Rain, Champagne and Sweet Home Alabama in Spain

There are days that are full of nothing. Well, you should do a lot of things, maybe that fifteen page paper that is creeping up, or act like an adult and start scheduling doctor's appointments, advisor meetings, or even just respond to an email that has been put off to every last second. You wake up, and a massive expanse of clouds is casting a tea and movie feel over your next eight hours. Add a puppy, fire and adorable boy and you'd have a perfect day.

As I sit here listening to "Crazy Girl" by Eli Young Band and fantasizing about a six-pack clad boy bringing me tea while discussing current events or literature, I have started to wonder when I stopped hanging on past ideas of love and started creating true expectations for myself. Tete just brought in a random late night glass of champagne-- there is no rhyme or reason to her drinking habits, but I will gladly partake. And so tonight I will spend a few hours with Sweet Home Alabama and new country love songs, enjoying the right to my fantasies about perfect men and foot massages. It is these days, the rainy ones where productivity is doomed and the thought of putting on a speck of makeup is appalling, that I find myself wondering how I manage to get so stressed out when life, on days like today, is so simple. These are the days that I can lay around, wondering how I work myself into frenzies about love, about my future career, or about simple things like why my hair is determined to turn a weird orange/red/brown mix regardless of what I do to it. Those uncontrollable things plague me with late night hours of contemplation: will I find someone who thinks my orange/brown/red hair is cute and who doesn't care that I am slightly a slob and OCD at the same time, let alone will I ever find a career that fits my control freak bossiness but lets me write? Oh Lord, the hours I have spent awake that now seem so simple when put up against the simplicity of a mental health day.

As women, I feel we tend to wrap ourselves around history. This might just be me, but I constantly analyze my past. This seems counterproductive, I know, because here I am halfway across the globe and am still worrying that my major is wrong. And that's just my major for school, let alone what I shall do with it afterwards.But then I can spend thirty minutes reading a business article about how the CEO of Starbucks reworked his entire company in 2008 and I get huge nerd impulses to write in excessive emails and comments about what a genius he is. Yet I look at the past and see nothing, other than a few lucky bullshitting experiences with Future Business Leaders of America, that would suggest I will excel at Marketing, or Management, whatever. Perhaps it is because I was born with an incessant need to control everything and make vast to-do lists, but I find the need to know exactly what my life will look like in five years. Which is ironic, because 12 months ago if you had told me I'd be living in Spain, single, or sipping champagne I would have thought you were on some kind of crazy drug.

It is that very fact that makes me wonder why we spend so much time dwelling on the past, to the point that it seems to be a plague in our lives. To count the number of times I have spent entire movies, drunken chats, or afternoons raving about heartbreak would require that I had fifteen extra hands. And that's just for the past six months. Perhaps the challenge isn't to make more and more to-do lists and become even more co-dependent on my planner, but instead to step back and realize that I don't have it all figured out. And that is okay.

Isn't it? Society seems to disagree with me on that point. Every meeting we go to, every career session, we hear what we "should" be doing, yet save for the few really over-eager or the few parentally advantaged out there, how many of us are actually spending our freshmen or sophomore year searching for a star internship in New York? Honestly, I'd rather spend this summer drinking a Mike's Hard on the couch after eating excessive amounts of caramel apples at work at the Chocolate Factory as opposed to falling around in heels at an internship in a city. Not to mention that everywhere we look we see the "perfect life" being displayed in movies, and yes I am addicted to movies and TV and corny novels and Jane Austen, but I am a lot of person to take care of, I've got enough of a job making sure I have painted nails and have showered. How am I supposed to manage a boyfriend and six pack abs along with that? And that's before you even get into my school, hair issues, Spanish speaking attempts, not-strangling three year old attempts, and Facebooking and reading. Is there any way that I can, in reality, be expected to have somehow gotten a boyfriend, gotten a grasp on my future career by some spark passionate calling from the Maker, and also managed to get my hair to turn brown all at once? Yeah. Right.

Instead I am perfectly content knowing that I have a massive list of things I know I will never want to be: bus driver, politician, judge, elementary teacher, high school teacher, vet, doctor, or an employee in Bass Pro Shop. That matches the list of men I don't want: momma's boys, workaholics, non-driven slackers, boys with IQs lower than mine, boys in general, a Raiders fan, a fatty, an alcoholic, an open mouth chewer, or a (okay I almost said ginger but how mean is that) so instead we'll just say or someone with no sense of style. Since, like me, sometimes hair just won't work with you.

And thus my contemplation on today's mental health day once again revolves around my future career and fantasy man. Typical, Michelle, way to go deeper. My poor parents realized that despite their best efforts and attempts at raising boy disinterested girls (though also not lesbians, preferably just not interested in men till age 30) they have thus far been 2/3 for girls who love boys. The overalls and mullets and fishing and camping have definitely given me the ability to go out and get my hands all goopy on a fish, but sadly failed to blind me to six packs or flirting. The result is a lot of love for fictional men and country music, and a healthy appreciation for fish. Before I pop off to finish my movie, I just would like to point out how ridiculous it is that we are expected to know what we want to "be" when we grow up. Excuse me? That won't happen for a long time! The next two years are simply classes and then jobs, that's not what I want to do with my life. My life is so much more than "When I grow up I want to work in Marketing..." Nope! When I grow up I want to travel to Ireland for a month and just backpack around. And hike in the Alps. I want to live in Sweden and fail at learning the language. Is it too much to ask that I get a really hot husband who is a genius and loves the outdoors, not to mention that I am positive my children are going to be authors and world-explorers. All I really have to say is that I will be coming home with huge dreams, huge expectations, and a whole lot of really ridiculous stories. And until then, I am going to listen to the wind blow, be glad that my laundry is in the kitchen on the drying rack instead of out on the terrace like it was last night getting a second washing in the rain, and sip my champagne. And be glad that at least for now, I am not grown up and my biggest worries in life are how to survive calculus in May, and if I will be able to zip my dress for April's wedding when I get back.