Diary Excerpt #1

Since these blogs clearly take me forever to write, I thought a fun little interlude to hold you over would be to post some excerpts from my diaries.  I have about 5 that I wrote in sporatically throughout my youth and I swear I could not make this stuff up.  They really showcase just how deep-rooted my celebrity obsession is, and also how creepy I was.  But, its funny.  So, without further ado:



Jan. 21, 1995

Dear Diary,

Hi! Today is starting out ok, but the story can wait.  Since this is the first entry, and all, I have so many secrets to tell you!
First of all, I love Rider Strong.  Before I thought that I just had a crush, until Jan. 20, 1995 I realized that I really loved him.  He is so funny!  Did you know that he is really serious in real life? Oh, I forgot, your a diary!

Rider.  **

Rider.

To get to sleep I just think about him. (And sometimes J.T.T.)

I <3 him!

I <3 him!

I <3 him!

Maybe I will meet him someday!


Love,
Emily

**This Rider is circled, not sure why

Late Night Snacks

When I was in college I was a ridiculous person.  My schedule consisted of waking up for my 8 o'clock class, acting like I maybe was going to go when I knew I wasn't, obviously skipping my 8 o'clock class, and then sleeping until noon.  The rest of the day was spent getting food and watching Bravo marathons with my roommate before getting ready and starting to drink at about 5.  This happened almost every day of the week.  Looking back I'm not sure how I survived, but the funny thing about college is that as bad as I was there were plenty of people that were so much worse.  People that never took a day off drinking, always organized the pregame and the after parties, and still managed to be up by 10am to go on a bagel run and drop off the keg to get the deposit back on the way home.  These people were the Greeks.

Of course, I don't mean Greek the nationality - I'm talking about those in frats and sororities.  They were huge at my school and while I was not in one, my best friend Lauren was, so I got to reap the benefits of mixers and parties without having to go to meetings or do the obligatory charity work that always seemed to happen at 9am on a Saturday.  However, the one aspect I regularly missed out on happened to be the best part - the "Formals".  There was one held for each frat or sorority and it was known to be the best time of the year.  They would rent out a huge banquet room at a hotel where everyone would get rooms, and it was basically like prom where drinking was not only allowed but encouraged.  There was an open bar and a DJ, and everyone had to wear formal attire.  It was my dream come true.  Of course, the only people that could go were members of the sorority and their dates, so every year I would be forced to make other plans while my best friend was away for the weekend and then suffer in jealousy when everyone came back talking about how much fun it was and all the crazy things that happened.  This went down every April and every March I would help my friends pick out their dresses and wish I could go.  I was like Cinderella dreaming of the ball and needed a Fairy Godmother to make it happen.  Turns out that Fairy Godmother was Lauren's boyfriend, Ben.

I still remember the phone call when Lauren told me Ben had a golf trip planned the same weekend as Formal and that she wanted me to come as her date instead.  This was the best news ever!  I immediately headed to the mall to find the perfect dress.  After much searching I settled on a lovely strapless jersey number, in a blue that would bring out my eyes and a hemline that resembled a fairy costume.  I thought it to be understated yet charming. I couldn't wait to wear it so I was ecstatic when the golden day finally came and I hopped into Lauren's car to drive the 45 minutes to the hotel.  There were probably about 70 of us and everyone got there early to hang out in the hotel rooms to pregame and take their time getting ready.  After quite a few shots I paired my dress with blue eyeshadow as a compliment, along with some gold bangles, my gold metallic purse (which I would still have had it not been ripped out of my hands months later by a Hispanic lesbian drug addict with corn rows, but thats a story for another time) and bedazzled gold pumps.  Clearly beer goggles and mirrors can be a deadly combination, because I thought I looked fabulous.  Lauren was sporting a sleeveless floor length red dress with an embroidered turtleneck, and together we were ready to rock.  We went downstairs and spent the night taking full advantage of the open bar and dancing until our feet hurt.  It was everything I had hoped it would be and more - one of the most fun days of my college career.  Until about 3am.

Ben had showed up after his golf outing and surprised Lauren, so now I was sharing a room with the both of them as well as Lauren's roommate and her date.  We were all hanging out having the last of our drinks before bed when we agreed we were hungry and everything would be so much better if we had something to eat.  Since it was late and we were in a strange place we had no idea what to do about food, until I remembered having passed a vending machine near the banquet room.  Everyone gathered all the change they had and I offered to go get snacks for the room.  Armed with two handfuls of coins and carefully memorized orders for chips and pretzels, I took the elevator down to the lobby.  There was no line for the machine so after commending myself for being the only genius (i.e. fatass) who noticed it, I put in my first round of quarters for a bag of Cheeto's - my personal favorite.  It came down and I feverishly pushed in the metal flap at the bottom to retrieve it, preparing to open it immediately to ensure that I wouldn't have to share them with the rest of my roommates.  However, something malfunctioned and the flap got stuck - after my hand was in there it would only open about the width of my wrist.  I tried to get my hand out but my gold bangles blocked this from happening, and before I knew it my hand was officially stuck.  In the vending machine.  My hand was stuck in the vending machine.  I sat down on the floor and tried to use my other hand to push the metal flap up, but that thing was not going anywhere.  I was completely helpless.  To make matters worse, no one was around to help me since it was so late, so I was stuck in a giant food dispenser in a deserted hotel hallway.  Not sure what to do and still really hungry, I decided to make the best of the situation and stuck my other hand in to at least get out the Cheetos.  After quite the struggle I finally got hold of them but the opening was too small, so when I tried pulling them out the bag burst and Cheetos rained all over me and my blue dress.  I gathered as many as I could and put them in my lap to snack on while I waited for someone to rescue me.  Finally, a frat guy walked by and I casually stopped him to see if he would mind helping me get my hand out of the vending machine.  Not my sexiest moment.  He tried pushing up the flap but not even frat muscles could move it, so he went to get his friends to help.  I was not extremely excited about this, but I was desperate.  Word travelled fast and before I knew it I had a line forming behind me of people wanting snacks, as well as a group of guys circled around me trying to rescue my hand.  They eventually came to the conclusion that it was not going to budge, so they went to the front desk and came back with the hotel manager.  I can only imagine what he was thinking approaching a drunk girl in formal-wear sitting on the floor eating Cheetos out of her lap with her hand stuck in the vending machine.  Unfortunately he was no help - he only had the key to open the machine and that did nothing to help my situation.  Finally a dark knight emerged from the line of people waiting for food - he had had enough of waiting and told me to lean back and cover my face as he got a running start and delivered a powerful kick to the metal prison holding my hand hostage.  It worked, and a round of applause broke out as I took my hand out and stood up, a free woman.  Everyone was happy until I announced that I had a tall order for snacks and $7 worth of change, and proceeded to start again purchasing munchies for everyone in my hotel room.  The entire line behind me booed.




***Lauren put up old pictures on Facebook!  I now have a visual for you.  The two on the right were also friend dates and our color scheme was not planned.  Also, this is back when my hair was dark and I was fat, so maybe I thought my stance would make my legs look skinnier?  Please forgive me.

Family Vacation

Whenever I talk to my friends about their childhoods they tell me that some of their fondest memories are from family vacations.  They were times of extreme relaxation - enjoying nice dinners in restaurants with white table cloths, sleeping till noon in queen sized hotel beds, and spending lazy days on the beach getting tans and learning to surf.  It was a week to get away from school and sports and homework to simply enjoy time together in a peaceful environment - to take a break from the chaos and remember that you could actually have fun with your siblings and parents. They were something to look forward to all year, creating memories that you would look back on and cherish for a lifetime.  Unless, of course, you were in my family.


San Diego was probably the hardest on me because it was the first one - I was young and naive and therefore allowed myself to be excited.  I thought that we would be spending every day lounging on the beach - I was obsessed with my new pink-striped one piece, and couldn't stop picturing myself body surfing in it or rollerblading with shorts over it so it looked like a casual cool bodysuit.  So I had to learn the hard way that my parents' inexperience with family vacations led them to make the unfortunate assumption that going to a new city meant not wasting a moment and seeing everything it has to offer under the "kid-friendly" section of the guidebook.  They could not seem to grasp that a vacation is for relaxing, and therefore my first family vacation experience was spent waking up while it was still dark out, stuffing my mini-backpack with Nutri-Grain bars for sustenance, and walking around every possible animal park within a 20 mile radius.  The San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Wildlife Park, SeaWorld...for me, San Diego has stood for a whale's vagina long before Ron Bergundy came along.  We would finish the day with dinner at Denny's - which was attached to our "hotel" - and be asleep by 9 so we could be up by 6 the next morning to continue our animal tour from hell.  This went on for six days.  Finally a glimmer of hope came though on the last day, when I was informed that we had run out of zoos and were going to spend the day shopping.  I was ecstatic to at last be able to do something normal and just hoped that their mall had a Weathervane. So you can imagine my surprise when we drove past the malls, over the Mexican border, and straight into a magical land known as Tijuana.  My little brother and I took in the sights of pregnant homeless women and houses constructed of sheets while my dad bartered with a toothless man to get the price down on an authentic Mexican blanket.  Breaking him down to half the price and pumped about his savings he then took us out for a lovely lunch of original Tijuana street stand fish tacos.  On the flight home the next morning I made a personal vow to never underestimate my family's ability to dismay me, and to also never eat Tijuana fish tacos before a five hour flight ever again.


After such a lovely experience on our day trip to Mexico, it only made sense that our next family vacation should be to spend a solid week and a half there.  My initial reaction was horror, but my dad assured me that he had done his research and this time we would be travelling the scenic "Baja Peninsula".  He showed it to me on a map and, promising to keep a safe distance from Tijuana, I once again made the dreaded mistake of allowing excitement for the trip.  Everyone I knew that had gone to Mexico boasted about its beautiful beaches and lack of animal parks, so I thought that this trip had some solid potential.  Once again, I should have known better.  My dad had yet to realize how much research and planning goes into a good vacation, so we spent the majority of the time in the car driving on highways littered with armed guards to "popular tourist destinations" such as hot springs packed with retired people that smelled so strongly of sulfur it made your eyes water.  Our meals consisted of - you guessed it - fish tacos, as well as the occasional whole fish complete with bones and eyes because my dad could not get over how cheap they were.  When we did buy the whole fish the men in the restaurant would come and put gold necklaces on me and call me Princess, which my mom thought was "very sweet".  Of course, we had also made the cardinal mistake of not staying in a resort, and had booked rooms at local hotels that were straight out of horror movies with dirty sheets and barely running water.  At the end of the week we walked into one particularly dungeon-like hotel room, causing my mom to start hysterically crying.  We left the next day and Mexico as a whole joined wildlife parks on my list of places that the world would be better without.


However, we stuck together and used our vacations as learning experiences, so after a few more we finally started to get our act together.  LA was a success (minus the part about my dad mortifying me on the tour bus by screaming and hugging me when we passed Leonardo DiCaprio's house), Hawaii was even better (except my shorts and t-shirt tan lines, but that was no ones fault but my own), and St. Kitts was perfect.  It seemed we had hit a stride and now made sure that all our vacations were well planned and researched, complete with plenty of relaxation time, no planned animal observing, and no skimping on hotels.  My dad started doing a lot of business in St. Croix and our family began to go at least once a year, and after that we had vacations down to a science.  We would stay at the same hotel every time - it was walking distance to a beautiful sandy beach where we would tan and snorkel during the day, followed by relaxing family dinners at night.  There was something for everyone - we had finally hit a stride.  I should have known it was too good to be true.


It started as a perfect day at the beach.  The weather was hot and sunny and the water was clear and warm yet refreshing.  I had spent my day doing my dad's "Ultimate Tan Regimen" which consisted of alternating between laying on my stomach until I got hot, swimming, laying on my back until I got hot, swimming, and repeating until the desired level of reddish-brown is achieved.  I was finishing up a cycle on my back and starting to feel unbearably hot, so I decided to join my dad and my brother in the water for a handstand contest to cool off.  The previous sentence might be misleading so I feel I should mention that I was about 19 years old at this time.  That said, the handstand contest led to somersaults, which led to seeing who could hold their breath the longest underwater, and a variety of other games.  We were having a blast but running out of entertainment, so I came up with the suggestion to have all of us crouch down in the water and jump up to see who could jump the highest.  Everyone agreed that this was a really great and fun idea.  We counted to three and went underwater, preparing to all spring up at the same time so we could see who was the highest in mid-air.  I had lost almost all of our other competitions but had confidence in this one due to my long legs, so I was pumped to finally win.  I got as low as I possibly could and, using all my strength, pushed myself up in the air with my arms over my head victoriously.  What happened next plays in my memory in slow motion.  As I was rising to the top I saw my dad and brother also in the air, all of us with pure joy on our faces.  I soon realized that I was the clear winner here, at the top of my game with a solid 6 inches more height than anyone else so there would be no arguing when we landed.  I had a brief second of excitement for my win, looking forward to gloating and daring them to challenge me with a rematch.  But as we were lowering into the water I noticed that my dad and brother's faces had changed.  Just one second ago they were ecstatic, but now had looks of horror with their arms covering their faces to shield their eyes.  My brother actually looked like he was about to cry.  I landed back on my feet and confusedly looked around me to see what they could possibly have seen to scare them so badly.  After nothing was to my right or left I finally looked down and saw what had caused them such shock and revulsion.  My bathing suit top was completely off.  Time started going in normal speed again and I covered up as quickly as possible, not sure what their reactions would be but hoping they would pretend it never happened and move on.  I looked at them nervously, and we all shared a moment of awkward silence before my brother literally started gagging.  Thinking he was overreacting I looked to my dad, hoping he would just laugh it off and tell my brother to calm down.  No help there.  My dad was having the same reaction, and looking at me with utter disgust he told me that I should go back to the beach with my mom and not talk to them for a while.  Stunned and horrified, I ran to the beach and told my mom that I had just accidentally flashed the two men in our immediate family.  Like them, she took this very seriously.  There was no laughter as she told me that I should just leave them alone for the rest of the day, and hopefully by tomorrow they will have forgotten about it and forgiven me.  Therefore, I spent the remainder of the day condemned to a beach chair 20 feet away to reflect on my actions.  Everyone went snorkeling without me, and when it came time to have lunch I quietly got my sandwich and brought it back to my lonely beach chair to eat in silence.  We all went to bed early that night, and I fell asleep praying that they would wake up in the morning having forgotten all about it.  Luckily, they did, and the next day it was like it had never happened and our vacation went on peacefully as planned.  To this day the incident has never been mentioned amongst my family again.