2018 Revival + Midnights

Hey friends! Did you miss me? I kind of stepped away from blogging last year and I got all sorts of wrapped up in other things. Like, sitting on my living room floor and watching my rabbit run around. And drawing webcomics. YEAH GUYS I HAVE WEBCOMICS YOU COULD BE FOLLOWING. They are: Kat Bites (which is a slice of life jokey sort of thing about, well, me, existing in the world) and Here's What Happened (which is a cute lil' queer love story about two friends who fall in love).

Okay. Self promotion over. Sort of. The point is: I got wrapped up in a lot of things last year. There was the sitting on the floor stuff, there was the webcomic stuff, there was binge-watching Nothing Much To Do and Lovely Little Losers on YouTube, there were a couple of travel-excursions, there were two novels that I wrote (holla!), and, well, you get it. Life happened.

But I'm writing this today because...(I'm imagining that elipses as a drumroll, what about you?)...I'm REVIVING this BLOG for 2018. WOOHOO.

Before, this blog was a little bit of everything. Little life updates. Poetry and prose. A tutorial or two. Lists. Opinion pieces.

It's still going to be all of that, probably, but it's going to be a little bit more focused because...

I'M TURNING THIS INTO A BOOK BLOG.

Are you guys excited? I'm excited. My game plan is to post once a week (I'm thinking on Wednesdays, how do you feel about Wednesdays?) and talk about a whole host of bookish things. This will start in 2018.

"Wait," You ask, scratching your head, "it's not 2018, though? And it isn't Wednesday..."

I know, I know, I know. BUT...I thought I'd re-emerge a little bit early because...

One series I'm thinking of doing is called...(drumroll drumroll drumroll)...

Cook Your Way Through YA

It's basically going to be recipes and things based on different YA books/short stories. And my all-time favorite author, Rainbow Rowell, (hey, Rainbow, if you're reading this, you're really pretty and thank you for writing all those wonderful books!) has a beautiful book called Almost Midnight which is comprised of a short story called "Midnights" and a novella called "Kindred Spirits." It's adorable and lovely and wonderful.

AND: the short story "Midnights" takes the reader through the moments leading up to midnight on New Years Eve for one group of friends, several years in a row. It's adorable and lovely and if you can't your hands on a copy of Almost Midnight, it's also in an anthology of YA Holiday Stories called My True Love Gave To Me which was edited by Stephanie Perkins and is full of wonderful wintery love stories.

So! I thought I would start a couple of days early with a "Cook Your Way Through YA: Midnights."

Since this story takes place at a New Year's Eve party, I thought we'd start off with two party foods. In "Midnights," our protagonists, Mags and Noel, spend their New Years Eves at Alicia's house, where Alicia's mom makes "the best chex mix" (or so claims Mags). So, I wrangled my mom (who I think makes the best chex mix) into helping me make our party foods. Chex Mix, of course, and Muddy Buddies (which are a NYE staple, in my opinion.)

Aw, so cute. Okay. So, we're going to start with the Chex Mix! Here's what you'll need: 

• 3 cups of Rice Chex, 3 cups of Wheat Chex, and 3 cups of Corn Chex
• 1 cup of nuts (we used an assortment including pecans, cashews, peanuts, and walnuts) (don't use tree nuts if you're going to be feeding your Chex Mix to the male lead of our story, Noel, because he's allergic)
• 1 cup of pretzels (pro-tip: if you insist on doing the rod pretzels, break them in half first)
• 1 cup pita chips (we used garlic parmesan but it probably doesn't matter)
• 6 tbsps butter
• 2 tbsps worcestercshire sauce
• 1 1/2 tsps seasoned salt
• 3/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder

You'll want to preheat your oven to 250 Farenheit.

Then, just...dump a bunch of stuff into a sheet-pan-thing.

So, you're going to mix the cereals, chips, pretzels, and nuts together in your sheet/pan/thing.

 

In a small sauce pan, melt your butter. Then, add in your worcestershire sauce, onion powder, garic powder, and seasoned salt. This picture on the left features one of my mom's favorite cooking utensils: a Dr. Dreadful Measuring Spoon. One side is 1/2 tsp, the other is 1 tsp. It's super handy. And it came from a Dr. Dreadful kit that taught you how to make little monsters and stuff. Anyway, it's cool and super handy and if you want to get yourself one you have to score yourself a Dr. Dreadful kit which probably means returning to the early 2000s.

Okay! So you're next step is to pour your butter/spice/saue mixture over your party food mixtures and then stir it all together.

Now all that's left is to bake it. You'll want to bake it for fifteen minutes, then stir it, then bake it for another fifteen minutes, then stir it again, and you'll just keep doing this until it's been cooked for a full hour. My mom has devised this brilliant trick to keeping track of your time:

I thought I took a picture at each step but apparently I didn't. Okay. So. Imagine you have a cloc. You start with the handle of your spoon/stirring device pointed towards the twelve. You set your timer for fifteen minutes. You bake your mix. After fifteen minutes, you take out the mix, stir it, and point your handle towards the three. Then, after your next fifteen minutes, you point your handle towards the six, and then the nine, and that's your final fifteen minutes. So, the first picture is before the first fifteen minutes, and the second is after thirty. 

And, well, that's it. It's ready to eat. 

Now! On to the muddy buddies. Here's what you'll need:

• 9 cups of Chex cereal
• 1 cup of chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup of creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

Melt your butter, peanut butter, and chocolate chips together in a small sauce pan. Use a low heat and stir it regularly to prevent it from burning. Once it's melted, mix in the vanilla extract.

Pour your chocolate mixture over the nine cups of cereal and stir it until they are coated. 

Mix in the powdered sugar. My mom used a wooden spoon. That wasn't sufficient, so, we snapped the lid on the bowl and shook the thing up. 

Now, you might object, thinking, "Those muddy buddies are far too brownish!" And, well, yeah. You could toss in a little extra powdered sugar to make the powdered sugar more visable. BUT I didn't want to do that because...

All right, friends, that's it for today. I'll see you all in 2018. Eat good food and read good books. 

♡kch

The List #7: Watch All of Parenthood

In 2016, my friends and I binge-watched Gilmore Girls in preparation for Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life. Gilmore Girls is one of those shows that I always enjoy. In high school, I'd watch reruns on ABC Family daily while I waited for the newest episodes to be released. I have watched the show in its entirety too many times, honestly. It's a show I'll go back to when I'm bored or bummed. It's a show that I've bonded with many friends over. So, as my friends held regular Gilmore Girls marathons, I was awash with nostalgic joy. Shortly after, I read Lauren Graham's Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls and Everything In Between. It read like a conversation with an old friend. I wanted more, but I also wanted something new.

Enter Parenthood.

I had, of course, heard of Parenthood before, but I hadn't really felt compelled to watch it. Not, at least, when there were 1000 episodes of Parks and Rec on Netflix. But everything Lauren Graham said about Parenthood in her book made it a show that I wanted to see. Which is to say: she said Mae Whitman was in it and I'm half in love with Mae Whitman TBH.

So, I decided that I wanted to watch all of Parenthood this year. (This is the brilliant thing about having a list of things to do in a year rather than a resolution: you can put whatever silly random crap you want on it.) I began in January and quickly watched through the first two and a half seasons.

Then, in March, I moved. While I was moving, I didn't have much time to watch anything. And, when I did, I was busy binge-watching Drunk History (which, omg, is so funny and I totally recommend you stop reading this and go watch that instead like rn kthnxbye).

I was getting Parenthood from the library and, before I knew it, season three was due back (and not renewable!) and I wasn't done with it. Around this time, I discovered that one of my coworkers was also watching Parenthood. We'd started at about the same time, but she inched ahead of me at season 3. Moreover, we'd talked another coworker into starting it, too.

So, I had to return season 3, place another hold, and wait for it to come back in. One of my coworkers came in to work and announced that she'd finished the series and now missed the Bravermans. My other coworker edged ahead of me. Finally, season 3 came in and I quickly finished it.

While I was in season 4, my other coworker was moving quickly through seasons 5 and 6. She would come into work and make mention of something that would peak my anxiety. As it turns out, most of the people at my work had already seen all of Parenthood so conversations ran amuck as I finished season 4 and started season 5. (Season 5 is the worst. I mean, it's great, but it's terrible. It's long and anxiety inducing.) The conversations at work were vague, just enough for me to get more concerned about what was happening in the show. Then, everyone would refuse to give me any spoilers.

One of my coworkers advised me, "You'll want season 6 now. You'll want to watch it as soon as you finish season 5. And then you'll watch the entire thing in a weekend."

When I was pretty close to the end of season 5, season 6 came in. It was a Friday on a week that I wound up working both Friday and Saturday, so I only had a one day weekend (and that one day was Sunday which, for me, gets really occupied with church stuff). But, nevertheless, my coworker was right. I finished season 5 on Friday morning. That evening, I got home from work and just binge watched season 6 until it was a little bit too late. Saturday, I did the same thing.

I'd been warned by my coworkers that season 6 would make me cry. For some reason, I really didn't think that it would. But oh my word.

The List #6: Go to a Con

This blog post is a couple of weeks late but I've been busy and my brain has been a murky gray so you'll have to just forgive me this time around.

A few years ago, I was really into youtube and I wanted to go to vidcon. But, when I looked into it, it was just too expensive and too far away and I'm not super good at talking to people IRL (or on the internet TBH) so I was afraid I'd just be stuck there, alone and asocial, for, like, three days or whatever. So, I pocketed my dreams of meeting Hayley G Hoover and tracking down Ingrid Nilsen for another year.

I'm not so into youtube any more. I haven't posted anything for over a year. I only very rarely watch anything any more, and then, it's only videos posted by my actual friends. And, even then, I do a half-assed and spotty job of it. So, I'm significantly less interested in emptying my savings to go to vidcon. But I'd never been to any kind of con and, so, I wanted to try it out, so I put it on my list.

Awhile ago, somebody shared something on Facebook that linked to a Planet Comicon ad where I was able to read through some of the celebrities who would be in attendance. There would be a lot of benefits to going to this particular con. For one thing, Stephen Amell would be there, and lbh that boy is razor-fine. (Side note: I actually prefer The Flash to The Arrow, and if I was given a choice between a con where Stephen Amell would be in attendance and one where Grant Gustin would be in attendance, I'd choose the latter. But that wasn't my situation and I was super stoked about the prospect of seeing The Arrow irl.) For another thing, Planet Comicon was in Kansas City. So, my commute would only be about forty minutes, and I wouldn't have to book a hotel room. Plus, I could only go for one of the three days. That would be enough time to experience it but not so much time that I'd become overwhelmed by it.

I asked a few friends if they wanted to come with me, but they weren't able to. So, I thought about it for awhile, and opted to go on my own. The "doing shit on my own" thing is a liberating development but it didn't come about easily. I only have it in me to invite, about, three people to something and if they all can't do it (even if they all can't do it for really justifiable "I'm in another state" "I'm working" type reasons) my social anxiety tells me that the entire world hates me and nobody wants to spend any time with me, ever, because why would they? So, when I was younger, I ended up just not doing things a lot. As I got older, I got better at going anyway. For awhile, it kind of sucked. But then I started really enjoying it. For awhile, I regularly went to movies and wouldn't invite, or even tell, anyone. It was awesome.

So, I decided to go by myself. Part of me hated that idea. Doing things with other people is typically more fun because you can spend so much time talking and laughing and you have someone there to take selfies with. But I knew that there were also a lot of benefits to going by myself. I wouldn't have the pressure of another person's schedule or expectations. I could show up late if I wanted. I could spend most of my time in line. I could cut out early if I wasn't having a good time. I wouldn't feel obligated to keep someone else entertained, to go to booths or panels that I wasn't interested in. I would just be responsible for getting myself to the places that I wanted to be.

So, I bought a ticket. Just one, for Saturday, when Stephen Amell would be there.

On the day of, I honestly didn't feel like going. It was rainy and I felt anxious and I was feeling a little disappointed that I didn't have anyone to go with. But, I'd already bought the ticket. I reminded myself that I could go, hate it, and then leave if I wanted.

I wore a red dress that my mother had sewn a Flash emblem on. I bought a new bag that wasn't too big but would fit a book, a notebook, a sandwich, a few small oranges, an umbrella, lotion, my phone, wallet, and keys. I left my work badge and debit card at home, just in case I lost my stuff or got it stolen. I took $100 in cash out of my bank account. I bought a chai, and I drove into the city.

I was running late. But, thankfully, the only person I was making late was myself.

It was a struggle and a headache to try and find a parking spot. I wound up calling my dad, twice, to ask for advice. At the time, he was having coffee with a friend, and they both had ideas for me. I wound up driving a few blocks away and parking at my brother's library. After parking, I ran inside to use the bathroom, and I stopped by to chat with my brother.

"Are you here for lit-fest?" He asked.
"No, Planet Comicon. When do you get off of work?"
"5:00," he said.

Planet Comicon wouldn't end until 7:00, but I would have to be back at the library by 5:00, anyway, because that's when they closed and I didn't know what would happen if my car was still in their parking garage after hours. So, we made tentative plans to hang out, and I, armed with my umbrella, walked over to comicon.

I was in line for what felt like ages. I didn't speak to anyone, but I looked around with gleeful curiosity. I saw a few girls in Tardis dresses. I saw the Doctor and a hoard of Disney Princesses. I saw a bunch of dudes wearing Jayne's hat. Mostly, I saw a ton of people dressed as characters I didn't recognize.

As we neared the entrance, I saw a Doctor, an Amy covered in ticks, and a couple of guys dressed like The Silence. A guy nearby got really excited and was trying to tell his friends about the cosplayers, and who they were cosplaying, but he forgot the name The Silence. I provided it and he just cheerfully said, "YES! THE SILENCE!" Before continuing to explain the episode to his friends. I congratulated my memory for aiding in semi-social interactions.

Later, I helped a girl remember the name Big Hero 6 when she was trying to explain where Baymax came from. Score two for my memory and semi-social interactions.

When I finally got into the convention, there was just so much to attend to. I wandered around aimlessly for awhile, walking aimlessly and looking at busy, booming booths. Eventually, I find myself in line to meet Stephen Amell.

It was a long line, broken into two parts. There are two giddy high school girls standing in front of me, one is on crutches, gushing gleefully about Stephen Amell, The Arrow, and how this was a dream come true. Behind me, a woman, maybe in her late thirties, talked nonstop with her mother. I pulled out my book (Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig) and started reading. After about ten minutes, we were moved form the second part of the line to the main line, the line where you could actually catch a glimpse of Stephen Amell from time to time (depending on where you were in the line). After about another fifteen minutes, the woman behind me mentions the cost of getting Stephen Amell's signature. $60.00. I froze. Did I hear that right? Did she say sixty or sixteen? I closed my book, turned, and asked, trying to hide my panic. "Sixty," she said.

"Okay, cool," I say, nonchalantly. I ask where she saw that and she pointed me towards a website. I stood there, trying to act like I wasn't kind of panicking, and trying to decide if I should bail on this line.

But I did, kind of, come to see Stephen Amell, right? And I already a good chunk of time in this line. So, I would just go for it. My big ticket item of the day would be some dude's name on a photograph. I waited in line for a total of two hours. During that time, I saw a guy who brought a really cool painting of the Arrow to get signed,  I saw a woman dressed as her own superhero with skeins of yarn in her hair and straps of thread in lieu of bullets, and I saw a woman dressed as the Arrow. (I spent the rest of the con hoping to see her again because I thought it would be cool to get a picture with female-Arrow and female-Flash. I didn't have any luck.) Eventually, I handed over sixty dollars, picked out a picture, and got it signed.

Stephen Amell was wearing a Royals hat and drinking coffee from the Roasterie. He was smiling and friendly despite having spent four hours signing things already. He even cheerfully greeted the people just walking by his table. He asked how I was, he said he was good when I asked it back, and then he shook my hand, smiling.

Afterwards, I did the math. $60.00 is about 5 hours of work, and I spent about 2 hours in line, and that means I invested about 7 hours of my time in a two minute exchange and a picture with a signature.They didn't even give me a bag to put it in. (It was still totally worth it.)

I was bag-less and it was raining, so I decided to look for some merch that might come with a bag that I could use to protect it. So, I wandered over to the merch booths. One that catches my eye immediately is packed with dresses made from unique patterns. After the $60.00 autograph, I didn't know about buying any thing as expensive as a handmade dress. But I kept looking around. She had zipper pouches, buttons, and bows, too. She stopped to talk to me, explaining that she handmade her stuff out of fabrics she designed. (You can check out her stuff here. I super recommend it because it's all hella cute.) I wound up buying three bows.

I wandered around, looking at comics and sketches and prints. At one point, I happened across a guy I went to high school with and we chatted briefly before I started feeling the discomfort of small talk and bailed on the conversation. I had decided to go back for a print I'd passed by earlier but, while I was looking for that booth, again, I stumbled across another one with cool stickers and prints. I was flipping through the artist's book of stickers when I happened upon a cool print of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

And, like, guys? I REALLY like Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. So, I kind of had to, you know? 

I made my way to the bathroom where girls dressed as characters from Sailor Moon and Doctor Who. I struggled to keep all of my things off of the floor. The sinks were covered in water and I did my best to wash my hands without getting any of my merch wet. The bathrooms were near a host of food trucks and damn I was getting hungry. 

I had a PB&J and some tiny oranges in my bag, but I couldn't figure out how to go about eating them, so I just didn't. 

I wandered back down through the booths. Sarah Andersen was supposed to be there, but I never had any luck tracking down her booth. (This is a bummer. You should definitely check out Sarah Andersen's Adulthood is a Myth and Big Mushy Happy Lump.) 

While looking around, I happened upon a really cool artist who did illustrations of characters--the Arrow, the Flash, Han Solo, Chewie, the Ninja Turtles, and so on--as kids on a playground. I looked over his stickers and artwork and buttons with glee. But his booth was kind of busy so I decided to head over to a panel and come back to buy merch later. 

The panel I went to was about turning your interests into a business--running a website or podcasts. I didn't know who the guys were that were running the panel, but it was interesting. They all did podcasts, so they all had good voices. They made jokes and were full of decent advice. 

When I left, I was starving. I wandered back to the artist's booth whose work I was admiring earlier, but it was still pretty packed. So, I wandered through the cosplay section, checking out R2D2s and dodging past Disney Princesses. (There were seriously a lot of Disney Princesses at this convention.) I was hungry, and tired, and I knew that I didn't have much money left. I needed to hang on to at least $8.00 to pay the library for parking there all day. (Side note: I actually didn't. It's $4.00 on weekends; free if you get your parking validated. I didn't know that, though.) So, I headed back to the artist's booth a final time. This time, I bought a print (the proceeds of which went entirely to Children's Mercy) that the artist signed and I bought five buttons--The Arrow for me, Han Solo and Chewie for my brother, and Some Rey and BB8 pins for my nerd friends. 

It was nearing 4:00. I was mostly out of cash. It was still raining. I zipped my merch up in my jacket, clutched the bag to my chest, and angled my umbrella to prioritize my purchases over my hair. I walked back to my car. I ate my sandwich and small oranges in the car and then headed in to the library. I hung out for an hour, listening to music, scrolling through the internet online, and writing in a notebook. Afterwards, my brother and I hung out at a coffee shop. Then, I drove back to my parents house. 

I enjoyed the convention, but I don't know that I would go to another one. Unless it was a book-con of some sort. Books books books. Authors authors authors.

The List #5: Get a Haircut

My fantasy self is a lot braver than my real self is. She's nonchalant and easy going. My real self is in a constant state of panic. But my fantasy self, woah, she's cool. In my fantasy version of events, with my fantasy self, I walk into a salon, sit down in a chair, shrug and say, "Do whatever you want."

In reality, I got my hair cut once during my sophomore year of college and then just let it grow for... like basically ever. I dyed it several times. At some point, I anxiously plucked a pretty noticeable bald spot into my eyebrow and then called my mother in a panic; she set up an appointment for me to get bangs cut that would cover my eyebrows.

So, when 2017 came around, it had been somewhere between five and six years since I last got my hair cut. So, I decided that it was time for a change.

My parents are friends with a girl who works at a salon, so they gave me her number, and awhile ago I contacted her. I assumed she would have a kind of full schedule, or at least one that would be difficult to work me into because I'm forever at a library half an hour away from the salon. But, I contacted her on Thursday night, and we set up an appointment for Saturday.

Earlier in the week, I told the mom squad at work ("the mom squad" is how I refer to three of the women I work with who all have children around my age and are full of sage wisdom and own a lot of cardigans and will teach you how to crochet or quilt or whatever if you ask them) that I was thinking about getting my hair cut.

"Like how?" one of them asked, excitedly.

I shrugged. "I think I'll just say, you know, 'Do whatever.'"

She looked at me with wide eyes. "You should look up pictures on Pinterest first. Get some ideas of what you might want."

"Yeah," I agreed. But then I just never got around to it. My fantasy self totally would have. My fantasy self isn't just brave, she's a thorough researcher. She makes rational and informed decisions. My actual self thinks, "Oh yeah, I'll look into that," but then never does. Or only kind of does. Or just texts her brother, "I only read about the first half of the stuff on the ballot, how should I vote on these propositions?"

So Saturday rolled around and I arrived at the salon and I hadn't even kind of considered cuts or styles.

I'm always early everywhere. It's compulsive, I think.  I don't think anyone ever told me, "Early is on time. On time is late. Late is unacceptable." But, nevertheless, it's the mantra that repeats as my baseline. So I showed up to my 11:15 appointment at 11:03. I stood awkwardly in the doorway looking around. My dad had showed me a picture of their friend, but I wasn't convinced I would recognize her.

The salon had wooden floors and walls. Walls decorated with large floor length mirrors jutted out at random angles creating little nooks and crannies filled with pleather, spinning seats and little wood cabinets covered in plastic combs. There were people everywhere--women in seats wrapped in plastic tarps, women dressed in black standing behind them and snipping away at their hair. I didn't think I saw my parents' friend anywhere, so I just loitered, looking around.

There was a girl near the front of the store who was painting her client's hair in dye and folding it into foil. Her hair was dark, naturally, but was honey gold near the ends. They call that ombre. I was trying to do some indiscreet studying of her ombre hair because I didn't want to go total creeper on her but a lot of people have refused to put color in my hair because it's so dark and thick and bleaching it would kill it or something. Unfortunately, she noticed me.

"Can I, like, help you?" She asked.

"Um, no," I mumbled. "I just got here... early... for an appointment."

Thankfully my parents' friend came in shortly after and called out, "Hi, Kat! Watch your step up but you can grab a seat there," she pointed to an empty seat in front of a floor length mirror. "I'll be right back."

"Okay!" I said excitedly, fleeing from the girl I got caught spying on.

My parents' friend is tall and thin in the kind of way that makes me wonder if all women are really part of the same species. She has dark hair that falls straight around her shoulders and wide rimmed glasses. She seems effortlessly cool.

She comes up and starts untangling the hair tie from my ponytail. "Woah, you're hair is really long. Is it naturally curly?" She asks.

"Yeah," I say, confirming both, maybe.

"Who do you get that from?" She asks. I shrug. I honestly don't know. Both of my parents and my brother have relatively straight hair. I did, too, when I was younger. But sometime in upper elementary/middle school that changed.

"So what are we doing today?" She asked me, dropping my hair around my shoulders.

"Um, well, I'd like it to still be long. But different. But I don't know what. I'm okay with whatever I guess," said the real/not-fantasy version of myself.

"Okay!" She said, chipper and smiling. She took me over to the sink and washed my hair. While she did, she launched into a story about a car cutting her off on her way to work. She's exactly the sort of person that I most admire, the kind who can talk effortlessly about almost anything. Comparatively, I'm always trying to think of what to say and how to say it. I'll come up with stories to tell and search for ways to bridge the conversation towards them. I start to say things and promptly stop. I'm a social disaster.

She walked me back over to her station and gave me a few instructions. When she was cutting my hair, I couldn't wear my glasses. I had to sit up straight. I couldn't cross my legs. When I first sat down, I was breaking all of those rules. But I promptly rectified all of that.

"Do you want to take this much off?" She held up a piece of my hair, her fingers pinched where she was considering cutting it.

"Um, I honestly can't see anything right now. But, yeah, sure, I'm good with whatever."

I don't know. Maybe blindness makes me more like my fantasy self.

"Do you want layers?"
"Sure."
"Do you want to frame your face?"
"I don't know! Do I want to frame my face?"
"Yeah, you do."

I was excited. And super freaking nervous. Throughout the next half-hour or so, my hairstylist wandered around me, snipping away at my hair, and telling me about her former roommate's cat and asking about my plans for the day. Then, eventually, she was done. She stepped back, inspected it, swirled my chair around and held out a mirror.

"Do you like it?" She asked.
"Yeah!" I said.
"It's shorter, but still pretty long. I like it," she said. "If you decide later that you want more layers around the front, just let me know!"
I paid her and thanked her and walked out to my car to send snapchats of my new haircut to some of my friends.

This was my hair before:

This is my hair now:

Surprisingly few people have noticed a difference. My brother says this is because people with short hair can not distinguish hair lengths beyond shoulder length. "I cut HALF of it OFF," I protest. He just shrugs, "It all looks the same to us. It's all just long." What bullspit.

The List #4: Start a Webcomic

At the start of 2015, I was working part-time at a library in southern Kansas City. At the time, my job was to sort and shelve materials. I was also working part-time staring at spreadsheets in an insurance office. I would spend the first part of the day at the insurance office, where I would listen to audiobooks and not talk to anyone. Then, I would go to the library and hang out in the stacks, shelving books, and only occasionally talking to anyone. I couldn't listen to anything while I was shelving so, instead, I just did a lot of imagining. One night, I imagined a ghost.

My imaginary ghost hung out in the 800s and 900s because that's where ghosts belong, LBR. Poetry anthologies and history books are total fodder for ghosts.

Around the same time, one of my coworkers at the library was trying to badger me into writing a comic strip for him. It was one of those kind of lame deals people are always offering to small-time artists/writers/musicians where your only payment is "exposure." I was trying to find meaning in my situation, though, and every moment I was thinking, "Surely this is all happening for a reason," so I thought, "Yeah, why not? Maybe that's the reason," and I wrote twelve strips of a comic.

Several months later, I decided that I would use the comic strip myself and start up a webcomic. I worked super hard to get one put together. I did art and formatting for the twelve strips I wrote, I started writing another several and working on artwork for those, and then I promptly ran out of steam.

For the past year and a half, I've had the twelve strips I finished queued up to be released on a blog, but I knew that if I started publishing them, I'd run out and not have anything to continue with, unless I put forth ALL that effort again.

Still, I liked the idea of having a webcomic. My brother created one. (You can check his out here if you want.) And I had done a lot of work to start one. So, I put it on my list.

I think, idealistically, when I wrote "start a webcomic" on my 2016 list, I imagined it looking like Brenna and Jones which was the one I started working on back in 2015. But I never really felt compelled to go back to working on it. So, instead, I considered a few different options.Whatever it would be, it would be good.

I would come up with an idea, try it out, and then stop before anything came to fruition. Then, I decided, what if I didn't worry about making it good, and instead I just made it something. I could try and tell funny anecdotes with quick punchlines in just a few panels. There wouldn't need to be an overarching story line. Rather than stressing myself out over clean lines and digital framing, I could do quick chicken scratch ink-drawn cartoons in a sketch book. Then, I could just take a picture and post it on instagram. My list said start a webcomic. It did not say "start a good, or even halfway decent, webcomic." 

Besides, maybe there could be some charm to chicken scratch.

So, a few weeks ago, I sketched a webcomic and posted it. I called it "Incompetent Kat." This is it:

...The not so semi-autobiographical bit is where my pet rabbit (Eleanor) sasses me with actual human language. In reality, she just looks at me suspiciously, tries to steal things, runs away, and thumps.

The next day, I posted another. Then, the next day, I posted another. All about me, being generally nervous and incompetent, and my rabbit, being rude and snarky.

After I'd been posting them for a week and a half (right now the goal is to post one every weekday), I started to worry I'd run out of material. But as it turns out, it's not too hard to think about jokes about my incompetence while I'm floundering through life. If you want to follow my webcomic, for now at least, you'll have to follow me on instagram.

Oh, also: I've also decided that, since I made the first twelve strips of Brenna & Jones, I'll go ahead and post them. One every Sunday until all 12 are posted. But that will probably be it. This is the first strip:

The List #3: Move Out of the Parents' House

The decision to move back in with my parents after the lease was up on my last apartment was a pragmatic one. I was tired of working two part-time jobs. I was almost twenty-five and I was ready for a career. (Ew, gross, I know, right?) So, I opted to move back into my parents' house, quit one of my two jobs, focus on my other job--expanding my training, knowledge and experience there--and apply for full-time positions as they arose. By living with my parents, I would be able to accept positions without being tied to a lease and a location.

My lease at my apartment was up in May and, in June, I was offered a full-time position in a town between 30 and 40 minutes from my parents' house. My plan, then, became to live with my parents for a bit, save a little, and then move closer to work. Six months later, I was twenty-five, still in my parents' house, and sharing a room with my rabbit, Eleanor, and way too much stuff. Most of my belongings were in boxes, piled in our garage, made inaccessible by other storage. I'm pretty introverted, and also terrible, so living with people and exchanging pleasantries started grating on me and I found myself transforming into that most loathsome version of myself who glowers whenever people greet her and actually gets annoyed when people ask how she's doing. I tell people a lot that it's hard for people to like me if they live with me, but the truth is: it's hard for me to like me when I live with other people. Someone will cheerily greet me as I walk in the door and the monster inside me will roar about never getting a second to herself and the rest of me will spend the remainder of the day chiding myself for being such an insufferable bitch.

So I decided that I needed to move out, and I put it on my 2017 list as an attempt to really ensure that it would happen.

And it did!

Towards the end of February, I was finding myself particularly deplorable, and I decided that it was time. I asked my dad if he wanted to help me look at apartments on Presidents' Day (because, no work, yay government holidays) and he agreed.

Asking my dad to apartment hunt with me was a stroke of brilliance on my part because as soon as my dad knew what areas I was looking into and what my price range was, he started researching for me. He compiled a list of a dozen or so apartment complexes, their addresses, their listed rent, and any listed pet deposits/fees. This was convenient because my fantasy self does this sort of research and is thorough and reasonable in her decision making, but my actual self just keeps rereading chapter 39 of The Raven King and posting selfies on Instagram.

On the morning of February 20th, though, I called the apartments complexes that sounded best and set up appointments. Then, we headed off. That day, my father, brother, and I looked at four or five apartments. We ate at 54th Street Grill (Thanks again, Dad! Seriously, people, bring your fathers with you when you're looking for apartments. Dads are the best.) Then, we headed back to my parents' house.

There were two apartments that I was considering. They were, of course, the first two we looked at. The first one would definitely let me take my rabbit with me, but there was a $300 non-refundable pet deposit and a $10/m pet rent. The second one needed to think about whether or not they would let me bring my rabbit as they didn't allow cats or dogs.

The second place called me back. They wouldn't let me bring Eleanor. So the decision was made for me. (Although, they did say I could get rid of my rabbit and then live there and that would be cool for them. But, like, sorry guys, I cannot even fathom how good of a deal something would have to be for me abandon this rabbit I agreed to be responsible for. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's a terror who bites my butt whenever I clean her cage and tries to eat ALL OF MY BELONGINGS and refuses to go back into her cage but I LOVE her.)

That week, I had Friday off because I worked on Saturday. So, on Friday, I called and asked if the first apartment I saw was still available. It wasn't. But, they said there was another comparable apartment that would be available later in March. "Okay," I said, "Can I go ahead and bring by an application?" They agreed, and so I did.

"We'll process your application and run a background check on Monday, so you'll probably hear back from us on Tuesday," they said.

So, then I waited. And at the tail end of February, they called me and told me my application was accepted. They also informed me that the people who had an application on the first apartment I saw had not been approved. So, I could have it, if I wanted. And I did! I moved that weekend.

The last time I moved, it was a little bit terrible. I'm awful at asking people to help me with anything, so, I didn't. I had a roommate that I was going to move in with, but he had to work during our move in day, so the only person I had to help me was my father. (Still, we loaded the truck and unloaded it in just two hours. We're awesome.) Then, later, we had to move my roommate! It was exhausting. Leading up to our move in day was stressful trying to coordinate with my roommate. The day itself was hot, muggy, and it kept raining. By the end of the day, I was sick.

This time, I had my parents and a whole host of friends agree to help me out. (Thanks, guys!)

On Tuesday, I found out I would get the apartment. On Friday, I picked up the keys and my parents brought by some of my things. On Saturday, my friends helped me load up all of our cars and then unload them at my new place. One of my friends even hung out for another few hours helping me unpack things. (I still have more unpacking to do, but a lot of it is done thanks to my friend.) Since that was all a whirlwind, I didn't move myself there right away. Eleanor and I stayed with my parents until Wednesday of last week when I finally loaded her up, packed up my bedding, and finally stayed there over night.

Since then, I've been unpacking slowly. (Although, Eleanor has been trying to encourage me to unpack faster by attempting to climb into, toss around, and/or eat anything that isn't put away.)

I wanted to hold off on writing this blogpost until everything was done and lovely and pretty so you could see pictures of my (admittedly kitschy) decor and neatly organized bookshelves. But as this past week and a half has progressed, I've been confronted with the reality that doing things, in general, is slow and time consuming. Someday, hopefully before the end of the month, I'll get everything organized and put away and I might even write up a blogpost so you can see it. Until then, I'll be tearing through boxes, looking for things, and feeling a little bit like Rory Gilmore in A Year In The Life (except... with a job and an apartment and access to my underwear and... you know what, nothing like Rory Gilmore in A Year In The Life, I guess.)

For now, there's a sort of chaotic charm to this half-boxed life. My kitchen isn't properly stocked. As a result, I had Oreos (left over from a party this past weekend) for breakfast for three days in a row. I drank milk the day after it expired (maybe not a huge deal for most of us but certainly something I wouldn't knowingly do in other circumstances). I burned the first pizza I tried to bake but, rather than throwing it away, just reconciled myself to eating ash-flavored pizza. I ate three fork-fulls of cold, week and half old, Chinese leftovers for dinner last night.

Every morning, I sit on the living room floor and get ready for the day, allowing Eleanor to get out of her cage, explore, and play. Then, she gives me a headache as I try to wrangle her back into her cage.

 It's nice though, to have a place that's all my own.

The List #2 "Give Galentines Day Gifts"

The immaculate Leslie Knope describes "Galentine's Day" as:

Now, there's a lot about the concept of Galentine's Day that appeals to me. See, here's a brief (and clearly inconclusive) list of things that I love:

• Parks & Rec
• Friendship
• Amy Poehler
• Gift Giving
• Female Empowerment
• Breakfast Foods

So it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that I wanted to get on Galentine's Day this year. For this reason, I put "give galentine's day gifts" on my "To Do in 2017" List. 

Galentine's Day, as defined by Leslie Knope in Parks & Rec, takes place on February 13 and, fortuitously for me, I was already planning on spending that day with some of my favorite ladies.

My small group decided to take a retreat that would go from February 10th to the 13th and if this was an entirely different blogpost I would tell you about how we ate at a Mexican Restaurant named "Amigos" one day and "Familia" the next. I would tell you about how we went to a lake and my friend's three year old daughter dropped a giant rock on my kneecap. I would tell you how some of us went to a bar where I ate loaded mashed potatoes and drank root beer. I would tell you how we had our church's worship and our church's last worship leader with us but how, despite that, we didn't sing the Micah 6:8 song at our house-church-service.

But this isn't that kind of blogpost. I'm trying to talk about things that I did because of a list in 2017, not just things that I did in 2017, sheesh people.

(Despite that, look at this group photo from the trip. Aren't my friends adorable?)

ANYWAY. Back to Galentine's. Our trip was ending on the 13th and most of the gang doesn't watch Parks & Rec (I know, what total heathens) so we weren't going to have an actual Galentine's Day celebration. But I just had to give gifts! And that is easy enough.

(Side note: to all my lady friends who I didn't see on the 13th: Happy Belated Galentine's Day! I love you and super appreciate our friendship. ♥♥♥)

I started planning my Galentine's Day gifts around when I created my list for 2017. And, naturally, my original plan was a slightly-bigger undertaking than I could really handle.

My initial plan was to knit the whole squad infinity scarves with different patterns but the same yarns. I needed to have three finished by Galentine's Day. This is as far as I was on February 6th:

Clearly, that wasn't going to happen. Not for the 2017 Galentine's Day, at least. So I resorted to Plan B! Lots of little things!

I'm actually a big supporter of the "lots of little things" gift. Nothing has to be breathtaking or totally amazing, it all just has to be fun. So, I made three animal-toy-necklaces. (This is a thing I've been doing, BTW. Plastic animal jewelry. It's the coolest.) Then, I went to the store and got three-of-everything cool.

Pencils and journals and socks and POPCORN CHOCOLATE and gel pens and pocket calendars. That little $1-$5 section at Target was seriously MADE for the "lots of little things" gift giver. (Also, Popcorn Chocolate is totally a thing. At Target. Right now. They're less than fifty cents a piece because they were CLEARLY UNDERAPPRECIATED. I bought like a thousand.)

Uh, yeah. The End. Or Whatever.


"Hey, Self? You didn't really end that blogpost?"
"Who cares? I wrote it, didn't I?"
"Kind of, I guess."
"And it ended didn't it?"
"Not really, though, that's what I'm saying. You didn't have a conclusion."
"It concluded."
"Not properly."
"What are you an English Teacher? NO. Because you're me. And we didn't get certified to teach. So, ha."
"Well whose fault is that?"
"OURS. HAHAHAHA."
...I seriously don't regret not becoming a teacher. Now I'm a librarian! And librarians don't have to conclude things properly. Probably. I don't know. I didn't memorize the handbook or anything.

The List #1 "Knit a Hat"

Before I start talking about things that are on the list, I think I should explain a bit about what the list is.

The first list came into existence on Christmas Eve during my freshman year of college. My good friend, Ryan, stayed with my family over winter break because he is from Australia and couldn't go back for every Christmas while he was in school. That year, my brother, Ryan, our friend Jacob, and I went to Starbucks all the time. We'd "study" there probably three or four times a week. During winter break, Nash, Ryan, and I still went a lot. We'd draw, write, talk, and play writing games.

I don't know why Nash didn't come with us on Christmas Eve. Knowing Nash it was probably because he still had to finish making presents for everyone. But anyway, Ryan and I went and sat at a table, drinking hot chocolates, and laughing. We were basically the only two people there. And somehow, we wound up writing lists for ourselves of things we wanted to do during the following year. The next Christmas, Ryan actually got to go home for the holidays, but even though he wasn't around, I still made a list. The year after that, too. But that was the year he graduated and I haven't made one since.

UNTIL this year. See the thing about the list is: it's about 10000 times better than a New Year's Resolution. See, I don't really need any resolutions because I like being the person that I am and resolutions seem kind of like they're based around a desire to be a slightly different person than the person that you are. A thinner person or a more active person or a more organized person or a more polite person or whatever. But the list is not about who you want to be, it's about what you want to do.

Also, I never actually finish the list. But I never beat myself up about it, either, because there are a lot of things I've done, places I've been, and things I've tried that I might not have if I hadn't written them down on a little slip of paper. The first year, for instance, I went on a sugar fast and to a night club. I participated in NaNoWriMo and I ate way too many Chipotle burritos. Now, I know that I can go thirty days without sugar and still REALLY WANT SO MUCH SUGAR at the end of it, and I have no desire to go back to a night club. I know that I could write a novel in a month but I don't know that I'd want to. And honestly the Chipotle thing was just an excuse to eat a lot of burritos and hasn't had much of an impact on my life.

SO ANYWAY this year I made another list. And I've decided that as I finish things from the list, I'm going to write blog posts about them. "Why?" You ask. Because I want to so hahaha THERE. I might not ALWAYS write a blog post, if it's something that I decide is best left private or just isn't that interesting of a story. And I might never tell you what all was on my list to begin with. We'll just have to see how the year progresses.

But this evening, I finished my first task from the 2017 list. I knitted a hat.

I first learned how to knit during my senior year of high school. My grandmother had been saying something about teaching her granddaughters to knit and I was a total brat about it. "I don't want to learn how to knit," I declared. And then I felt pretty bad about all of that and taught myself how to knit as her Christmas gift

My first attempt was a total mess. It was supposed to be a scarf. But it started out narrow and got progressively fatter. I dropped a ton of stitches so it was full of holes and knots. Eventually, I just cast off and started over. The second one came out better  but I didn't get it done in time and had to wrap up the monstrosity as her present. I think she turned it into a stocking cap. Eventually, I finished her new scarf and gave it to her. After that, I knit myself  a scarf, my brother a scarf, and my mom a scarf. I knit a very tiny scarf and then stitched the ends together to make my mom a headband that matched the scarf I made her. I knit a very fat scarf and stitched the ends together to make a combination infinity scarf/blanket for one of my friends' daughters. i also started about a half dozen other scarves that I never finished.

Are you seeing a pattern here? For the longest time I could only knit rectangles. My friend Laurie was teaching me how to knit mittens once but we stopped 1/3 of the way through the first one and I promptly forgot everything she taught me.

But I decided that since I taught myself how to knit scarves surely I could teach myself how to knit other things as well. I checked out this book from the library:

It is full of really cool hats. But I felt out of my depths. So, after flipping through it once I returned it and looked up instructions online. I kind of looked over them but I'm not actually super good at following instructions. So I just read enough to get the gist.

I started it on the day my friends Amy, Laurie, and I decided to marathon Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. I used gray thread and messed up straight away. I got my yarn twisted and didn't realize until I was a ways in. Laurie (a true knittin' pro) helped me out of that mess. I kind of have a "muddle through" mindset so I just kept at it. The next day, I watched Ghostbusters and knitted some more.

I thought that I had it long enough, so I finished it up. As it turned out, I was very wrong. (By "as it turned out" I mean "as it figures" and by "I was very wrong" I mean "I was being impatient and impetuous so even though I knew it wasn't long enough I figured it would be good enough but it was not.")

So, I started knitting at the start of the hat again. This time, I used black yarn. I decided I would knit a few inches in a circle and then attach it to the bottom of the gray bit. I'd have to make a pompom anyway because I kind of had a gaping hole in the center of my hat. I could make that black and it would look... purposeful? I hoped.

I knitted most of the black today while watching A Series of Unfortunate Events and, later, Dear Eleanor. (This is the sort of thing you do when the world is too cold to exist in.) I could tell, even while I was knitting it, that it wasn't going "well." The stitches were looser, the circumference of the circle was somehow smaller, and one side was turning out longer than the other. But, like I said before, I muddle through.

I'd hoped that I could come up with a way to connect the two segments while casting off. But if there's a way to do that, I couldn't figure it out in the two minutes I gave it before getting annoyed. So, I cast off, and borrowed a crochet hook from my mom (okay, total honesty here, I think I have a crochet hook somewhere. One year "learn to crochet" was on my list... so I learned but also I promptly forgot and then I promptly lost my hook. Possibly. I think.) and used it to stitch the two sections together. The gray section is bigger than the black, so it looks a little... silly. But I muddled through that, too.

As a final touch, I googled how to make a pompom. I read through the direction and then went to pester my mom. "Explain how to make a pompom to me," I asked.

"Well, there's one way, but it's harder..." She started.

"Not that way, then," I said.

"Okay. Then you just wrap it around a piece of cardboard a lot, then take the cardboard out, tie it off in the center, and cut the sides."

"Won't that just look like a bunch of little strings tied together?" I asked.

"If you wrap it a lot it will look fuller."

"...But... wouldn't it just be a bunch of tiny strings tied together?" I asked again.

"Yeah, that's what pompoms are," my mom said.

Seriously! Who knew? It was actually crazy easy to make a pompom! Anyway, then, I stitched it onto the top of the hat and that was that.

And see, here's the thing about the list: from here on out, anything could happen. I could complete the list, or I could do half of it, or I could not actually finish anything else that I wrote down. It won't matter! What matters is this: now, there is a hat in the world that wasn't there before. And now I know that I can knit something other than a scarf. I can knit a really atrocious cap if I choose to.

Look at that. The year has hardly begun and I've already been empowered by some yarn.