Conscientious eating

All my life, I was able to eat whatever I wanted because I was dancing so often my metabolism was on par with the speed of light. I was the vegetarian who only ate macaroni and cheese. Now I can't do that anymore, but I've spent so long disregarding what I put into my body, it's hard to shake the habit. My skin is really greasy, and that's unusual. I suspect it has something to do with what I'm eating. Something's gotta give.

I've decided to write down what I eat all day. The Smith dining website also lets you check the calories of the food in the dining hall, but I'm not going to do that because it's excessive. Besides, counting calories reminds me of that awful book Wintergirls, about teenage anorexia. No thank you. I'll write down what I eat, which should make me slightly more aware of what I'm consuming. My Monroe also makes it hard for me to eat between meals, because whenever I do, I have to rinse out my mouth with saltwater. It's not that much of a production, but it's annoying when I'm doing something else and have to get up, rinse, and come back. Like when I was watching Thor with Paulina, Emily and Josie. I had some cocoa and immediately had to go rinse my mouth, and then they felt obligated to pause the movie, even though I'd already seen it (and hadn't liked it that much, anyway). Plus, we were all sitting on Paulina's bed and when I got up I disrupted the whole seating arrangement. It's a small inconvenience, but I don't like bothering other people with my own stupid style decision.

Plus, writing down what I eat will finally let me figure out just how many pears I eat every day. I know I'm curious.

So today, to start things off right, I ate at Gillett. It was pretty nice, I guess. Sometimes I like eating vegan or gluten-free food, just out of curiosity. My vegan lunch was actually delicious, and now I know that I like Brussels sprouts!

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Finished The Odyssey in seven hours. And they laughed when I sat down at the piano!

...as Alice can attest, that's not an unreasonable reaction.

On a completely different note, I'd like to discuss how awesome Spotify is. My former boss had it, and I had to get it because it's so damn awesome. I love music the way I love oxygen--I must have it, and boy do I miss it when there isn't any. However, because I believe in the integrity of an album and also I because I don't download, I don't have a lot of music. I listen to the same albums over and over (this past winter, the only album I listened to was Volume One by She & Him) and Youtube, but now with Spotify, I don't have to! It's also tremendously helpful with 40's Radio Hour, which I'm going to reference constantly even though I think maybe three people are reading this, at least two of whom have heard me talk about this for weeks, if not months. I'm attempting to learn all these songs by listening to them, because as previously mentioned, my piano skills leave a lot to be desired.

I have to say, though, the best part of Spotify is that it enables me to make a bajillion playlists and I don't have to use the same songs because all the music ever is available for my use. It is magical.

Today's song: "That Old Black Magic," Louis Prima & Keely Smith

I am shameless

...which is why I emailed the Vibes asking why they didn't let me in. I honestly didn't expect a response, but they emailed me back and told me I sing with too much vibrato and didn't blend well with the larger group.

OK then! These are things I can work on!

Marty's influence coming out

Aaand I didn't make it into the Vibes, either. I know, faithful readers. I know you're upset for my sake, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of depressed. But on the plus side, now I'll have plenty of time to work on 40's Radio Hour, Alice's and my new podcast, coming soon to a weberverse near you! I'll keep you posted. I know you're all hanging on the edges of your respective seats.

Verdict number one

THREE PEOPLE came to Groove callbacks and I STILL didn't make it in.

I can think of some choice expletives I'd like to use in reference to Groove, but I won't because Kelly's in it and I don't want to be mean about her, so instead I'll just sit here and stew.

Fucking Groove.

I MADE THIS FOR YOU!!!

OK, no, to be honest, I made it for me. But isn't it pretty? I'm enormously proud.

Current score: 2 to 1

But I made the callbacks for Groove and the Vibes! The callbacks are back-to-back (Groove: 6-8, Vibes: 8-10) so I'm not sure how that'll play out, but I made it! Go me!

Groove also told me to pick a higher, more contemporary song and to be more confident. I felt pretty confident but maybe that didn't show, and the song thing completely makes sense. I sang "Someone to Watch Over Me" for my first audition, and this is a group that mostly sings contemporary songs. Totes reasonable. So I think I'm going to sing "The Hat" by Ingrid Michaelson. This should be interesting; I've never been to a callback before. I wonder what I'll have to do.

Got the call at 11:11 last night

The Poofs say thanks but no thanks. Oh well. Didn't have high hopes for that one, anyway.

Mindsplosion

Also, today I found out that this girl in my history class (who will be my friend, I hope, cuz she's mad cool) graduated from the same school as my ex-girlfriend.

What is this shit. I thought I left the six degrees of separation back in Buffalo, where they belong!

Soulfege

Yesterday, I auditioned for Groove, and today I auditioned for the Smiffenpoofs and the Vibes. I did not plan on auditioning for the Poofs; Paulina said she was going there and I misheard her and went along, then figured, what the hell. I'm still going to audition for the Smithereens tomorrow, though.

There are those who are highly scornful of Smithies who audition for all the a capella groups, but this strikes me as sort of dumb. Where's the harm? At least you get used to auditioning that way. I used to be a nervous wreck before auditions, but around senior year, I sort of got over that. Not sure why, not sure how. I only know it's a good thing I did, because if not, I'd be just a bundle of nerves right now.

The auditions themselves went OK. I'm not great at singing the third of a chord (the last time I sang soprano 2 was sophomore year, what do you expect?) but the rhythms are a breeze and I learn melodies pretty quickly, so that's definitely a good thing. Of all my auditions, I think Groove went the best, and the Poofs and Vibes were about the same. Neither of them was as smooth as that first audition, though. Maybe it's because I know Kelly and it was comforting to know one of the people that was judging me, maybe beginner's luck. Guess I'll have to see. The callbacks are on Thursday and I should be hearing on Wednesday about that. I'll keep you posted.

Freeze frame

I live my life for its picturesque moments. Yesterday, I was wearing a white button down shirt with light purple and black stripes, sitting in the dining room of my house, drinking water out of a wineglass and reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and I felt extraordinarily classy. The best moments in life are the moments where you feel like Holly Sturgis.

Reacting to the Past

(I wish I was taking that class. My first-year seminar isn't the best.)

I got an email from Cypress the other day. It was written in a style very characteristic of Cypress, and made me miss her. I tried to burn as few bridges as possible before leaving New York, but by the end of high school I was losing interest in saying, "We'll stay in touch, right?" I wanted to move on with my life. There were lots of people with whom I wanted--and still do, for that matter--to stay in touch, but when I told them that, I got the impression that they didn't really believe me.

Since reading Cypress' email, I've been thinking a lot about the friends I had in Buffalo and what it was like there. I just got caught up on Kathryn's blog, and several people have been checking in on me lately (thanks to Facebook birthday posts), and I just keep considering friendships in general. I know I value the friendships I had in Buffalo, but the question is, how much? When I go back for Thanksgiving, who will I want to see? Any of the people that graduated with me? My friends who are still in high school?

My sisters took the "Off to college-- goodbye forever!" approach towards many of their casual acquaintances from high school, so I'm really going on my own experiences here. There are certainly some people I'd like to see, but I've always been reluctant to let go of friendships.

And on the other hand, what about my friendships here? I feel like I have a lot more friends in one place than I've ever had before, and I really appreciate all of my friends, in a way that's different from how I appreciated my high school friends. There, it was almost like clinging desperately to a life preserver, finding anyone who wasn't one of the gross popular kids and spending time with them, even if you weren't really close with them. I hate being dependent on people, so often in high school, I'd just be alone because I didn't want to rely on anyone else. Here, I feel I have much more control over who I spend my time with, and I spend my time with them because I actually enjoy the undiluted pleasure of their company. Here, being alone is more a personal decision than an active rejection.

I've heard rumors that some people say, "I'm happy. I have friends. My life is good," and just leave it at that. I'll never be one of those people.

Celebrations and joy!

Today was my birthday, and it was really nice! I had my favorite class (Physiology of Behavior) and got a Monroe, which was significantly less painful than I thought it would be (at least when the actual piercing occurred. The aftermath is quite a different story, in more ways than one.) and looks even cooler than I thought it would. I got an early start on my bad decision-making; when my mother sees this thing, she is going to faint. But I like it.

Anyway. After that, I had my first real chorus rehearsal, which was delightful. It feels magnificent to be singing again. Alice and Julia are in chorus as well, and when rehearsal ended, we went to the Quad, where I was presented with a birthday cake that all my friends had helped make! Why they chose to bring it to the Quad when they baked it on lower Elm is something of a mystery, but I don't care. They baked me a cake! And it was gluten-free, so all of my friends could eat it! And it was a carrot cake, which is my favorite kind, a fact that I had mentioned and immediately forgot about. I was honestly amazed that my friends had just magically known my favorite kind of cake. My obliviousness is really unprecedented. So we ate the cake in the campus center, and good times were had by all. Sitting on the green couches, surrounded by good friends who have no idea what I was like in preschool, enjoying gluten-free cake. These are the moments you preserve in amber.

Today's song: "Stormy Weather," Lena Horne (Subject matter not related to how my day went. Just a good song to go with a good day.)

Style

Girls at Smith dress really well. On average, I mean. People have amazing style, and I'm quite envious. I always try to dress nicer, but I don't for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is an issue that I've been pondering for quite some time now. It's not really an issue. It's more like having a weird little tuft of hair that just sticks up, and usually you don't think about it because it doesn't bear thinking about, but every so often you look in the mirror and think, Tuft. You bother me on certain isolated occasions. (This is not to be confused with my thoughts regarding Taft.)

Anyway. The tuft-thought goes something like this. I do not identify as femme, but I dress and act very much like you'd expect a femme to dress and act. You'd think I could just leave my thought process there, but no.

I'm not comfortable saying I'm femme, but on the other hand I'm just...not butch. Eirie and I had a conversation about this over the weekend. She listed ways in which I am butch (I split firewood, don't wear makeup, don't really wear dresses, have had a buzz cut on more than one occasion) and ways in which I am femme (Ballet. Nuff said.) I know it's a spectrum, and you don't have to identify as either if you don't want to. I'm really not sure why I think about this so much, because it's not like the answer's even that important. I like pretty things like dresses and earrings and long hair, but I don't like them on me. Most of the time. I do own a few not-super-frilly dresses that I wear, and I also used to do drag all the time, which I'd like to get back into. I used to be pretty good at it, actually, which is definitely something to be proud of.

Today I tried to dress nicely because the other girls in my French class (Is girls the right word here? Ladies? Young women? Maidens?) all dress super chic, and last class I was a little sloppy. Whenever I know people are going to be looking nice, I always feel the urge to look nice as well, so it's really a good thing. My cousin Sara has singlehandedly raised the bar for the entire young generation in my family. To give you an example of what I mean by "super chic," there's one girl who wore a really well-cut polka dot dress, black high heels, and a pearl set to class today. That's what we're talking. Super classy. I wore this weird frilly shirt thing that I always forget how much I hate till I've been wearing it for a few hours. It makes me uncomfortable-- not like "itchy," more like "I cannot reconcile my wardrobe choice with my inner self." But I endured. Because I guess I thought I looked good? Except... I didn't think I looked that good.

Why am I making myself wear things I hate? This doesn't make any sense. Maybe I should just wear the clothes I'm comfortable in and stop trying to predict what image I'm projecting to other people. That's just silly, y'all.

Today's music: "Moment's Notice," John Coltrane

The importance of eating food

Helen told me to post more (twice in one day isn't enough? Guess she's used to Tumblr, where people seem to post every five seconds. Silly Helen!) so I thought I'd share this tidbit with you. Since arriving at Smif, I've become addicted to pears. I eat them for my supper, I eat them for my lunch, and if I had a million pears I'd eat them all at once and get a really bad stomachache. It's weird because I never liked pears that much before college. In fact, I actively disliked them. (An incident with a worm. Let's just leave it at that.) But now I eat pears like it's my job. A delicious, juicy job.

However, I took a pear from the Emerson dining hall and put it in my bag for later, and it exploded all over my sweater and a library book. Not a good thing.

Before I left for Smif, Caroline told me to try all the dining halls, which is pretty good advice, so I followed it. (This is apparently an attitude Alice and I don't share; I basically do whatever people tell me to as long as it's not obviously stupid or dangerous, but when people tell Alice to do something, she becomes less inclined to actually do it.) I still haven't been to all the dining halls, but so far I like King/Scales the best because it reminds me of the dining hall from Gilmore Girls and has really excellent food, followed by Lamont, which I've only been to once and I had to eat and run in order to make an advising appointment on time (which for me, means 15 minutes early) but was attractive and had good food, and Chapin, which is good because it's centrally located and close enough to the Quad that it's easy for all my friends to meet up there. I eat at Cutter a lot because it's also centrally located, but I'm a little wary of the food because I know two girls that had allergic reactions after eating there. Chase/Duckett (affectionately known as Chuckett by my Baldwinite peeps out there) is nice and very close by, but it's got a very low ceiling that bothers me a lot more than it should. Low ceilings remind me of prison cells. And I don't like eating at Tyler because no matter how hard I'm trying to turn the other cheek, I'm a little too Sicilian to be a really good Catholic. It certainly is uphill work.

Reading is sexy!

So, I'm trying to get over this delightful bout of nausea and exhaustion not by sleeping, but by reading Emily's old blog, and she mentioned a valid point. I read the same books over and over. And it's time to stop. I usually read books with lots of atmosphere and fairly upbeat plots, but I'm getting a little tired of that now. (About time, right? It's only been nearly eighteen years.) What I started getting into at Unirondack was reading classics--I read Jane Eyre for the first time this summer, and it was absolutely fantastic, so maybe I'll just read some more Bronte and Austen. Josie and Abeer told me a little while ago to read Emma for a nice light read, and my mother was super jazzed when I started reading Anna Karenina, but I had to return it before I was done reading.

So I think I'll make a reading list, then. Keep myself to a program. Of course, once classes get started in earnest, I won't have any time to read (especially since I'm actually fangirling about Physiology of Behavior. Watch me do a ton of nonrequired work/independent research for that class.) but the list will give me some direction.

Lily's Reading List:

1. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
2. Emma, Jane Austen
3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte

Three is good to start.

Five hour date

Five AWESOME hours. I'm hella sleepy right now but it was totes worth it.

Today's song: "Judas," Lady Gaga (once again, all me.)

Panic panic panic

Normally, I don't mind waiting. I think of myself as a very patient person, and I'm not too bad at putting things out of my head. For example, not two feet away from me there is a package that I can't open till Wednesday, and that thought doesn't bother me at all.

But I have half an hour left to wait and I'm making myself insane. I hope tonight doesn't involve me going into cardiac arrest because my heart is doing something weird that I'm sure isn't healthy.

Today's song: "Nervous Breakdown," Wanda Jackson (Music influence by me. I'm addicted to Wanda Jackson's voice and especially her latest album.)

Separate but equal

Both of my sisters went to the college I am currently attending. While I don't see this as a problem, I am still very determined to make my Smif experience unique. However, I will be accepting their advice, which is excellent. This blog will document my college adventures, as I boldly go where thousands of other women and two of my closest relatives have gone before. But it'll be different with me. Right?

.....

Right. Good answer.

So, step one of asserting my differences: I will not be taking Logic 100. This was an inadvertent step. I definitely intended to take the class, but it conflicts with Physiology of Behavior, which I need to take so I can ascertain whether my destiny is to become a Neuro major. Today, I talked to an upperclassman on my floor about Neuro and she was really enthusiastic about the course and said my professor is awesome. However, said conversation took place while she was very drunk, so I won't bank on her word.

Step two (I'm probably going to lose track of these steps or just lose interest in the system, fyi): Today, I auditioned for the advanced ballet class. Ballet is not an interest my sisters have ever really cottoned to, although I bet they'd both be really good if they tried. C is much much stronger than I am, which I think is more important than flexibility, and E tackles everything she does with such intense drive, I'm sure she would force ballet to bend to her will. (However, this strategy never worked for me.) But anyway, I think the audition went fairly well. As per usual, I was the only Cecchetti trained dancer in the room (You can always tell. Vaganova versus Cecchetti is like a chair with claw feet versus the kind of minimalist chairs you always see at Ikea: sleek and utilitarian.), but I didn't mind because a) that made me stand out more, b) Vaganova annoys the living hell out of me, and c) it was a pleasure to be dancing in a real class again, regardless of context. I've missed class.

It's very late (for me; I usually go to bed at 11:30 but my plans fell through) but I'm not tired at all, so I think I'll wrap up this post and compose more playlists in an ineffectual attempt to calm down the butterflies in my stomach. Occupational hazard of lunch in the garden--not that I'm complaining; I wouldn't have been anywhere else for the world.

Today's song: "When My Boy Walks Down the Street," The Magnetic Fields. (Influenced by E.)