...realized my notes are not quite right.

In just a few days I'll be stuffing everything I own into my tiny little Subaru and heading back to Utah. My feelings right now are quite complicated. Yay friends! Boo, no more puppy! Yay making money again! Boo, paying for my own things! Yay learning! Boo, homework! Yay Slab/Krispy Kreme/IHOP/etc! Boo, Provo! And so on. Still, it's going to happen whether I want it to or not, so today I began packing. Well, theoretically. I actually ended up taking tons of pictures of Hoover as he slept, pretending my new bendy tripod was a hydra, wrestling with Hoover at length (who can resist when he comes over and gently pries your hand from your face and tries to drag you to the living room? No one. That's who.), finishing off some Ben & Jerry's Half Baked, and then finally decided I could at least purge some drawers I'd stuffed full of school things and left alone. So I did.

Most of it was pretty standard: some old homework I'd once believed I'd refer to again, some books I actually will refer to again, a mug full of money from Ukraine/Poland/the Czech Republic and tons of pennies, and various writing utensils. Then I came across the notebooks. For whatever reason I had 3 spiral notebooks full of notes and essay drafts with no apparent organization. Notes from Physical Science 100, for example, were scattered across the three, appearing on random pages sandwiched between doodles and religion notes. This meant that I had to look through every page to see if there was anything I needed (though I can't imagine what those would be unless someone breaks into my house and threatens to kill me unless I can pass a Physical Science test but decides to give me 15 minutes to study my old notes, and even then I'd be pretty screwed since I'm fairly sure I failed that final after studying for days). Despite my careful search, I found nothing important. But I did found some things of interest.

I'm an avid doodler. It's much easier for me to pay attention when my hands are otherwise occupied--or in same cases to tune out boring professors who talk too much about dragons. So I expected to find weird drawings, and they were there. Lots of people with fangs, really fat horses, and little monsters I've created. But I don't just draw; I also write random things in the margins. Sometimes they're relevant to the notes, like when I was apparently enthusiastic about science and scribbled "Plasmas are charged! Yay."

Occasionally, I think I can identify my thought process, but I'm uncertain. Even if I'm right, I'm not sure it makes much more sense. This, for example, was the only thing on the page:

"I'm pregnant! I'm glad you found someone who loves Buffy."

I think I was writing a draft of a letter to a missionary, but I'm not sure where the pregnancy came in. I bet in the middle of a really boring class where the alternative was probably coloring in my freckles, I thought it was a hilarious joke. And then there are things that make sense, until you consider context:

"I just want to hug everyone in the whole world! Love love LOVE!"

This was in Physical Science. I am sure I never felt that way, in that class or out of it. But especially in it. Mostly I was murderous or bored to death, which probably inspired me to write this apparent poem:

"My little pony/it's a whole/new mindset/canary!"

The delightful thing is that I have no recollection of writing any of these things. I'm sure that at the time I had perfectly logical explanations, or at least flawed logical explanations, but now it's like opening a time capsule. A time capsule from about 4 months ago. Still, I'm sure 4-month-ago-Chloe had something clever in mind with these gems:

"I just don't like corndogs, okay?" (beside notes about Bronte's use of Christianity and mysticism)

"JASON BOURNE WILL KILL YOU ALL." (in the middle of notes on "Lanval")

"I do love faeries!" (on an otherwise empty page)

And finally, after looking through several hundred pages of random notes, doodles, and scribbles to myself, I learned something I probably wouldn't have realized otherwise: apparently I have some fixation with fecal matter. Who knew? There are many references throughout. Some entirely random...

"Pooping rabbit!"

Another poem...

"Ghostbusters/ My pony's name / is Tanner. It is / not Poopface. / Multiple! / Je ne sais pas. / Potato. / I love potatoes!"

And finally, my personal favorite:

"Poop! Poop. Poop. Poop poop poop!"

What else is there to possibly say? Poop poop poop, indeed.