Procrastination; the Oxidation of Memory

Unfortunately, and for no good reason, I have failed to publish any blogs during my past five months in South Korea. And it is too late now as the best part of a blog post is how it can so wonderfully capture the minute details of a moment. But I can summarize some things for sure and indeed I am willing as I have just took the time to read over some past posts and was surprised at how precious they seemed to me. I am shocked at how quickly I forget about adventures and am thankful for even the smallest scraps that I decided to write down. 

But where to start with a semester so incredibly full? All that has happened and changed is almost ridiculous to think about, and I really do find it hard to believe. I am unspeakably thankful for the experience yet hesitant to call it a blessing. Will it have a long term affect on who I am? Were all of the decision I made right? Will I come away feeling satisfied with having put off school for a year? Time will surely tell me in its maddeningly slow fashion. 

Beautiful Mr. Blue

Mr. Blue and I were first acquainted when I was a fairly young girl. He was with my grandmother at that time  and I remember thinking that he was very pretty for a car with his deep sparkly blue paint and attractive contours. On occasion I would drive with my grandma to the store or to the park when she was babysitting me and the seats were always satisfactorily soft. But it smelled like my grandma's garage, musty and stale. And his glove box was always overflowing with expired coupons for the various fast food restaurants in town. Years later my grandmother decided to put down the keys for good although it was more of a doctors order, but she would never admit to it. And so Mr. Blue was passed on to me, just in time for my first year of university. It was a jolt for him, leaving the parking spot at the old folks home and moving into a world of fast paced academia. Rappers strewn along the once scrupulously clean floors and a constant stream of loud passengers. His speakers were suddenly channeling out loud melodies and his tires spun and turned lively and tirelessly. I am tempted, against what rationality says, that Mr. Blue feels thankful for the new breath of life. He shows it by being very enduring and causing me very little strife. Indeed him and I are a team.
This past month has been an exceptional  trial of our strength as a team. The road to Vermilion Field Station is the Valley of Death for a car of Mr. Blue's age and stature, but he has yet to let me down. I think sometimes there is a moment between a car and it's driver when real love and fondness strikes. And there is a moment when one realizes that they spend too much time living alone in the forest and perhaps have begun to slip off into the deep end and for me both of these moments came at the same time. It was a hot summer day and I was on my  way to pick up a local birder in town to come help me out in the field. I loaded up Mr. Blue and headed down the sandy drive. Because it was so nice out there were quite a few people around the establishment for a day of swimming and rock hunting, however I was determined to make it out without talking to any of them because who wants to talk to people milling around their front yard? It's very invasive. But because of the heavy traffic the drive had become a sand pit and Mr. Blue sunk up to his front bumper. We were stuck fast and the tourists were all watching. Imagine a crowd of people watching you get stuck in your own drive way! Go to a local beach, sheesh!
I grabbed a shovel and rake from the garage and began to shovel with fierce determination. It was an act of pure self reliance; I was in a situation and there were no phone lines, cell service or WiFi and I was determined prove myself capable of complete Independence. I dug for more than a half an hour, on hands and knees, shoveling out piles of sand with my hands and coaxing on Mr. Blue the whole time. Finally I reversed out of the pit, grinding the gears of Mr. Blue to a point of near destruction I'm sure, but he never let me down. No sir, he was as determined as I was. Next I had to maneuver him up and around the pit which took a considerable amount of speed and gave his old, rusty shocks a run for their money. Once we were home free I knew that Mr. Blue was a very special car and that he and I could get through anything after that episode. Oh Mr. Blue, you are the world's greatest car. 

Bushman

Hot, humid and lonely describes the main events of my life out at 300 Nowhere St. but there are moments that don't exactly make it all worth it but definitely are nice perks. Like sitting in a busted lawn chair with a panoramic view of a swampy beach underneath a sky filled with heavy looking clouds. That's a nice feeling. Kind of like what it must feel like to be a monk sitting up on a high mountain feeling all empty of the pollution of civilization, wallowing in inner peace. And then a family of deer runs by, their hoofs actually thundering on the wet, spam coloured ground. It's a show that mother nature puts on, she does it in a way that you don't really catch the plot and meaning unless you stop and look. No technology, no where to go, no one to talk to about whatever seems important in that moment. Just open sky and wide open space. She is a very demanding director but you get the point, it slaps you around a bit. And gets way to personal. I don't really want to reflect on what my purpose is in life but she really forces you to once she displays a million different species to you, showing you in detail what their purposes are. Get over yourself Mothernature. Most of the rest of the world has. In fact, we are slowly removing you! But you do make a beautiful movie.

My Unthinkable Love

It's moments like these that I feel inspired to write. I am sitting in a McDonalds and it's around 9:30, just about to start into some homework. And I find myself wondering at the mystery that is McDonalds. This is the institution that has been the example of horror for nearly every documentary and book on food industry disasters, capitalistic greed and health issues that I have read, yet I find my self relentlessly drawn to this place. Granted my menu opportunities have shrank drastically (the only food I feel inclined to order is a black coffee without a plastic lid) but I still can’t help to feel love toward this place. Tonight I am sitting on the barstool chairs near the windows. The table directly in front of me is hosting two teenager boys engaged in a pokemon match, the table next to them has a happy family sharing a moment over some McFlueries and go one more over I find a man covered in tattoos sitting with his wife, munching on a cheeseburger.  The diversity is amazing, no one sub culture has claimed McDonalds which is what makes it so approachable. It’s a flourishing ecosystem, the rain forest of restaurants. And the available WiFi and coffee house feel calls deeply to my nature and appeases my short budget. I am perhaps a sorry excuse for an animal enthusiast but I just can’t shake the feelings. McDonalds seems to nearly have a soul in my opinion. Ask me what I think of McDonalds and I will say, without blinking, that it is an oil consuming black hole turning unthinkable trash into edible crap that is making North America a place full of fat pigs and they do this by standing on the backs of poor farmers, desolate immigrants and horrifically abused animals. But remove the logic and the facts and boil it down to the feelings that I really can’t help and I will tell you that McDonalds is a haven. Full of memories of my mother watching me from outside the playroom window, an orange juice moustache, a great new toy in a smiling happy meal box, a gathering place for my high school friends and most recently: a warm building and a place to sit and write, read and plunge into academia. McDonalds, I hate you; mostly because I love you. 

Sweet Summer Days

I must admit that I was a little leery about blogging after I got home from my grand Kenyan adventure. Mostly because I didn't think that any of my blah, at home experiences would measure up to my previous blogs. And, maybe this is just the reverse culture shock talking, but I really didn't think that writing about going to school and doing chores would satisfy me or any potential readers. I was indeed in a bit of a schlump, missing the taste of risk and adventure and the inevitable sense of identity that comes with those two things. But today I knew that it was time to fire up the old blog again. It suddenly hit me that I had been liberated from the mundane, I don't know when exactly it happened but I know it has been for a while now and I was just too unused to any thing other than the mundane to notice. It must have started with the end of the first year of university. Then proceeded to climax when my sister came home, followed by my brother's graduation and then getting the Piping Plover Monitoring position which brings me to this very day in which an experience occurred that changed my outlook.An experience worthy of blogging about.
A Regular Day at the Vermilion Field Station:
I saw it first while I was driving with my parents out to Whitefish Point, to show them exactly what I do out in the middle of the forest. The thing was just sitting there, as if it had no idea what a road was for. It didn't even move as my car rumbled up to it, merely inches from smacking it back into the woods. I slowed to a stop and rolled down my window right beside it and stared at it with mocking eyes. Stupid partridge.
The next time I saw it was on the way back from the Point; I was by myself this time so I pulled over on the narrow dirt road and got out to jeer at it as this was the second time it had stood in the road and stared at my car as if it were nothing more than a tumble weed rather than a very heavy and fast, hunk of metal. This is when I noticed little, tiny fluff balls wandering in the brush close to the road and the dumbstruck partridge. I immediately felt ashamed of myself. This animal wasn't stupid! It was boldly protecting its young! I stood back and marveled at it for a minute until it started to growl. Yea, I had no idea they could do that. I walked swiftly back to the car without looking back. This definitely let the beastly partridge know that it was the boss in our relationship and I'm fairly certain that it had sensed my mocking earlier and resented me a little.
A while later I was walking back from a couple of plover nests, hardly even thinking about the partridge with the vendetta, when I heard a great deal of noise in the bush beside me. I glanced over and saw the chicks and stooped a little to take a peek at the little guys. It probably would have been fine too,  if there wasn't another chick on the other side of the road which I was directly in the middle of. All of the sudden the thing came charging at me! It had its tale all spread and its wings were held out making it look twice as big and it also had this little tuft of feathers on the top of its head sticking straight up. And it just started charging right at me, so I took a few fast steps forward (bad move) and then looked back only to see it charging with even more resolve. So I just grabbed the straps of my back back and started to sprint unashamedly, calling out between bursts of laughter: "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
It was at that moment that I realized my life is rich and interesting once again. Praise God for angry mom partridges. I shall never call one stupid ever again. And I will have to go the long way to avoid another confrontation.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/24269690?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/24269690%22%3Ekenya 2011</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user3292241%22%3EHannah Grimes</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com%22%3evimeo%3c/a%3E.%3C/p>

Surprise! Baby! number two

"Finally the powers on! Three days is just ridiculous." I grab my empty glass and head back to the kitchen for some more juice. The last night we had carried the t.v. over to the empty neighbours house so we could watch CSI. The things I have to suffer through over here.
I glimpse at the slightly ajar door and then turn into the kitchen of our small apartment when suddenly I jumped at a small moving mass on the floor. Frozen for a moment, my brain registers what it's looking at. And then I burst out laughing, "Ummm there's a bunch of chickens in the kitchen,"
"What?" I heard my aunt call from the sitting room.
"Yeah, there's 12 baby chickens in your kitchen."
It took us a while to heard them all out the door but finally cheapers were all back outside. Paul, our friendly, farming neighbour, seemed to have a very busy group of chickens.
"No wonder that roosters been so excited lately."