Buy Me Flowers

I work in event services. It's such a rewarding job. The things I do and the people I work with are engaging and I leave the office everyday feeling like I did something important for people. Not all entry level positions are lucky enough to be like that.

There are also more trivial reasons to love my job, like a (seemingly) bottomless candy bowl and a coworker who likes to play Earth Wind and Fire from her desktop computer a few feet away from me.

Today I discovered another trivial reason to love my job. Floral arrangements. Today an event that our office has been working on happened and afterwards the client came into our office with a BEAUTIFUL (and pricey) floral arrangement left over from the event.

I sat at the front desk blushing like I had just won the Miss America title. I was giddy like a middle schooler on her first date. I melted into a pool of giggling female stereotypes.

Getting flowers is like being tickled. You can't really do it to yourself. Occasionally I do buy flowers for myself, but there is nothing, NOTHING, like getting handed a floral arrangement unexpectedly. Even if it is for your whole office and not just you.

I think it is a CRISIS that people don't receive flowers more often. I never give people flowers but I totally should. And everyone should buy me flowers.

I know my birthday is far off, so no one can say I am fishing for presents, but just imagine if my friends bought be a bouquet of flowers for my birthday. Depending on how many of my friends remembered my birthday, I could end up with dozens of bouquets of flowers.

I could scatter them around my apartment and feel like a famous actress after opening night of her next hit show.

I could light candles, pour myself a glass of red wine, and throw the petals all over my bed, like some sort of trollop.

Flowers are like instant fantasies. Suddenly I am caught in an imaginary version of my life, involving dark haired lovers with thick rimmed glasses and even thicker accents.

Suddenly I am wearing pink lipstick and kitten heels like Audrey Hepburn, listening to jazz while drawing on very thin, arched eyebrows.

Suddenly I am living in the country, wearing a bandanna in my long blonde hair, the radio on, waiting for my strapping husband to come home for dinner.

Suddenly I've got gentlemen callers at all times of the day and night, my silk robe slipping off my shoulder as I wave them away, smiling coyly.

Now someone go buy me some flowers.

The Butterfly

Pick a flower and it will die, sitting it a vase. It will shrivel until you wash it down the sink.

Watch waves crash along the shore for as long as it takes to understand that a wave is not a singular thing.

Bottle me up, cage me, find my essence and concentrate it. Then, if I had wings, I'd lose my flight.

Do not ask a monarch to pin itself to a cork board for observation. Breed it to forget the sun.

I am the cat who sits at the door but cannot decide to go in or go out.

Do not command a dog not to bark, a horse not to run, a man not to cry.

The wind cries, the ocean weeps, the mountain roars rage and revenge.

I can tell you my secrets but not their meaning.

If I had wings I would not be afraid of falling.

My courage was pinned to a cork board.

Senior Year

I've been sick all week. It's given me a lot of time to think. And when I say think, I mean watch countless episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Doctor Who-- sprinkling in the occasional rom-com and nap.

I am finally starting to feel better. Still, I am spending my Saturday in my apartment eating hash browns, watching tv, and reminiscing about high school.

You don't realize how far you've come until you remember all the shit you had to put up with from age 14 to 18. Oh how times have changed.

Four years ago I was on the verge of my senior year of high school.

Now I am on the verge of my senior year of college. Well, when I say verge, I've still got seven weeks of summer so...

High school. What the heck, amiright?

If you are in high school: Right now you will think this is the best time of your life. Or you will be frustrated that it is not the best time of your life. Try to embrace the moment either way.

Because I am here, four years later, to tell you that it's not really all that great of a period of time.

And if you are my age and you are reading this and thinking I am wrong: I'm here to tell you that in fact you are wrong. You are also probably exactly the kind of person in high school that made it not ideal for me. So, thanks.

There will always be bitches and bros in high school. If you are one or were one of those bitches or bros, please stop. Because in high school the people who are like me thought you were so cool-- cooler than us by far. Congrats. But now, after high school, the people who are like me just think you are dumb and/or fat and/or arrogant and/or washed up. But we most definitely are cooler than you now.

I'm not friends with many people from high school. I'm not even facebook friends with many people from high school-- and you know that means they are low, low down on my priority list.

Who are those people who I went to high school with? I don't think I ever knew them. I spent four very vital years sitting next to people who never gave me a second glance the day after we graduated. Those people who I walked past in the halls everyday, who at our five/ten/fifteen year high school anniversary I probably won't even recognize. I have no idea who they are.

From my graduating class, who knew anything about me? Like really anything important about me?

I thought senior year of high school was going to be epic. And it was in my mind, at that time, pretty epic. But...

Look how far I've come. Maybe the people who went to high school with me can't see it. I can see it. And I know they've probably come far as well.

My senior year of college is going to be epic. Maybe in four years I will think it's nothing compared with where I will be then, but that's okay. As long as there is continued progress.