This Blog Is About Wren

Posted on by Sierra
Today I am going to reward myself for waking up earlier than I had to by writing a blog.
This blog is about Wren.
I don’t know Wren very well; in fact,we’ve only ever met once, but Wren is an inspiration, my latest hero, and if nothing else, Wren deserves a blog.
Wren is taking Arabic.
Wren used to be a doctor.
Wren wears a stunning green plaid polyester jacket with a tie to school every day.
And an old man cap.
Which is appropriate, because Wren is Eighty-Seven years old.
Allie introduced me:
“This is Wren,” she said. “He is 87 years old, and he is taking Arabic.”
…At which all of the wrinkles in his perfect face defied all sorts of gravity laws by dancing into a grin.
“Aren’t I stupid?” He asked, chuckling a slow chuckle.
“On the contrary,” I replied. “You are very smart, and still quite stylish.”
I don’t know why, but I just got the feeling that Wren was recently widowed. I pictured him each morning over a lonely bowl of cereal, straightening his tie and shining his shoes, because classy is the only appropriate attire for school—or at least that’s how it was back in his day. Allie later confirmed: “His wife died eight months ago. He is a retired doctor and is trying to stay busy. He is hoping to go over and be a doctor in the Middle East now.”
I call for a Hurrah for Wren! Hurrah for a man who takes on such a difficult class! Hurrah for a man that loved his wife so much that he needed such heavy distraction. Hurrah for a man of courage,  a man who truly understands “Go Forth to Serve.” And Hurrah for Green Plaid Polyester Jackets too.



Hurrah for you, Wren. Hurrah for you.

Potty Humor (PG 13)

Posted on by Sierra

My boyfriend and I have reached a level of intimacy where I am starting to get to know the way his toilet flushes. So, though I won’t yet use his bathroom without turning on the sink to create a healthy obfuscating white noise that blocks out any potential bathroom noises, he still gets in his car and drives all the way to his apartment whenever his Mother Nature beckons, so at least I’m getting comfortable with him.
And since I’ve let myself finally get comfortable with him, I have learned to spot any anomalies in his toilet’s flushing tendencies—and on my last visit to Jeremy’s restroom, there was an “anomaly.”  And so after I got over my initial ten-minute shock and humiliation by pretending to casually eat my grapes and quesadillas Jeremy had just made for me, I decided it was time to test my boyfriend’s love for me.
I buried my head into his chest and asked, “Do you love me?”
Jeremy: “Yes. Why?”
Me: “How much?”
Jeremy: “What’d you do?”
Me (Barely audible): “I may have clogged your toilet.”
Jeremy (relieved and laughing): Is that all? Oh, geez.
I then immediately retreated to the couch and attempted to bury my whole body under its cushions, under the guise of needing consolation for my humiliation; really, I was just trying to bide some time for the bathroom to air out before we descended upon the Clog.
            When finally we braved the Clog, I insisted that any smells present already existed. Jeremy mercifully assured me that the Clog probably lingered from a previous occupant. And then we went in. Together. Scared, but oh-so-brave.
            And the toilet flushed perfectly normally. Of course.
“That’s it, Sierra!? That’s it! You didn’t even need to tell me, and I never would have known! There was nothing even wrong!”
“Jeremy!” I insisted, “It flushed different!
Jeremy (still laughing): “Did it, Sierra? Did it flush different? Did it act up? Did it misbehave?”
Me: “Yes! It did! I swear!”
Then, in the special sort of euphoria that only comes from not clogging your boyfriend’s toilet, I tackled him onto the couch, where he assured me that he could handle a lifetime of unclogging toilets with me. And then in a moment of utmost sweetness, he said to me, “Sierra, I love you. But sometimes, you’re retarded.”
It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said. 

Wednesday Weirdness

Posted on by Sierra

     The weirdest thing just happened: It was a Wednesday night, and I finished all my homework for the week.

     It’s times like this where you want to summon all the blogger powers at be–funnel all of that creative energy that’s been building inside your writer fingers for weeks but just hasn’t had time to be released from your fingertips–and write something truly prolific. 


But all that comes out are a few fragmented thoughts:

Concerns that gyms are only really for people that are already in shape.
Vague realizations that Disney has done bad things for females’ perception of love.
Consternation about your personal uselessness in fixing Bahrain or rebuilding Japan.
Unnerving realizations that sentence combining is something you consider a hobby.
Bitterness that you never built yourself a treehouse where you could burrito yourself into a blanket and read by flashlight into the wee hours of the rainstorm. 
The dull but omnipresent junior high hurt of recognizing that cliques still exist and your still not part of them.

So my dear readers, nothing profound or prolific for you tonight. Just thoughts to chew on for a bit. Also, Here’s an indie photo for you to salivate over. Thought it capped off my blankness nicely.

I’m off to go read a YA lit novel. And I feel great about it.

Happy Wednesday to you. 

More Important Things

Posted on by Sierra
Last week I blogged about hair. The next day, I was humbled by one of the most important events that will probably hit this decade.

I am bound by human hands. I am bound by the frailties of the human race. I don’t have the all-powerful hands of a loving God who probably wants to reach down to earth and clean everything up himself (and please, no comments about how God caused this disaster. Please), but since I believe that humans are his instruments, I want to help. 
Does anyone know of ways that my small, meager, American self can get involved in the relief effort in Japan? Does anyone want to help me?

The All Important Subject: Hair

Posted on by Sierra

I blame my Aunt Beth for this particular genetic blight. I apologize, Beth, if I embellish on your story in anyway, but this story is begging to be told, so it’s best done with a bit of color anyway.
           I believe it started with a trip to Europe, a country which is not as reputably meticulous in their grooming standards as us body-wash-loving Americans. Perhaps, as an effort to embrace European culture, while still retaining her American eccentricity, my aunt Beth decided to divide her body down the middle, using her nose as the Prime Meridian. For one year, she proceeded to groom one half of her body as any body-wash-loving American should; she brushed, shaved, showered, perfumed, make-upped, etc.
The other half—she didn’t. She just… didn’t. Didn’t brush, shave, shower, perfume, or make up in any way shape or form. She was half beautiful, half banshee.
One generation later, and the right side of my hair has decided to avenge to family “half side of the hair neglect.” Essentially this means: the right side of my hair never looks as good as the left side of my hair. When I do my hair curly, the right side lays lank. When I do my hair straight, inevitably some natural wave sneaks into the right side, throwing my whole pin straight look totally off. My pony tails even look bumpier on the right side of my head! No matter how much primping, no matter how much toiling, the right side of my head is always belligerent. 
This is why I have decided to take matters into my own hands. I will personally eliminate all hair unawesomeness by adding FEATHERS to the right side of my hair. 
Like this:
Glasses may or may not be included.
What do you think?! I’m so excited.

Curiously Blank and Mysteriously Pristine

Posted on by Sierra

My name is Sierra Robinson. And I haven’t purchased a new blank notebook in two days.
Sponsors, I have a problem. I am easily swayed by indie cover art and blank pages (none of this college-ruled nonsense). I purchase blank notebooks like cartons of cigarettes. Something about them speaks to me. Maybe it’s the un-cracked spine. Maybe it’s those seductively blank pages. Maybe it’s the pristine whiteness of potential.
Whatever it is, I’m obsessed.
This is my current collection of notebooks:


See what I do to them? 


Check on the spine on these puppies! They’ve been written in, pasted in, and beaten into submission so much that their spine starts to splinter like crazy. And this is just the college collection. I have a whole bureau drawer + a whole 3’ by 2’ container chalk full of them back home (even though I never really understood the phrase chalk full).
Apparently, I have a lot of thoughts. And a lot of time to write them down.
While some of my journals (namely the injured spine journals) are a raging success, others are less successful. 

Take this journal for instance:

I agonized for minutes about whether or not I should purchase it. I scanned the list of potential uses for this journal. I weighed the pros and cons of this journal and I decided that I simply had to have it. I decided it would be of great use to me, whatever it became.

And then.

I blew it.

I wrote down my New Years Resolutions on the first page.

And now all this book can contain is lists of New Years Resolution, and it has ended up a wasted collection of tree. 



This is why I am greatly perplexed about this newest addition to my collection:

This little treasure came all the way from Europe just to be with me. It is from the Belle and Boo Collection and I highly recommend it. 

But it vexes me because… right now, it has so much potential to become the next great American novel.

It could hold my deepest darkest collection of intelligent poetry.

It could contain the cure to Cancer!

But I’m terrified, petrified, immobilized because what if… what if… this British journal becomes another house of New Years Resolutions??
WHAT IF I SINGLEHANDEDLY DESTROY ITS POTENTIAL?


Friends, cast your votes: What should become of this perfect little notebook? 

And remember: Please notebook responsibly.

Sh-All

Posted on by Sierra
I think I’ve shared this with you before, but I’m not a graceful person. Nor do I ever plan on being a graceful person. When people see me coming at fast food restaurants, the employees don their ponchos and man the napkin booths, discretely dropping stacks of napkins on my food tray for the inevitability that food gets all over my shirt–or all over their shirts (I’m that spasmodic with a hamburger). Other manifestations of my lack of physical dexterity: I trip. A lot. Lately, I’m like Adele Webber, and ten points to you if you catch my allusion.
Take last night for instance: I was trying to remove my impediment boots, boots that normally are the cause of my stumbles, and in the process, I nearly fell–derriere-first–onto the floor. Were it not for my safety net of tall boy, I would have fallen to my tailbone’s demise. But you see, I’m not graceful in Vans, let alone very tall boots with large heels that aerate the lawn.
Which brings me to my point. My new boyfriend and I have a tallness problem. I’m not sure if the problem is his fault for being too tall, or my fault for being too short.
For proof, I have included the following photos:
Do you see the angle of incline that our necks are being forced to perform? Do you understand the inherent difficulties of craning? (Please note: in this picture, I am wearing three-inch heels).

And take this photo for example. See, here, the height difference doesn’t actually look all that alarming.
But friends, I encourage you to look closer, or at least scroll downward.
TIPTOES!

Friends, it appears I will be condemned to heels for quite some time. I feel like perhaps I should get better insurance, or perhaps join a group called “Short Support,” where we all get together and whine about not being able to get things on the top shelf, or practice wearing stilts.
Are there any Sh-All (Short Tall) couples out there who have had successful lives together that can share their words of wisdom? Would anyone like to alleviate my stress by telling us how cute we are together?
Because… honestly, truth be said in full, I’m not so worried about the height difference. I just wanted to show off my new boyfriend! Isn’t he handsome? And so very tall?

My Own Attempt at Walden

Posted on by Sierra

“To be awake is to be alive,” or so sayeth Thoreau anyway. Well said, Thoreau, I heartily agree. My genial sense of concordance with Thoreau’s aphorism was augmented this past weekend as I took to the mountains of Heber, where I could curl up on a Love Sac (antithetical to Walden Pond, perhaps, but I certainly wasn’t complaining), and ponder my semi-Walden weekend experience. Sheer bliss, my friends. Afterwards, I almost wanted to personally patch up all the holes in my clothes, and stop paying my poll taxes…(I’ve been studying Transcendentalism in American Lit. Can you tell?)

Special thanks to the Penrods for an amazing weekend. 

Jeremy Fainted! He FAINTED!

Posted on by Sierra

I collect idiosyncrasies; which is to say that I’m kind of an odd duck. One such idiosyncrasy is my peculiar affinity for having blood drawn. Since I was tested for mono in the 9th grade (test positive, thank you very much), I realized that once the needle was in, it felt kind of like a little sucker-fish sucking on a teeny hole in my arm—and for some crazy reason, I kinda liked it.

An unfortunate Robinson reality: I have yet to break the 110-pound limit required of blood donors, so I’ve never gotten to wear one of those nifty criss-crossy colored bandage thingies that you get, along with complimentary juice, that one receives after they donate. Thus, I persuaded two of my most trusted BYU acquaintances, Miss Chloe Noelle (who you’ve met before) and Sir Jeremy Penrod Esquire, to donate their red humor in my stead.

Chloe. Was. Nervous. 

Jeremy was obnoxiously nonchalant.

Jeremy, after finishing the question and answer session, which sounds more akin to a PPI, was escorted to the donation chair, where they juiced his arm up with iodine and inserted an impressive needle. I played the role of the dutiful girlfriend-type-thing, and gasped and grimaced in all the right places. Jeremy charmed the male nurses, all the while maintaining a positive demeanor, and cheering Chloe on as she made her begrudging death march to her own donation chair.

Chloe. Was. Still. Nervous. She declined my invitation to hold her hand, and opted for Jeremy’s masculine (albeit a tad clammy) hand instead. The nurse was appropriately sarcastic with Chloe as me, Jess (another cheerleader), and Jeremy gathered around her and watched her squeeze the blood out of her arms. Chloe expressed her concern, not about the pinch of the needle, but of the lurking fear that she would pass out after the deed was done. Jeremy made wise cracks about the impossibility of the whole affair.

And then, he mentioned that he perhaps ought to get something to eat.

And then he turned paler than Edward Cullen.

And then I thought he was merely trying to psyche my woe-begotten friend out by falling, face-first, almost in slow motion, on top of her as the blood drained from her arm.

“Jeremy!” I said harshly. “That’s not funny! Stop faking it.”

Jess was quicker on the uptake. She realized that my boyfriend-type-thing was indeed fainting—genuinely. There was a slight panic as the nurses eased Jeremy’s pale, momentarily lifeless, and excessively limp body to the floor.



Chloe got up and got juice like it was nobody’s business.



Bathroom Stalls in Munchkin Land

Posted on by Sierra
       Standing in the middle of the junior high, with pubescent children launching at me like hand grenades in guerilla warfare, I feel sometimes like clicking my moccasin slippers together and stating three times “There’s no place like home.” The last time I was in this munchkin land, I was actually a middle-school munchkin.  While I know I’m still comparatively short, it’s heartening to see that I’m at least taller than someone—or a whole sea of full of someones—even if they are 13-years-old.
            I haven’t head the word “Sevie” in years, but there’s something charming about this colloquial degradation that makes me warm to these miniature humans in surprising ways. There’s something charming about walking into a classroom where all girls literally Tower over all the boys, & all of the boys who are still munchkin-sized start sounding like men as they read aloud in class. There’s something charming about the white eyeliner mistakes and the awkward hair decisions. It’s enough to render the whole experience vaguely charming in general.
      But you know what is not charming?  Going to the restroom (in a moment of sheer desperation, I assure you), and seeing unkind, unflattering words like  “Karly Winters* is a F-Ing B****” and the like, emblazoned across the walls of the stalls.
         I was just starting to forget how mean kids can be.
Though these students can be little charmers in the classroom, which I am sure is a more accurate depiction of their potential, I remember that special sort of meanness that is especially reserved for Junior High. I remember being that “sevie” that was so worried about seeing my own name on a bathroom stall. My heart aches for *Karly Winters, who can’t even pee without being reminded of her social status.
Who even brings pens to the bathroom anyways? Middle Schoolers, that’s who. 
*Name changed to protect the innocent.