medium – Page 12 – The only certainty is bad grammar

My best friend got engaged!!!!!

Published: March 23, 2012 / Updated: March 23, 2012 Crystal feminism?, god, medium, Wow

My very best friend in the whole world got engaged last week! YAY APRIL!!!

And I’m the maid of honor!!! OMG!!!!!

We’ve been friends since she was days away from turning 13 and I was 15.

We met when one day, when this girl Shari and I decided to go knock on April’s door to ask if she wanted to walk to Dominick’s with us to buy ice cream. April had just moved in to the neighborhood and even back then I was uncomfortably friendly, and so, I did random things like show up unannounced at random doors, and ask the people who lived there if they’d like to go to the store with me and my friend Shari.

Lucky for us all, April said, “Umm, sure.” You know, as opposed to “Who the F*ck are you? Where’s my gun?!!”

If you added up all the hours we all spent together that summer, you’d get infinity. That’s how summers feel when you’re old enough to leave the house alone, but not old enough to need a job. Infinite. I do not even understand how we all fantastically wasted away as much time together as we did, but I suspect Monopoly, the card game Speed and discussions about boys helped immensely.

It’s been about exactly 13 years since then now.

13 years.

Wow.

In that time, April and I have both graduated college, lived in our own apartments, lived together in one apartment, dated hundreds of boys and spent years on the phone together. We’ve both gotten excited about alcohol and then over it, dived into the skinny jean trend and stuck with it, and grown deeper into our faith.

Deep down though, neither of us will ever fully shake the teenage girl inside us. Or at least I hope we won’t. Because those girls are SO EXCITED!!! right now about April’s wedding. They are smiling, and laughing, and speaking our secret language, and crying about the joy of it all.

And they are praying as hard as they can that peace and joy and blessings will follow us for many years to come.

So congratulations April!! You have found your one true love and I’m so happy for you that I could jump up and down and fart right now with pure glee!

Here’s to the best wedding ever!

So that’s where JFK was shot.

Published: February 23, 2012 / Updated: February 23, 2012 Crystal medium

Hey ya’ll!

I just got back from Dallas! So fun. Loved the 80-degree weather in February!

Yes, I was there for a candy conference. Yes, I overdosed on sugar. Yes I have a great job.

Moving on, I got a chance to see the place where John F. Kennedy was shot. I confess, I forgot that happened in Dallas until the bus driver taking us back to the hotel from dinner said we could stop.

In a word, it was eerie.

I stood on the corner, and looked up at the brown book depository building and saw the window from which Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired those infamous shots. (The bus driver told us Lee Harvey Oswald’s gun still is kept up there for tours, although I did not have a chance to confirm that). Then, I glanced at the street, and pictured the car coming up the lane and the massive panic that followed. The infamous grassy knoll is now a reflecting pool and a monument, but it’s not hard to imagine the cheery parade crowd gathered there transforming into a group of shocked witnesses within the blink of an eye.

It’s a bizarre thing to stand where such a famous death happened. A death I’ve seen 1,000 times on TV and in old news footage but have no first-hand memory of.

I wonder what drew people to that parade that day. And how being a witness to such a tragedy changed their lives. I wonder if they could tell in the moment where the shots came from. I wonder if they instantly realized what was happening, or if, like with most sudden events, it took them a minute to process. I wonder what the people who stayed home that day thought when they heard the news. And I wonder how long it took for anyone in Dallas to be able to walk past that scene without crying.

In college I randomly ended up in a English class with a crazy teacher who thought the whole world was one giant conspiracy and so, of course, he was absolutely convinced that there was more to the JFK assassination than Lee Harvey Oswald.

And, instead of teaching us how to write, he spent the whole course making us study the shooting. Then, at the end of the semester each of use was forced to write a 15-page analysis of the situation.

I ended up putting the paper off until the last minute and because even I screw things up sometimes, I turned in a horrible analysis. I know. I know. Shock. Horror. Disbelief. Anyway, I guess it’s been long enough now and I’ve got myself a decent enough job these days that I can share with you that I got a D on that paper. Seeing as how people pay me to write now, I think everything ended well.

The thing was though, even though I put about zero effort into writing the paper, I do remember reading some of the background about the shooting, and I have to say, there’s a lot of strange stuff. If my college education memories serve me right, there’s discrepancies about Lee Harvey Oswald’s height, the eye witness reports were tainted by the fact that the eye witnesses had already seen Oswald on the news, and of course there’s the fact that Oswald was killed before he ever got to tell his side of the story.

So ya, I think maybe the JFK shooting might have been a conspiracy by the mob, the U.S. government, aliens or some combination of the three. (To be honest, I have some doubts about the moon landing too). (Seriously, why were there shadows in the footage, and where did the wind come from?)

Anyway, standing at the scene of the crime, right there in Dallas, Texas, I was hoping that I would gain some clarity about what actually went down. That I would suddenly see first-hand how it was all laid out and realize that either it must have been a lone gunman or that the assassination could have only happened if a group of people were firing shots.

Alas, I left more confused than I was when I started.

But I did leave with a different type of clarity. Staring at the spot on the street where the car was when the shot hit Kennedy, I suddenly felt the extreme significance of the event.

And it reminded me that death can happen at anytime, anywhere to anybody. All we can do is live our life so that when the final shots are fired, we can say good-bye without regret.

RE: Life, insurance, flu shots, etc.

January 26, 2012 Crystal humor, medium

:: Tap. Tap. ::

:: TapTapTapTap ::

Umm, ahem, um, is this thing still on?

Oh! Hello there. How are you? It’s been a few hot minutes hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I’ve been busy keeping my head above water over here. You know, splashing around and wailing and scream-crying (mostly in my car).

Things are much calmer now. My bank account is in the black, my brother (who is now living on my couch) has officially held down a (full-time!!) job for more than two weeks, and neither my cable nor my cell phone were shut off even once.

That’s in large part because my mom is awesome. No, more awesome than that. Seriously.

Life hasn’t been cake for her these days, but as always she pulled some random things together and everything seems to be getting back on the right track again.

Well, you know except for the fact that nobody in my family has health insurance. Well, I have health insurance, sure. And my dad is on Medicare, I think. But well, due to a sad series of events, my mom, my two brothers and my little sister no longer have access to affordable medical care.

The crappiest part though isn’t even the lack of medical insurance, but the fact that my sister currently has braces on her teeth but no longer has dental coverage. I’m pretty sure she’s had serious fears about the orthodontist demanding to immediately take off her braces if they can’t pay. So pray about that, ya?

The frustrating thing is that my two brothers both are working full time, and my little sister is 12. There is no reason ever in the world that those three people should not have medical insurance in the United States of America.

And seeing as how my mom bore said children, and then raised them and everything, it just seems to me that she too should have some sort of medical coverage. At least for emergency care.

My brother (the one living with me) randomly got the legit flu last week. I admit, at first I was very older-sister about the whole thing, all, “You JUST got this job. You have to go to work. I’ve gone to work sick a bazillion times. That’s what adults do. So get your butt to work.”

And to his credit, he did just that for two days. But on the third day he was so weak that while trying to bath himself and he literally fell asleep in the water. At that point, I was all, “FINE. Let me see if you have a temperature. ”

He did.

100.7.

So then I felt bad for him. And after much prayer/anxiety-filled decision making, we decided it would be best if he went to his job and told them he wanted to work there with all his heart and soul but that he didn’t exactly have the strength to stand up right now. Thank the Lord in heaven right now that they were cool about it.

After I tucked him in to couch to go to sleep, I started to play my favorite mind game – worry about everything ever. Which off course led my brain to the possibility that my brother would end up with pneumonia and die.

Dude has had it once before, so it’s not really that far-fetched people. Just sayin’.

I got super nervous that he would need medical care and started Googling flu.gov for signs its time to take someone to the hospital. And then, of course, I got even more freaked out because he doesn’t have medical insurance.

I mean, ya, I know, they would HAVE to treat him. But they would also have the right to charge him exactly one arm, one leg and one first born child for said treatment. Not exactly the kind of bill he or anyone else in my family is in a position to pay right now.

Luckily, after he slept for about 48 hours straight, his fever went down and he regained the strength to bath himself so we never did end up having to go to the doctor.

But the point is, going to the doctor shouldn’t cause financial panic. Not in America.

And I don’t understand why he works full time and doesn’t have insurance. And I don’t understand why I work two jobs, but I can’t put any of my immediate family members onto my insurance plan. And I don’t understand people who think the health care system in American is awesome.

I just don’t.

The good news is, my company gave me a free flu shot this year (the nurse came to our offices and everything), so I was totally golden illness wise. Good thing the one with the medical insurance won’t need to be seeing a doctor for the flu anytime soon, huh?

YAY AMERICA!