On Becoming a Person

So I have been reading up on a lot of local history regarding UA and it’s surrounding vicinity.  Forgive me, but I actually find this so interesting! Here are some random facts y’all might enjoy as well:

• The site of the current Student Union, Zook Hall etc. used to be a cemetery in the 1800s.  They built Buchtel Hall on top of it and when it flooded bones used to wash up. There are probably still bodies under there!
• Nearly all of the buildings on campus are not the original buildings with those names—when a building was torn down the replacement building was named the exact same thing.
• NONE of the buildings on campus are original structures from when the university was founded. Buchtel Hall burned down twice before it became what it is today, and it is the oldest building on campus.
• Many of the city’s early settlers were from the mountains of West Virginia and are actually described in historical accounts as “hillbillies”.
• In the 1930s a group of ministers tried to get all the city’s clubs to shut down at midnight on Saturday, so that there would be absolutely NO dancing on the Sabbath. Yeah, that didn’t work out at all.
• Quaker Oats, the Diamond Match Company, Goodyear (including the blimp!), Firestone, and B.F. Goodrich tires were all founded here.
• The city’s water used to be supplied from Summit Lake, which contained the raw sewage from all of the houses around it. The water was unsanitary and smelled horrific.
• When the rubber business was booming, the entire city smelled “like a rubber band smoldering in an ashtray.”
• Race relations here have always been better than in other major cities.
• The streets of the neighborhood Firestone Park are built in the shape of the Firestone logo
• Alcoholics Anonymous and the infamous John Brown were both made here.

(Photos courtesy of www.ci.akron.oh.us)

You CANNOT watch this video without laughing. I dare you to try. The first two times I saw it I cried. It is just contagious. Don’t turn it off after the first minute or so—it gets better! Whatever this guy is on I would love me some of it.

Not purposely though!!! I am referring to everything I am trying to grow in our little backyard garden area.  Remember my beautiful potted pink  impatient plant? It was originally hanging on the post of our porch, but it started killing the bush underneath it. All of these little spores fell on the bush and the leaves started dying, so now I have a foot+ diameter hole of dead branches on it. I took the potted plant down and put it on a holder on the patio itself, but since then it has started turning brown. All the leaves in the middle are dead; only the ones on the outsides are still green. I have no idea what’s wrong. I water it EVERY day.

  (This is what it looked like before the Death)

I also planted a tomato plant back there, but I made the mistake of not caging it because I didn’t think of it until it was too late. The thing grew all sideways like a vine, encroaching on the other bush it was planted next to and starting to kill parts of that. I finally bought a cage, but by this time the plant was up past my waist and had three separate stems. John and I wrangled it into the cage this morning, but in the process we broke several branches off, including the only 2 (still green) tomatoes  it has produced yet. I was so upset. But it’s my fault for being dumb about tomatoes in the first place. Remind me never to plant anything again if I want it to live!

Melvin is becoming more playful and mischievous as he gets older and presumably more comfortable in his home. Yesterday was an all around interesting day, to say the least.

First, the trash. We have discovered that his absolute favorite thing to eat is roast beef. From Arby’s. YES. I also had some lunchmeat roast beef that came in a plastic container, lined with a plastic bag. I had finished off the meat and left the container in the sink because I wanted to wash and re-use it. I was on the couch working when I heard a bunch of noises coming from the kitchen, like plastic things bumping into each other. He was in the sink, nosing the empty container. Fine with me, I have much bigger things to worry about. A few minutes later I hear plastic crumpling, and I look up and Melvin has brought the plastic roast beef liner into the living room and is carrying it around in his mouth. This is entertaining. He was looking for a place to set it down and play with it, I could tell because that’s what he does with many of his toys—carries them from one place to another and drops them where he wants to play. He couldn’t figure out where to drop the plastic, so he was running around in circles with it somewhat frantically, until he finally decided to drop it in his cat bed. Then he pawed at it and licked it for a while before getting bored and wandering away.

Next, to go in chronological order, the poop. I got home from class around 7:15 last night, go into the bedroom to change, and notice that on the tile floor of our bathroom next to Melvin’s litter box are several (5-6) cat footprints—made of poop. Upon closer inspection there are also specks of poop splattered on the side of the toilet and around the floor. I am deciding between being grossed out and cracking up. His litterbox is a mess, so I go to scoop it out. He has a covered box with a little door, and I was too lazy to remove the cover so I just reached in through the little cat door. My wrist instantly feels wet, so I pull it out and realize that it is now smeared with moist poop. Even closer inspection reveals poop on the bottom of his cat door. Basically, there is poop everywhere. John witnesses this audibly from the living room—it’s just me laughing my head off and yelling, “Gross, gross!” I have deduced that it likely was explosive diarrhea or something of the sort. We fed him meatballs from our dinner the other day. That may have been it. Far be it from me to ever feed him meatballs again.

Last, the glass. As many people know, Melvin is still in the habit of waking me up in the middle of the night, a couple of times, by meowing for attention and food. He has this habit of walking past my head and up on to my nightstand, where he often tries to put his face in the glass of water that I keep there. Then I have to shoo him down. Last night I was so tired that I must not have heard him meowing, nor getting up on the nightstand. The thing that did wake me up was a crash, the shattering sound of glass, and then his little feet hightailing it out of the bedroom.  He had knocked my glass of water off the nightstand, and somehow it shattered on the carpet (I still don’t know how!). At 2:30am I was blotting up water and picking up shards of glass from under the bed. John slept through the whole thing and found it quite amusing.

My family members who read this will understand what I mean when I say that Melvin is getting more like Jake little by little!

It became clear to me that preparing for comprehensive exams has caused a temporary memory lapse for my brain. Suckery. On my way to campus this morning, I got halfway to the highway before I realized that I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring or my engagement ring. I generally don’t sleep in these because they snag on the sheets, and I take them off while I am getting ready in the morning so I don’t gunk them up. I had to turn around and go home to put them on, lest I get a bunch of weird questions and have to do some serious explaining to my classmates. So I was late.

Then, during my break I went to the campus library to look for some books, none of which they had, of course. I was about to leave to go to class when I looked in my purse and realized my cell phone was missing. I apparently lost it on the infamous third floor, which is designated the “quiet study” area. I had walked through so many shelves on that floor it was sort of impossible to retrace my steps. I went around looking for someone I could ask to call my phone for me, but everyone I saw was… asleep. Either that or locked away in a “group study room”, likely waiting to have sex with someone, or so the rumor goes. After frantic walking I eventually found the phone perched on a shelf at the very last rack of books in the building. So I was late again.

Pair this with 6 straight hours of class half-filled with other students venting their stress about comps, and a borderline grade on my first IQ scoring protocol (which I struggle with anyway because I lack the serious focus and attention to minute detail that it calls for), and I was so ready to be done by the end of the day. I was thoroughly surprised and thrilled when I came home and found a vase of flowers on the table from John. <3. Hours of studying and a package of Sour Patch Kids (oh sweet relief!) later, I feel a little bit better. Though I fear that I have to kiss my working memory goodbye until after Comps.

The new first year students have begun their program this week. That officially makes me a 4th year student in the program. Amanda and I were talking this evening about how when we were first years we thought the fourth years were so old and mature and knowledgeable that they were practically untouchable. Interesting how I don’t quite feel like I live up to that expectation!

It IS funny though because I am currently taking a class (out of sequence) with the previous year’s first-year students. I feel like I am so out of it in that class; like everyone has their little cliques and then I am sitting there all old arthritic and out of the loop.

Here is some documentation of our growth over the years!

Mike, Me, & Amanda, downtown Akron, summer before first year

 
Adrienne & Me, Barley House, winter of first year

Adrienne, Me, & Amanda, Department, winter of second year

 

Graduation with the MA, spring of second year

Betsy, Amanda, Me, Myriam, & Zac, (Mix of all 3 cohorts!) Barley House, summer before third year

Me & Myriam at the first ever Boss Night!, Fall of third year

I need something for fall of 4th year now! I think the good side of this is that I am that much closer to finishing :)

I am reading a book called Industrial Valley, by Ruth McKenney, about Akron in the Great Depression. It was originally published in 1939 as a compilation of true events as shared by a newspaper reporter. Behold one of my favorites so far (everything following is directly quoted from the book):

Haw!          ~          October 19, 1934

     All of Akron laughed today when the Times-Press published the calling cards of a bevy of flashing-eyed local prostitutes. “I am working my way through Akron University,” said the cards. “I live in a hotel protected by the city for twenty-five years.”
     The Times-Press solemnly denounced the city police for allowing ladies of the evening to go around advertising they were co-eds at the city institution of learning. Akron University officials solemnly denied that any prostitutes were working their way through their college, and Akron police denied that they had been protecting any “hotels” for twenty-five years or any other period of time, indeed, and forsooth!
     Mayor Honest Ike Myers added the final fillip to the town’s best joke in months when, asked if he knew about women “soliciting” on the streets, saying they were Akron University co-eds, he replied, “Girls at Akron University begging dimes to get through college?”
     “No, no, Mayor” chorused the reporters, and told the old man the facts of life.

Our 4th of July was significantly uneventful—John and I spent the day around the house trying to put a bed frame together that one of our friends had given us. It was quite a project—in the end John had to go to the hardware store, buy lumber, cut it down and sand it to make slats. Meanwhile I was vacuuming cat hair off of the furniture. We didn’t see fireworks because there weren’t many displays this year; instead we ended up going to the dollar theater in the evening and seeing Date Night.

July 5th (Monday) was better. We went to John’s dad’s house for a picnic. The only downside of this is that it was like 93 degrees outside. They have a pool, but we had neglected to bring swimwear, but it was so hot that we ended up jumping in in our clothes! That felt MUCH better!