this my town

I had a dream about Brown last night. All I really remember is going to get food somewhere, accidentally only buying a cup of maple syrup, thinking about just eating it, and then deciding that I needed to go to the Blue Room to get a muffin. But then they were out of muffins. Also, I was locked out of my room, although I specifically remembered picking up my keys and leaving the door unlocked.

I take this all to mean that I've fully assimilated to college life.

Last weekend, a penis appeared on the wall outside my hallway. I suspect the athletes down the hall are responsible, but I suspect them and their athletic cohort responsible for most bad things that happen on the hall. It's possible that an unrelated band of hooligans just saw the stretch of drywall and decided it needed some phallic imagery (they should have gone with an obelisk), but even then I would suspect that the perpetrators were athletes of some sort. Damn athletic hooligans.

Yesterday, in a fit of madness (I've been having those lately), I bought a sharpie and turned the penis into a fish. It still looks like a penis, but it has eyes and I turned the poorly-drawn testicles into a poorly-drawn fish tail. Now it's a dick-fish, which is better than just a penis on the wall.

Again, taking ownership of my surroundings and feeling assimilated. That's what's happening right now.
Speaking of surroundings, I managed to omit a real conversation from the Monopoly game the other night that I feel is worth sharing, because I laughed.

Mark: Who owns Virginia?
John: I own it. It's in my pants!
Me: Incidentally, I grew up in Virginia.
John: Well... then you grew up in my pants! ... I'm sorry. That was inappropriate.

So that happened.

Love always,
Clara

summer

Not the season but the girl.
I've just now discovered that Summer the senior (from my high school in the states) is a blogger. She is phenomenal and you should all go read her blog right now. Here's a sample.

First, it was the first day of spring sports and I got a rush of emotions thinking of how I did track last spring. HAH IT’S COMICAL! I will never forget the first practice where I went up to Coach Bodine and said, “Hi, my name is Summer Delaney. I am a junior. I don’t really know what to do because I can’t sprint because I am really slow, and I can’t do distance because I have no stamina. I also run funny. Suggestions?” She told me to try to keep up and that the first practice was running around the track for 30 minutes alternating between 30 seconds jogging and 30 seconds sprinting every time the whistle blew. This quickly turned into 30 seconds walking and 30 seconds jogging. When the fast people were running, Bodine would yell “STOP BEING LAZY AND MOVE!” 

When I passed her, she said “It’s okay girl, just finish.”

Summer and I had some great times in US chorus back in the day (oh, and JV softball. I try to forget about JV softball). I very specifically remember rooming with her in Germany, staying up late, and literally falling asleep while talking (and eating Mozart balls, an Austrian treat that lends itself to innuendo -- the best kind of Austrian treat). Falling asleep while talking is a weird thing to do by the way, because I actually started having a dream while we were chatting, and didn't realize that it wasn't real.

Summer: Does that make sense?
Me: Wait, I need my purse!
Summer: ... what?

We also tried to hit on Landon boys at the private-school-choral-gatherings. Everyone knows that's what those kinds of events are for anyways. Pink-Tie and Orange-Tie had it going on, and I've got a thing for guys who can sing.

Love always,
Clara

misfits

So I've been watching this show called Misfits.

It's rocking my world. It's about these british teenage juvenile delinquents who are hit by lightning and get super powers. If that doesn't sound fantastic to you, you need to reevaluate your standards.

One of the guys, Curtis, can rewind time. He can't control it, but when something bad happens generally he'll just rewind back to the point where he can stop that bad thing from happening.

Last night I had a dream that I could do that. In the dream I went back to school, and Daphna was there. Then I went back in time, and suddenly it was the beginning of the school year, and we were at this barbecue thing. Kayla was there too. Now, I couldn't remember exactly what my social situation was at the time of this hypothetical barbecue, so I turned to Daphna (who was still there) and asked "So, I just came from the future; remind me which of these people are my friends right now? Am I still hanging out with this person? Am I friends with that kid yet?"

And I ended up saying hi to someone that I wasn't supposed to be friendly with, and I changed the future.

I think it's telling that while Curtis tends to use his power to avoid his friends' deaths, I end up using mine to complicate my social situations.

I also think it's telling that I had a dream that combined Misfits and being back at Brown, because

1) I am so bored that I've been watching two episodes of this show per day.

2) I really want to go back to school.

Tomorrow we go to Lichtenstein though. That should be fun.

Love always,

Clara

meta-dreams

I have been sleeping way more than is acceptable today.

This morning, I was having a dream in which I was sick. In my dream logic, I didn't have to go to class, because I was sick. So I turned off my alarm. Because I was sick.

Except... I'm not sick.

And I missed my first two classes.

I figured I'd make up for it by doing a lot of work in Faunce this afternoon, an idea that immediately went to hell when I turned on facebook chat. Then I had section, and came back to my room.

Where I fell asleep.

I had some really weirdly interesting dreams during this most recent nap. First I dreamt that something on my chair (my phone? A hairbrush?) was my computer. Then I dreamt that in that previous dream, I had typed weird dream-things onto my word document, and that in this dream I was reading them. I seem to recall something along the lines of "Don't become submerged in concrete. That would be a shame," being in there.

Then I dreamt several times about waking up and going to dinner. Every time I realized I was still in my chair, I'd get disoriented all over again.

Now I'm awake.

Really.

I think.

Love always,

Clara

i can't cook

I don't know whether it's the fact that I'm sleeping in an unfamiliar bed lately or what, but I've been having some crazy dreams.

Last night I dreamt that I was in a field crowded with cars, and there was a party, and I had to leave, and my parents were there? And someone was selling food from a van, or a trailer, or one of those things you see at carnivals, but I had to get to Brown, so I was trying to leave.

It was weird.

Dreams are really hard to describe.

I read a bunch today, and helped make a flourless cake. By "helped", I mean, whisked a bit, and cracked 6 eggs into a pot, managing to get shells in the mix, which Isabella then fished out with great urgency.

Just a day in the life.

Chris used to say he wouldn't trust me to make him a sandwich.

I do tend to do horrible things to sandwiches, though, so I guess it's fair.

I once had the brilliant (seeming) idea to toast my bread before making a peanut butter and jelly on it. I'm sure there's a way to do this without it being a complete failure, but I don't know that way. Did you know that peanut butter melts?

So that was a drippy mess.

I really didn't even know it was possible to mess up PB&J before that day.

One day, there will be a family relying on my skills in the kitchen, and that family might starve. I'd better marry someone who can cook. Or learn.

I do like cooking, but I do everything haphazardly. That's just my style- haphazard. And it works in a lot of ways, but I feel like cooking requires some precision or attention to detail or caring-whether-some-little-egg-shells-fall-into-the-batter. Some people breathe with precision. I'm not one of those.

Nick taught me how to marinate/grill shrimp last year. That was fun. And that didn't take much precision.

Maybe my family won't die. Or be horribly malnourished. That would be good, if I could avoid that.

Isabella's house has all of these "health-revolution" types of books in it now, due to her senior project.

I'm willing to bet none of the weight-loss-oriented books mention set-point theory. You know why? You can't make money telling people that if they're at a relatively healthy weight, and they eat in a reasonable way, they're probably going to stay that weight. I feel like culture has an idea of "good looking" which is on the thinnest end of healthy, and then an idea of "fat" which is definitely not healthy, and there is definitely a healthy range in between that sort of gets ignored except when these people are being recruited as "plus size" models, when they're not overweight.

That annoys me.

So there are all of these essentially-healthy people who think they need to lose weight to be "good looking" and it's a waste of time. And then there are actually overweight people, and I don't think they're reading books about green-foods-diets.

That's because I just assumed that all fat people are stupid.

I should stop criticizing society, when my own thoughts are so reprehensible.

But anyway, what I'm going to pretend I meant by that, is that generally if you're actually overweight, there are ways to cut down on food intake before you have to snap straight to drinking green smoothies (which, I will admit, are really good, if they're made right) with every meal. The ones who want to do that are likely eating pretty standard amounts to begin with.

This conversation just got awkward. I'm out of here.

Love always,

Clara

P.S. "Conversation"? Who the hell was I talking to?

P.P.S. "To whom the hell was I talking?" would be more grammatically correct.

lefties in canada

I had a dream last night that some of the swiss kids and I were in a band, and someone offered us a record deal or something, but we had to make it to this party in Canada that someone was throwing for us. And I was in New York City with my family, and I figured, maybe I'd take the bus to Canada, but it's hard to find a bus to Canada. I wasn't even sure I was invited to this party though, so that was sort of awkward.

Then, for some reason, I had to become left handed, or maybe my mom did and I was just accompanying her, but in any case, we were sent to left-handed-training-camp, which involved... I don't remember. Climbing up something.

We learned about a boy who didn't have a left hand or something, or he couldn't be turned upside down, and something was going on with his teeth. I was told that his conversion to left-handed-ness took a lot of dedication.

There were magazines.

Love always,Clara

crowdsourcing my college applications

Hey there, blogworld. I have a favor to ask you.
I'm trying to fill out college supplements.
Unfortunately, as soon as they ask me a question about myself, I become the most boring person on the planet and cannot think of a vaguely interesting answer.
Want to help me remember what I'm like?

The questions I really need inspiration for (that I think y'all might be able to help with)
What are three important-but-not-immediately-obvious things about me?
Also, do I take risks? Ever?
Are there five words (probably adjectives, just saying) that describe me?

I don't know the answers to these questions!

I would laugh pretty hard if some college application reader found my blog and realized all of my essays were based on the comments on this post.

Please! Comment! Help me get into college!

In other news, I had a dream last night that I got deferred from mystery college x. I woke up feel like like "okay, at least I know now," and then realized that no, I didn't know, I had almost a week to be tortured by uncertainty!

I am definitely not losing my mind.

Love always,
Clara

dreams of yellow bicycles

I had the weirdest dream last night.
There was a bit where I slid down a hill lying on my stomach, because my jacket was slick. And when I got to the bottom of that hill, I found Eleni and someone else, and they were on bikes that you couldn't start to pedal. They had to run and jump onto the bikes once they got the necessary momentum.
This all took place at a college. Apparently they'd been riding these bikes around Europe. Maybe the other person was Cath. That would almost make sense.
Then, in a completely unrelated twist, I was in the chorus room with Mr.R and I woke up right before he was about to tell a really funny joke.
That would be my luck.

Things that are awkward- When someone you don't know that well and actually dislike invites you to their birthday party.
That awkward moment just happened for about two thirds of my grade.
It was all very As-Told-By-Ginger. The birthday girl was handing out envelopes in homeroom. Except instead of being excited, everyone sort of exchanged nervous glances and slipped the envelopes into their backpacks, in hopes that it would all go away.

Love always,
Clara

TGIF

I slept in this morning. But before that, I had a really weird dream.
It had two parts. The first part was before my alarm clock went off and I realized my first class was at 12:00 today and there was no reason to get up at 7.

That first part was roughly as follows: I was at something, and I think it was supposed to be Junior Retreat, but we had this sort of talent show. So everyone was standing in this HUGE oval in this also-huge room. And this guy shows up carrying a giant polaroid camera, and I get onto it. And he runs around the room while I do something similar to a can-can. That was our talent. Can-can on a camera.

This is the second part: I am at someone's summer home somewhere, and there's a party, and I am expected to be a guest at this party, but I have also been put to work- I am to cover a board with "pearls", but these pearls are little drops of this glue-like stuff that sticks to your hands, so you have to drop the glue out of the tube wearing rubber gloves, just in case. I decide it is also necessary to do this while in the bath (because the water would also keep the stuff from sticking to my hands?). Then my sixth grade teacher walks in and I realize I'm not wearing rubber gloves, which is why I am failing so miserably at my task. He had had to do the same thing, but he finished quickly because he did it the right way, and I was clearly doing it the wrong way, and it at that moment occurred to me how impolite it was to use someone else's bath without even telling them.
My parents and I leave the party, because we're driving home with CeCe's parents, but then I realize I left my shoes inside and so I run across the front yard.
Somehow in the midst of this, someone refers to my talent show performance. I explain to them that it was a dream, even though they were there.
Also, I spent some time walking in the back gardens of wherever-the-hell-I-was.

It was really strange. I made myself wake up at 8:30 just so that I could get out of the dream.
I'm going out tonight, in a couple hours or something. It'll be sweet.

Love always,
Clara

Thoughts on napping.

I had a three hour nap this afternoon. That tells me two things-

1. I may be coming down with something

2. I will not be able to fall asleep tonight

Both of those things are really annoying, to be honest. I hadn't meant to take a nap. I've come to hate them, actually. It's like being kidnapped.

Most people say they feel better after taking a nap. I usually feel pretty crappy when I wake up. I walk around like a zombie, confused by my surroundings, for about twenty minutes, and then I HAVE to eat something, even though I'm never hungry, and then I feel ill.

Also naps give me really weird dreams. For instance, I had a dream today about the Apple tablet. In the dream I woke up and found one on my bed, and realized I'd have to keep it a secret, because Steve Jobs would be upset if he realized MacBooks like Patrick were transforming into tablets.

Love always,
Clara

Lord of the Flies?

I had this really weird dream last night.

It was at school, kind of, but everyone was always in the Preston Gym, sitting at lunch tables in rows. And someone wanted to systematically kill us all while we ate our cereal.

Katie was there, eating cereal, very calm about the whole thing. Will kept telling me to read Lord of the Flies, which in the dream I hadn't read, but in real life I have. In fact, copies of Lord of the Flies were showing up everywhere in the dream.

The people who wanted to systematically kill us all decided to do random executions by breathing fire on one arbitrary lunch table at a time. That was kind of exciting.

Also, I've had several dreams in which someone has cut off my hair lately. Do you think that's like, a symbol for something? It sounds like the sort of thing that would mean that I'm secretly in love with my mother or something.

Love always,
Clara

In my epic nap...

I had a couple dreams.

In one, there was this strange other woman in my family, like, with my dad. And I liked her well enough, but I was dismayed that he liked her more than he liked my mom. She was pretty though.

And then I was at someone's house and Jenna was there? And it was a pool party?

There were more details to these but as dreams go, I can't remember them.

Love always,
Clara

Stalking someone else.

As you may know, I like Julia Allison. So does this girl.

Legitimately though, this new york non-socialite is the reason I started blogging.

I watched 'Glee' on hulu (also because of Julia Allison) and have had an awesome a capella "Don't stop Believing" stuck in my head ever since.

It's raining.

I had this dream last night that AJ and I were going to france in a space ship. It was beautiful, space. And we were in the future when space ships had gravity and nice living rooms and whatnot, with brilliant windows to see beautiful space.

AJ was an experienced traveler. I was not. It was a peculiar dream. Lots of explosions and sparkles.

Love always,
Clara

Yikes, this is me.

And by the way, did I tell you about my dream in which I was swimming in a Roman villa and Thomas C was there, but he was a hippopotamus?

Love always,
Clara

wtf?

A combination of events has made me inclined to post this here.

Last night, I had a dream that I told someone not to leave the party. My logic for their non-departure was... particle physics.

And I think grammar was involved. The person I was speaking to understood particle physics, but hadn't realized that you could like, change the sentence structure and thus alter spacetime.

WHAT

THE

HELL?

Love always,
Clara

I charge you,

oh circadian rhythms
that you stir not up, that you stir not up, that you stir not up
that you stir not up nor awake, awake, awake, awake
my love til she please.

That is a modified version of "The Rose of Sharon" by Billings, a song we sang last year in chorus.
It seems to make sense to quote it right now because I am that tired.
But sleep is simply not happening anymore.

I had a dream about trying to order pizza in an airport (before catching a plane, of course) and you had to use your passport number to do it, and Taylor D's dad was there.
That should tell you something about the last couple days.

In my brain it is almost noon.
This is not cool.

Non placet mihi.

I am such a latin nerd it's insane.
It's actually a good thing I'm a nerd like this, because I'm fairly certain all the colleges I'm exploring this week love nerdiness to some extent.
I hope.

Yikes. College kind of freaks me out. Just because I'm still not sure I know what I want in one.
But I know I want nerdiness. And friendliness. And to some extent I want it to be pretty, just because people are really affected by their surroundings and so living around ugly buildings and such would depress me.

Love always,
Clara

Strange dream

I had this dream that I lived next door to my Aunt Ellen and all my cousins. But we never visited them. So my mom put our house on a bus and moved it to knock down the wall between our garden and theirs. So they were all sitting on lounge chairs in their garden which was now attached to ours, and there was a skull and crossbones spraypainted on the ground. Sketch.

Then Prom took place at my house. Which was weird, and I really wanted everyone to leave.

I think Vivian was there. I think I introduced her to my crazy cousins.

Love always,
Clara

Dreams between the hours of 6 and 9

I had this dream that a person pretended to be stuck to me so that he could turn invisible.

Wait, what?

And then someone said I had a hot date, and I thought they meant the invisible person stuck to me, but they really meant my art teacher (who was an invention of the dream) who was at that moment cross dressing. And pregnant.

Then--I suppose this was another dream--I was at our summer place (super small maryland town).

And there were actually waves at the thing we call the "beach".

Then I played with Aunt Kathy's camera. And she had binoculars too, which I basically stole to spy on our neighbors playing dodgeball. Some of them were in like, white puffy things, and others were in really nice clothes.

And then I realized I recognized a bunch of people from school, and I hadn't realized that they were friends with my neighbors.

Then one person who was from school but I don't remember who (probably another invention of my mind, but I remember wondering "how does that person from school know my neighbors?") walked over and stuck something on my back. And the thing was a newspaper clipping of cool things about Williams. It was a nice gesture.

Then the person and my sister and I went for a walk, and we wanted to all lie down in the grass at this L-shaped park, but some other people decided they wanted to play lacrosse.

Except that the shoes they were wearing were too big, and the lacrosse balls they were using were too small, and everything was dangerous for someone lying down in the middle of their field.

Except that it was OUR field.

I explained to the school person that I got my independence here. He said he got his in atlanta, which doesn't make much sense.

I know when this dream happened because it was after I woke up to my alarm clock and discovered we didn't have school today, but before I woke up once and for all (ten minutes ago).

Before 6 o clock, I was having a dream about something with chorus, and Summer was trying to organize a chorus dinner. I had to pick up the phone to get details on this dinner, but as soon as I was about to pick up the phone, my alarm went off. It was quite disappointing.

Love always,
Clara

Like, four dreams

So I was trying to convince someone from california to stay where I was for one more day. Involving camp. But it was also exam week, and my extra day had to do with my chem exam, and I wanted him to stay so that I could see him again.

And for some reason unknown to me, a person who has never been to my camp, but heard a lot about it, was there, and I kind of really wanted that person to see me with the other person.

And someone was trying to use alternating fruits to explain why it's just fine to leave camp, and how we were all just afraid of various things, but I jumped in with some blackberries  and blueberries and asserted that it was literally the best place on earth, so why leave?

And then I was hanging out with Blair Waldorf at the nice mall and we were having dinner with Chuck and his two really hot brothers. But she was pissed that they were there so we bailed. On our way out we walked through this place where they were playing Beatles music, and she told me we were going to go to a bar. I told her we were both driving.

Then later she realized that Chuck (who was now Edward Cullen) was going to propose to her because he had a thirteen-cent gold coin. So she was excited until Stewie (from family guy) took his American-Idol related angst out on her finger with some string and an x-acto knife. Nothing serious, but she had a paper cut where an engagement ring would go.

American Idol? It had something to do with a building with windows. People would talk to each other through these windows. I don't know.

Then, Dominique and I were starting a business in which we would put CDs into apples... because everyone would want to buy that! So I went and bought some apples I guess, but then my dad stole them. He wasn't my dad really though, he was the dad from that "curtis" comic strip.

Then my mom and I tried to drive to the beach. We wound up going through new york. And I guess when I got there I tried to set up a like, booking service, but realized I'd opened before I'd made any contacts. And I was in this little pink and yellow hut-tent like they have at the beach. And a woman was angry with me.

Then I partnered with an existing booking agency, and Chloe was there, and two emotional black men were going to have to fit themselves into a small space, but apparently they were good at it. We were still in that hut-tent thing.

And a man wanted us to walk to this place with 35 foot waves, when I really just wanted to get to wherever we were going. My mom was fine with it though... she has no diligence. 

I just woke up; therefore it's all fresh in my mind.

Weird weird weird dreams.

Love always,
Clara

I need to write this down...

... mostly so that I can stop telling random people about it (which is my method of remembering things).

I had a dream the other night. I was at this place in a HUGE room with dark wood walls, like a cabin. And I was with this girl, her name was like "Carilee" or "Candie" or something, and we were roommates? And subsequently we were best friends, although I was unsure of the whole thing.

So there was like, a carnival sort of in the big room, and a line for best friend ice cream or something. You had to stand in a really long line, and then you and your best friend signed your names and they gave you ice cream.

Candie, being a bad influence, decided we didn't have to stand in line, and no one would know.

So we did.

Then we were walking around with the ice cream and in the line I saw a number of sophomores including Tom and I think Phillip. So we started talking to them, kind of bragging about how we didn't have to stand in line for ice cream.

Then this fat authoritative woman asked whether we'd waited in line for our ice cream. We said yes. I had a camera in my bag. She wanted to see pictures of us in line. I didn't have any. WE WERE DISCOVERED.

Then she made us stand in line (and NOT get any ice cream).

That was my dream.

Love always,
Clara