad got home late from work, he would knock on her window and "MooOOooOOOOooooOOoooOooo". Isn't that funny? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that's funny, but I doubt it.

I suppose that it was an ideal way of my parents had of insuring Little Sister didn't wander off into the woods. More than likely, however, they just thought it was funny. And thus, the title of this blog was born.