oh ehm jee

wow. talk about the busiest month of my life!

i've been lazy, many appologies. well, not lazy in life because it has been one crazzzy month, but lazy in the land'o'blogs. so sorry.

i have a lot of writing to post, and will include it here soon. i have finished my last semester of classes at nsu and only have my thesis to complete before i am officially a master (hehe)! and also, ohh jeeze i have alot of writing still to complete. its terrifying actually.

on top of all my writing and near mental breakdown because of writing- its effing cristmas! hells yes! i love this season and every single stressful thing about it. i love getting gifts and being a part of america's mass consumerism. its amazing. i actually have most of my shopping done already -go me! -but there are always last minute lose ends to tie up so hooray for that.

matt and i finally decorated our tree after it sat sad and nakie in our living room for a week. and the house is all decorated and looking festive and ready for the holidays!

my freelance writing gig has fallen through and after all the writing i did for local flair magazine - they never made it past go - never collected $200. although i sure did - thank god they paid me before crashing and burning. but i'm sad. its hard getting into all this writing business - no one wants someone without experience -but how the hell do you get experience? someone please take a chance on me - i can do it! i know i can!

i hate knowing what i'm capable of and not having paper proof to show it. annoying much? i'm patiently (sometimes not so patiently) waiting for the doors of opportunity to fly wide open. hello world? are you out there? i can write! pick me!

sigh. this feeling sucks.

damn - how did i get all the way down here? we were all high spirits a second ago talking about xmas and here i am debbie downerizing it all. my bad.

yay christmas!

happy holidays kids :)

The Once, Possibly, Almost Corey Jenna Hammond

this week i had to try and move through time. eaiser said than done buddy! i tried to explain something important to my identity by using a scene in the past embedded in a scene from the present. my head hurts. anyways, here is the lil bit that i've got. in the future i'll explain more about the name and expand on the memory more probably. anyways, here it is...


The brilliant diamond refused to be unseen on my left hand and I couldn’t stop looking at it. This Christmas would top them all for the rest of my life. It’s like Santa himself came down and said, “Oh hey Corey, you know that ‘happily ever after’ thing Cinderella was in on, how about some of that?” Uhm, let me think, sure. Matt and I hadn’t been engaged for twenty four hours, and already it seemed like the whole world knew.  His mom had been at our house gushing over us for all of five seconds before the serious discussion began.

            “So, Corey, do you think you’ll take Morrow as your last name? Corey Morrow?”

            “Uhm, I guess I hadn’t really thought about it yet, but probably”, I was lying. I had thought about it. I thought about the future of my last name often actually. My last name had always been a sensitive subject in my life and my feelings about it had been different for almost two years now. The contents of an old cardboard box had changed everything, and there in the room my grandparents once shared, my life shifted.

In that room, I sat on the floor, cheeks damp from slow rolling tears. The room was bright and empty. Millions of tiny dust pieces swirled in the sunlight that poured through the sliding glass door. It was silent, save for the distant ruffle of my mom and grandma in the spare room at the other end of the house. I sat amongst old boxes, their contents pilled in mountains of memory around me. I was looking without knowing what I sought. Now that he was gone, I could think of a hundred questions I wanted to ask him. What was Vietnam like? What was his favorite book? This was both vastly important and irrelevant all at the same time.

            I was digging through boxes that my mom didn’t want to. I wanted to see what was hiding in them for all these years before our heritage was shoved in the back of a closet again. She said it was just old junk, but in my own experience, the good stuff always hides with the junk. I searched slowly, content with the time passing as I had nothing else to do that bright afternoon.

            I swished my hand through a box full of loose papers, swirling through them with ease. A hard cover found my fingertip and I plunged deeper, my elbow disappearing in the sea of paper. I pulled the book from the bottom of the box and sent papers pouring over the edge. “Cooley High, 1940”. I knew that name. I always loved hearing about Poppy’s time at Cooley, because the name sounded like something out of Grease or West Side Story; it was so authentic. I would wait patiently for Poppy to tell me that he sang and dance his way between classes, but it never happened. I cracked the book open and it smelled like the library.

            Old books are always enchanting. I flipped through the pages, looking for Poppy’s dark hair and big eyes.

“Allen…Allen… where is he?” I wondered.

I scanned the first few pages of every class, searching for his last name, my last name. He wasn’t there. Why would Poppy have a yearbook for a year he wasn’t in school? It didn’t make sense.

I stood up and brushed years of dust off my sweatpants.

“Mom?” I yelled, stopping in the living room. I was too perplexed to walk all the way to her.

“What?” she walked in, trailed by Gramma.

“Why do we have this yearbook? Look, Poppy isn’t in here anywhere” I flipped pages to prove my point.

“That’s his, he graduated in 1940” she assured me.

“Uhh then where is he?” I was out of patience and I wasn’t blind, he wasn’t in there.

She took the yearbook from me and turned the yellowing pages, “Here.” She pointed to a picture I knew well.

“Carter Hammond? What’s that about?” I was so confused now. Why would Poppy change his name? Allen wasn’t Gramma’s last name either, she was a Renner.

“Allen was Poppy’s step-dad’s last name. He took it after his mom got remarried, but that was after he graduated high-school.”

“How come you never told me?” I was in disbelief. This was the closest thing we had to a family secret and I had to hear it before realizing I’d waited twenty two years for its reveal. All those times I had to trace our lineage back for some lame school project, she never thought to tell me my bloodline name was Hammond?

“I didn’t know it was important”, she said as her and Gramma were drifting back towards their project in the spare room.

Not important. Was it important? I marinated. It felt important. My head swirled like the sheets of paper the yearbook was buried in. I could have been Corey Hammond. That sounded weird in my head and I didn’t like it.

Until now I was so attached to Allen. It was my mom’s last name and I had been proud of it, no matter how many fights it caused. I had planned on keeping it even when I got married because of the massacres we had been through because of it. Dad wanted me to have his last name, Ritenour. And after twenty two years of fighting over it, whether to hyphenate it or not, I felt weird holding onto Allen so tightly when it wasn’t really ours.

Gramma and Poppy’s house dissolved; the yearbook evaporated from my hands as the memory faded back to the depths. The smells of Christmas morning breakfast pulled me back and I smiled at the tiny sun on my finger. When Matt asked me to marry him, the answer was obvious, and the choice to change my last name would follow. I would become a Morrow on our wedding day and put the controversy to rest once and for all. After being in a family full of last name drama, I was looking forward to the peace and quiet a new last name would bring.

homey, home, home...

well, hello.. this week i did some more writing, surprise! i decided to write about home. to be more specific, my current home. matt, my fiance', bought our current home for us and its sorta like heaven. it was a struggle to get there but we did it. good times. below you will find my take on two parts of our home buying process with a short explaination at the beginning. ready go!

     Matt bought our house on October 31, 2009, almost a year ago. That time was both exciting and stressful, and it led up to what became my first home. It would be the first time when all of my belongings, and my mail, and my cat were kept in one place. Until then, I had multiple homes with stuff at each of them. It was what I knew, what I was used to; I had shuffled between Mom, Dad and Grandparents since I was very young. We didn’t move into our house until December fifth, but the months leading up to the big move, and moving day itself meant a hurricane of emotions inside me.

Corey vs. the old Jewish lady

            It was days before we closed on our house, and after months of searching, bidding, signing, waiting, crying, we found our house and it would soon be ours. Matt and I decided to buy a house on his Mom’s suggestion, bless her, and we began researching. Well, I began researching and Matt mostly listened. I’m the worrier, he’s the sensible-calmer-downer; it works. Finding the house was the easy part. We both knew what we wanted and how much we wanted to pay. Convincing the crotchety old bitty to sign it over and get the hell out was the hard part.

            The first time we met Joyce, my future nemesis, was in August. Her house had just been put on the market and we stopped by on one of our many days of searching. It was great, perfect even compared to the half destroyed foreclosures we had seen earlier, and the price was right. Joyce seemed nice, slightly eccentric, possibly crazy, old but nice. Her hair was trying to be red but it was an old lady pink. She was tiny and very Jewish. I lost count of the Yiddish words within the first five minutes. I could tell Matt was counting them in his head too. I watched him lose count and smiled. Perhaps in an effort to up sell her house, Joyce offered us toast and played the piano and bongos for us. Not together obviously, although that would have been amazing…

Anyways, our relationship with Joyce started out as such a relationship should. Everyone was polite and cheery, though it wouldn’t stay that way. It looked like a win-win; Joyce sells her house and we move out of the 2 bedroom apartment we shared with Matt’s friend Chris and his girlfriend. I didn’t have a key to the apartment and getting up at 7am to leave when Matt went to work was old the week after I started staying there. It was time to move out.

            Now we were so close closing on the house, finally. We had been back and forth with Joyce about everything from cost to closing date and did everything to accommodate her. It hadn’t been easy or stress free. At the same time, Matt’s twin brother and sister-in-law welcomed an adorable little sprout into the world. Everyday was busier than the last. Baby Liam was only a day old when I got to hold him for the first time, but we’ll save those emotions for another day. My phone rang in the oversized blue hospital room while we were visiting the newest addition. I dug for my phone in my messy bag and apologized to everyone.

            “Hello?” I questioned. She knew what I was doing tonight, why would she call when she knows I’m at the hospital with Matt’s family?

            “Cor! We’ve got problems…” my Mom sounded out of breath. I wanted to tell her to stop and not say another word. I didn’t want to know right now. I wanted to enjoy seeing the baby. “Joyce is refusing to close!”

            “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” I blasted, before thinking about where I was or who I was talking to. Tears sprung from my eyes and pooled in my lap without my consent. We had already given Joyce so much, waited so long, and now she does this shit to us. Unfair doesn’t even begin to explain. “Why?” I asked when I could think again.

            “She is senile and old and crazy. And she doesn’t want to” Mom said.

            “Seriously! What a bitch! I mean, can she even do that?” Laws and all that business weren’t my forte, and this was my first home buying rodeo.

            “Yeah, she can. You can try and take legal action against her because she did sign the initial contract, but that is going to be expensive and time consuming” she explained.

            “Ugh! I hate her!” I didn’t even know where to begin. The hospital room full of people had vanished and was reorganized into stunned faces. “I’ll call you back” I told her and hit the end button on my Blackberry.

            “What’s up?” Matt asked.

            “I’m going to go to Joyce’s and murder her tonight with my bare hands” I joked.

            “Why? What now?” Matt was more concerned now, he knew my sarcasm came out most when I was really on the brink of insanity.

            “She’s saying she won’t close” and my anger reduced me to tears again.

            “It’s ok” Matt cooed as he put his long arm around me, his goal was always to keep me calm. Staying glued was one of my favorite things about Matt, especially since my tendency to become unglued was at an all time high. I focused on breathing and keeping it together. I had been dating Matt a year and I didn’t want his family to see me in this ridiculous state. I hadn’t sealed the deal yet, no ring, so I had to try and be normal.

            “This is frustrating. What do we do?” I asked. His sister-in-law chimed in with her lawyerly advice, and my heart rate slowed. “Ok. We can do this, let’s try talking to Joyce”

            “Good. I like that. We can call her in the morning.” Matt sighed. He was sick of all this drama too.

            We reasoned with Joyce, and closed on our house in the following days. She ended up staying in our house for an extra month. Fine, perfect. I had to fight to get days off from my retail job from hell, and now I would spend them sitting at home staring at my life packed up in boxes, waiting for December. I thought we had finally finished with Joyce and her craziness, but as it turns out we had only just begun.

Moving Don’t

Joyce was moving out! FINALLY! I was worried we would have a squatter on our hands and I would have to start fighting dirty, like singing loudly outside the house, to get her old ass out. But, after the longest November of my life, she was leaving. Our moving day had been pushed back several times, and we fought about the large check she owed us for rent. I’m still not sure we got that effing check. Her equally insane slightly more hinged daughter dropped the keys off to my mom that afternoon and we were all excited to be shot of old Joycey. When Matt got home from work, we met my mom at our new house. This was it! I could hardly walk I was so excited, one foot then another, Corey. We were done with Joyce, we were moving tomorrow; this was ours, all ours. My mom snapped a picture of us turning the key and my cheeks burned from smiling. I followed Matt through the door and my traitorous tears burst through as he flipped on the light.

            “WHAT THE HELL!?” I screamed and my mom poked her head through our doorway.

            “Whoa” she said, “what a freakin mess”. Matt kept quiet and flipped on lights as he walked through what might have been the aftermath of a bomb. So much for all my dreams coming true.

            “Is she kidding me? What is all of this?” I kicked trash and paper, pushed past furniture and surveyed the damage. It was bad. Really bad. Whatever Joyce felt like leaving, she left. Potted dying plants, old dirty dishes, everything. It was like someone phoned her to say that aliens were coming so she grabbed a few things in a whirlwind and abandoned the rest in a quick escape. I thought of my one day off this week, tomorrow, our designated moving day that would now take twice as long since Joyce hadn’t really moved out at all. She was gone, but all her kitschy shit was left for us to deal with.

            “At least she took the piano” Matt chimed. My smile fought my anger and won.

            “Yeah, at least there’s no piano” I chuckled through the tears. “I just can’t believe this is happening!”

            Through all of this, I had been excited; excited to have my stuff together, excited to be with Matt everyday, excited to cook food that might turn out bad, just excited. This was something new, something brilliant and I wanted to stare directly at its light and lose focus. I already had the man I wanted, and now we had a house. It turned out to be a house full of worthless shit, but it was ours. Matt never tried to stifle my excitement, but he never truly accompanied me on my journey to blind insanity. He was too level headed for that. Leading up to moving day, I made him remind me that he was excited, since he never really wears it quite like me. But even then, this would be different for both of us. Home. Our home. My Home.

I didn’t know what to expect, and even now it’s new and real. Everyday is foreign at first and I think back to times when I had multiple homes. My memories of those homes aren’t bad, or worse, or sad, they’re just different. I never felt like I belonged to one particular place, none of them were truly mine. Almost like I had been lost and decided to rest somewhere rather than actually attach myself to the address. But not now, I was home and holding on for dear life.

           

           

....so there it is. again, this is just draft one. but hopefully you liked it. cuz i do :)

i'm not responsible - we all know this...

i cant be trusted with responsibility - and if you didnt know it before, well you do now! ive been really busy writing for school - and its basically consuming my life. dont get me wrong - i got myself into this. i asked for this. and i am enjoying it, promise :) its just hard work... "if it was easy, everyone would do it" as my dad says.. yeah dad, i hear ya!

so anyways, apologies for the absence. im here! everyone can just relax :) ive been working a lot on my writing, particularly my memoir writing. my upcoming thesis will be a memoir piece, so im working on the baby version of that now.. let me just say - it is not easy! telling the truth - the total truth about yourself, and life, and what you have experienced, is very difficult. our class is basically therapy.. someone cries every week...its usually me (im a weepah!) ::if only you could here my awesome british accent on here..ill look into making that happen!::

the type of memoir im writing is going to tell like a story - not a boring biography. there will be scenes and characters and a plot. but its all memory. my memory. and putting all that out there is pretty scary. ok so - the piece i'm including today is going to serve as the introduction to my story - i hope to explain in my memoir my own journey to "home" - physical and inner home. real home. i didnt have just one home until i was 23 - i had at least 2. at the age of 23 all of my life belongings and my mail finally were at one place. it was a long road there, and it all matters.  and it all begins, strangely enough, by leaving - without much in tow. but, its the start, my spark to find home - inside and out.

so here it is - the first draft (there will be many more i assure you - writing like everything - is a long and dramamtic process!)

Everything Starts With a Spark

It was August 27^th, 2007 nearly a year to the day that we began planning our adventure. We arrived at the Raleigh-Durham airport in North Carolina at 1:37 pm and waited. I had nail marks in my left arm from where Haley had held on to me tight during the landing. It was going to be a long day, and I had already called shot-gun on a seat away from Haley, leaving Erin to comfort her ridiculous sister during the next four take-offs and landings. With any luck Haley’s Xanax would kick in soon, and we would get a good laugh out of all her “fear of flying” nonsense.  

With the closest thing I have to lifelong friends at my side, Erin, Haley and I embarked on what we hoped would be a life changing adventure.  I wasn’t there for the city of Raleigh and North Carolina was not my final destination. In fact, I wouldn’t finally arrive for twenty more hours and even then I would be on the move for the next three months. However, I happily embraced Raleigh-Durham for three hours. With my toes creeping over the edge of a major trip, I wanted to use my down-time wisely. I restlessly poured over our plans for the next few days, a habit I would continue even after our trip had ended. We exhausted the many gift shops and decided that better food was on the horizon (this was after all, not Atlanta - there wasn’t even a Chili’s). I settled on the floor next to my overstuffed backpack, complete with all my toiletries, digital camera, and two full days worth of clothes should my luggage get lost somewhere along our many legged flight to Greece.  I smiled at the dusty blue carpet under me, reminded instantly of my elementary school and hoped this tiny bit of nostalgia would carry on into airports abroad. Haley pulled out her video camera, and I was ready to outshine my 5am “were leaving Florida” performance earlier that morning. I was a hot mess then, there was no chance I looked any worse now.

“Ready? And action!” she joked as the camera rolled.

“Well, here we are in lovely Raleigh-Durham”, my fake drawl had Erin bent double on the floor, tears falling past her laughing grin. “It is around 2 pm and we are on our way!” I gave a lengthy and inaccurate weather report, followed by our airport activities, each segment interrupted by spurts of heaving breathless laughs.

“I have overactive tear ducts!” I explained when Haley commented on tape about the huge tears wetting my cheeks. Sometimes we were too funny for our own goods.

            I ended my segment with a Joey Tribbiani-esque “EUROPE BABY!” and the camera was carefully put back into its home within Haley’s bag.

I truly love airports, so I wasn’t upset about being in several over a twenty four hour period.  Just the opposite. Quite honestly, I was ecstatic.  Something about the no-rules dress code and the fuzziness your ears get from the pressure change and intercom conversations really makes me happy. My mom was a flight attendant when I was really young, so maybe my love of flying goes way back. Plus, moving sidewalks and indoor train systems are a phenomenon I wish I could experience every day of my life. When I was a child it was my dream to ride on one of the golf carts with the blinking yellow lights and the beeping noise when it was reversing. I still have not achieved that goal and I think I need to feign injury or travel with the morbidly obese if I want to even get close to that cart.

I spent a good ten minutes sitting on the floor in Raleigh-Durham reviewing every item I had with me. Camera-check, shampoo-check, sweatshirt-check. Haley could see the checklist scrolling in my brain.

“Dude, if you forgot it its too late”, she yawned. She was right. We were already hours from home and even if my family was willing to somehow mail me something, I would be nearly untraceable for the next three months. The hours stretched and curled into endless card games of solitaire, go fish, oh shit, spades, rummy, and slaps. Eventually the games would cross into each other and rules would be created and broken, but that was hostels, trains and cities away.

The voice over the loud speaker brought me out of my travel coma and as the minutes ticked closer the bubbles of excitement were harder to ignore, like champagne that knows its about to be uncorked. This was to be the first trip I had taken out of the country, and it was like our baby since we planned everything ourselves, and sadly had to pay for everything ourselves. My all-American dad still doesn’t understand my need for adventure and wishes I had spent the cash on something more productive.

And so we sat, with jitters and serious plans for the next several weeks of our lives outside what would eventually be the gate that led to our plane To Gatwick, London. From there we would take an hour bus to Heathrow Airport, at what we knew to be 2 o’clock in the morning, on the other side of London, where our flight to Greece would be waiting for us three tired and giggly girls. And as I sat in Raleigh-Durham, staring down the path of possible lost luggage and stale pretzels, I had to laugh and enjoy all I had there in front of me. Baggy sweatpants, bedazzled tank tops, and stripper high heels galore in the second of many airports I was to encounter in the coming days of my life. I knew I had to soak in every second because it would go faster than I wanted. I knew this was big. I knew that I was on the edge of something bigger than me and I was scared and excited. I had always felt like a painting that was made to hang but not touch, kept safe in the dried paint and canvas. And now, all that had been and all that could be was there before me.

sooo - thats where it starts. and theres much more to come -

stay tuned <3

really, homework?

     well, whatever excitement i previously described has faded and the true amount of work ahead of me has reared its ugly and time consuming head. dont get me wrong, im excited. but there are just so many things i would rather do than homework. and let me tell ya i have a ton! duh corey - its grad school! but still... there are so many harry potter movies i could be napping to. (thats what i plan to do in about 3 hours..half day at work WHAT!?) its ok to be jealous, i understand.

    so i sat down at my newly cleared off countertop, ready to get my learn on, and got overwhelmed rather quickly. in all previous semesters i have taken one HEAVY writing class and one more balanced class. not this time bucko! alllll heavy! hooray! i love to write, thats why im doing all this crazyness, but staring at piles of books and assignments and reading and etc is a lot to handle - especially when you have cut fast food and other delicious treats from your diet - am i crazy!? pretty much. yes.

   in other news - my loving mother dumped her dogs on matt and i this weekend, which was fun. except that it wasnt. her little bitch dog emma destoryed everything in sight and made me question my temper more than once. ugh.

    i made delicious chili to recover from that madness. chili makes the world go round. chili?! youre asking yourself - corey dont you live in balmy south florida? why yes i do! and hot spicy chili is acceptable in all seasons in my book! im obsessed. its so delish and so healthy! who knew! (yummy chili recipe shoutout to the one and only hales!)

    i cant believe its already august - and yes, i know, at the end of every month, everyone acts all suprised that were there - well damnit i am suprised, so back off! im so excited about september! there are so many wonderful things happening! im going wedding dress shopping, visiting the magical land of the one and only harry potter and seeing rascal flatts in concert :) what a fantastic way to start off my favorite time of year!!

   other exciting news - im buying new boots! i know you were really concerned about my fall footwear, so just rest assured knowing that new brown leather boots are in the future. (after harry potter world, of course, my money has priorities..) i havent settled on the exact pair just yet, but the "bowtied beauty boots" on anthropologies website are currently in the running for first. you can sleep soundly now. youre welcome!

    well - since i am at work currently, i suppose i should actually work. at least for a few minutes. until next time..

the beginning..

   well, everything starts somewhere, and here seems just as good a place as any. "you can call me master.." refers to my current goal - getting my master's degree. i'm in my last semester of classes at nova southeastern university and next semester i will begin my thesis and finish it over the summer. haley (my bestie) suggested that i get my doctoral degree after this (because she's crazy) and said my hard work would be worth it bc then people would have to call me "doctor" to which i replied, "id rather have you call me master". and so it will be. this time next year, you can call me master :)

   you will quickly learn that while i am a writing student, bent on becoming a writer one way or another - my grammar and spelling sorta suck. especially in this context because i'm just going with it and mostly i just dont care on here. so deal with it! i also dislike capitalizing, unless of course word wants to do it for me. no heavy lifting for this girl, ah-thank you.

    i am reallllyyy excited about the classes i am currently taking - because they are my last two, and they are the two i have been waiting for since i started my master's. autobiography/memoir workshop and feature writing. i plan to write a memoir for my thesis, so taking a class based on memoir will hopefully help get me started on that journey. and feature writing (or writing for magazines, that sorta thing) is also pretty perfect, since i just recently started writing for a local magazine called "local flair" - look it up. its pretty awesome, and i feel awesome being a part of it. go me!

   so what else - unsure. this next year promises to be great, so stay tuned - you wont want to miss this!