In its original form, this meme came from Do Thy Research, but I modified it somewhat to make it more interesting.

Seven things to do before I die:
1-6. See previous post
7. Dye my hair some random color (like pink)

Seven things I cannot do
1. Dance
2. Fly
3. Understand the point of football
4. Jump off things (as in bungee jumping, high diving boards, bridges, etc)
5. See those 3-D pictures that you stare at until a deer or four-leaf-clover appears
6. Improvise
7. Flirt

Seven things I say most often:
1. I feel like...
2. Why am I in grad school?
3. Yay tea!
4. I need a nap.
5. No, [fill in relative's name], I don't have a boyfriend (and thank you so much for asking. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice papercut...)
6. (assortment of various movie quotes)
7. &*%$ popups!

Seven books I love:
See list to your right

Seven movies I watch over and over again:
1. Moulin Rouge
2. Anne of Green Gables
3. Anne of Avonlea
4. Cyrano de Bergerac
5. Bedazzled
6. All the Mystery Science Theaters.
7. Romeo and Juliet (the old one)

My seven most vivid memories
1. When I was in elementary school--like fourth or fifth grade, we would always carpool with this other family whose daughter, Kristin, was a year younger than me, except on piano lesson day, when we would go home separately. Well, one piano lesson day, we asked Kristin's dad, Tad, if she could come over after school and play. He agreed and during Cole's piano lesson, Kristin and I decided to see if Mom would notice if we snuck Kristin home without telling her. When the back hatch of the minivan was open and mom wasn't looking, Kristin jumped in among our backpacks and lunch bags and covered herself with a brown plaid blanket. When we got home, Mom was preoccupied, so we got Kristin out of the car without her noticing, begged Mom to let us go take care of something "really important"outside, then hightailed it to the back of the property where we played in the creek all afternoon, forgetting our little deception completely. A few hours later, Tad called to see when he should come pick her up, Mom was clueless, panic ensued, and Cole, Devon, and Kristin were all given a very stern talking to (somewhat tempered by Mom and Tad's inability to keep a perfectly straight face).

2. We've always canned lots of fruits and veggies in the summer, and since I've been old enough to help, you can always find me snapping beans, peeling pears, and pitting cherries. My favorite, though, is canning peaches. I remember one year the peaches were absolutely beautiful: we'd haul a crate of them in from the garage fridge, drop them one by one in a pot of boiling water, watch them bounce in the bubbles for a moment, then spoon them out and slide off the skin in one slick piece. Biting into those peaches was sheer heaven--hot outside and cold inside, juice running down your chin, sweet as candy...I think I ate as many as I canned that year.

3. Three and a half years ago I came home one afternoon to the news that my dad had had a heart attack. I remember driving my sisters to the Corvallis hospital, trying to chatter casually about random things so the girls--especially Brenna, who was only 9--wouldn't be too scared, while holding back the panic churning in my own stomach. Geron, quiet and pale in the back seat; Brenna in the front, answering my silly questions, wanting to believe it was all ok. Trying to keep the needle at 55 mph. Goosebumps that wouldn't go away even after I turned off the AC. Trying to pray but never getting past "Oh God. Oh God." It's funny that I don't even remember the moment when we finally heard that he'd come out of surgery ok--I only remember the waiting.

4. My sophomore year of college, I was in a play with several students a couple years older than me, whom I idolized. One night after rehearsal, three of them invited me to go to the hot springs and of course I accepted. I was just thrilled to be in their presence for the whole 3-hour drive (they listen to Andrea Bocelli--how sophisticated!) but when we got to the hot springs I forgot about them entirely. We walked through six-inch snow a couple hundred meters to the springs, which were completely natural--just rock, sand, and water. We stripped down to our swimsuits and climbed into the pools. There were no lights or anything else manmade within sight. It was about 2am and the night was perfectly clear. Huge snowy mountains rose up on every side, and every few moments the steam would be blown aside by a light breeze and reveal the most breathtaking sky of stars. The only sounds were the trickling springs and our own whispered voices. I remember thinking over and over that this was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen, and it still is.

5. Every year from 1st to 8th grade I was chosen to go to a speech meet held by ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International, I think) and recite a poem or speech in a competition. My eighth grade year, however, the packet of information arrived late, with only two weeks to go until the meet. It was my last year, though, and I wasn't about to give up my last chance to go. I picked a poem--something about about a little boy who learns to be kind, I believe--about 2 pages long, written in rhyming couplets. I memorized frantically until the meet, and when it was my turn to recite, I stood in front of a classroom of judges, contestants, and parents, repeated about half of the poem...and got stuck. Completely stuck. Can't-remember-a-single-word-in-the-English-language stuck. My training in performance prohibited me from leaving the stage, though, so as the seconds ticked by I just stood there--wide-eyed, face and neck getting hotter and hotter, enduring the achingly sympathetic gazes of everyone else in the room, staring at the tiles on the floor and the red shoes of the girl in the front row, watching the judges in the back making marks on their papers, and pawing through my brain for the next line, but finding nothing except terrifying blankness, like a whiteboard that has just been wiped clean. Finally I came up with a line from a bit later in the poem, and so continued from there until I mercifully reached the end and could go sit down. According to the judges, the time I had been silent was something like 1 min, 23 secs.

6. My grandmas and mom came to visit me at NNU for Mother/Daughter weekend when I was a freshman, and one night I dragged them to the English Evening--an event where senior English majors present their senior projects. I don't know what put it into my head to go--I was still an Elementary Ed major at the time--maybe I was intrigued by those crazies who studied what they enjoyed rather than picking a viable career. In any case, we showed up to the tiny classroom where the event was being held, four strangers in what I didn't yet realize was a very tightly-knit department. The room was sweltering and the itchy fabric of the chairs irritated my legs. Still, I listened in awe to the presentations of these unknown seniors--one on MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind, a few of original poetry or stories, one on the Canterbury Tales, and others I don't remember. What I do remember is absolute fascination at the kinds of things that could be said and written about the books I knew. (Also a vague sense of unease that my mom and grandmas were probably bored to death--I did realize that not everyone would find the event as stimulating as I did.) I think that perhaps this was the day I first wanted to become an English major--although I didn't admit it until awhile later.

7. One Fourth of July (I honestly don't remember how old I was--maybe 12?), our friends, the Bowens, came over for fireworks. Cole and the Bowen boys were lighting those ground bloom spinners and throwing them up in the air to watch them spin wildly on their way down. Cole threw one and when it landed, it bounced a couple of times in the gravel and landed inside our hedge--a row of mature 5-foot junipers that were especially dry that year. It didn't take long for the dry dead wood inside the plants to light up and spread. However, since only the dry brush underneath the green was burning, the only evidence of fire was the crackling sound, the billowing smoke, and a faint glow deep in the hedge. The glow and smoke spread right and left, and everyone leapt into action. "It's on fire! Grab the hoses!" yelled my dad. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" screamed my brother. "It's heading for the house!" cried my mother. The moms grabbed for the babies. The dads and older kids scrambled for hoses and after a few frantic minutes the fire was contained to a few smoldering bushes. And that was the end of the fireworks for that night.

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Thursday, January 05, 2006