Corinne's Blog

this room is a pig sty.
It is hard to look at everything I own in boxes.
I don’t want to let go of any of it but I feel that I am becoming somewhat of a pack rat.
I look through my old notebooks and I find pictures I’ve drawn and notes that I’ve scribbled about how to live a good life along with quotes said by both teacher and old friends.
I look at how I used to look at life, I was completely carefree and happy.
I find pages that read Mrs. Corinne Blatz and Mrs, Corinne McCreath it is really quite funny that I like many others have dedicated pages of my notebook to fantasizing about my future.
It seems that nowadays I spend hour after hour doing just that but in the confines of my little room here in Brooklyn Park.
I want to get out of this small small blue room and I want to make something of myself and make money.
It is extremely hard to live here without anyone around me I know or Internet of any kind.
I’d like to go back to Hamline’s Campus and “hangout” but I’m afraid because I owe so many people money…mainly Theta Chi and I don’t want to have to explain to people why I’m not already away living a wonderful life in Scotland.
I don’t want to explain that instead of running off to Scotland like I had planned I ended up taking up a job as a housekeeper. I find it hard to explain that while I was working as a housekeeper I was trying to save up enough money to escape to Scotland. I find it opens bad wounds to think about how I ended up losing my position at the Goff’s mansion because I was doing something that comes perfectly natural to me…babysitting. It is really difficult to think about how much I’ve moved and changed my life these past few months. I am amazed that I haven’t gone completely insane.

I want to be in a place back in the city, I inquired about moving into a place with an old classmate of mine and a new friend who I feel I will be keeping for a long time. I’d like to find something in my life that is permanent and long term that also makes me happy.

I believe a transition to 3013 18th Ave may be a good step for me to take. I want to move to 3013 18th Avenue into a house bought by a handsome young man named Leo Kohorst. Leo is a friend of Tom Orbison a former high school classmate of mine and I had the opportunity to meet him when I was invited to Leo and Tom’s third housewarming party {funny and ironic because at the time the heat hadn’t been turned on yet.} Since that party I’ve seemed to have made really good friends in Leo and Tom. They have welcomed me into their home on many occasions these last few weeks since i’ve moved to Brooklyn Park and don’t like to commute.

While ‘crashing’ at their place they’ve made me feel like I have a family and a future and many memories to make around and involving them. Tom and I interact like brother and sister in a way that I only wish I could have a relationship with my own brothers. Leo is something of a subject of intrigue to me. At first I felt like I was like a mom and he was like a dad in the living house/ home involvement situation, together we have cooked, cleaned, and repaired much of Leo’s house. His maturity level is something that attracted me to his personality…for what other twenty one year old do I know that has decided to invest all his lifesavings to buy a house? He has since the party become someone who I feel I will be friends with for a hopefully long time, I have a great time talking to him and we have a lot of things in common. I like that he’s shared a lot of himself with me like his passion for music and his future goals. It scared me at first because Leo and my relationship reminded me of that of Craig and I while we’ve been friends these past six years. At the time I met Leo I had been fighting with Craig and It took a lot in me not to try to make a move on him in spite of Craig, because I have to admit that I was attracted to him and he was conveniently close and accessible unlike Craig who is 3000+ miles away. I’m happy that I got through my initial crush on Leo and that I am now able to communicate with him without feeling guilty that I’m being unfaithful to Craig. I feel that since meeting Leo we’ve had enough conversations to know that our relationship will remain strictly platonic as long as I am in a relationship with someone else. I feel that I need a friendship that is like Craig’s because the main reason that I feel Craig and I have been fighting recently is because our friendship has suffered because of our personal intimacy problems. Better said the compete lack there of… an intimate and physical relationship. I admire the dedication Leo and Tom put into their schoolwork; setting aside hours for studying in the house a day.

Study time in the house is like nap time in kindergarten and quiet reading time in fifth grade…or like being on the silent floor in the Hamline University Library, a peaceful experience that makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. I hope my being around Leo and Tom in that kind of dedicated work environment will help me when I go back to Hamline University. I’ve already decided that ‘when’ not ‘if’ I do go back to Hamline that I will continue to live with Leo and Tom because Leo’s house and my living arrangement would be something that I’d have for a good 3 or 4 years if I decide to move in as long as I can make the rent payments on time.

The consistency and how long term the living situation will be is exactly what I need and want in my life right now. I’ve always been someone to think ahead and toward my future and I feel that my making this decision might be one of the best decisions I’m going to have made this year I’ve taken off of school. This room I’m renting now in Brooklyn Park hasn’t become any bit like somewhere that I’d like to call home. I feel that this house and living situation have so far felt completely temporary, that is until I was able to get back on my feet and find a job and a better place to stay.

The hardest thing about living in Brooklyn Park Minnesota has so far been the two hour bus ride to and from Brooklyn Park. The ride has begun to wear on my nerves and patience.
I’m getting tired of the situations and the people I am encountering on the bus and I want to deal with crazy Minnesotan bus riders a little less.

Just today Tuesday October 20th 2009 I was sitting on the 22 bus after having left Leo and Tom’s place. I was reading my book and trying to make my trip on the hour long bus ride go a little more smoothly. There was a family that got on with two twin girls and one of them was sitting and crying in her stroller and the other was fast asleep being held by her father. The baby in the stroller had come onto the bus crying and the mother seemed to at first be trying to calm the child down for the sake of the ears of everyone on the bus. I wasn’t sure why the child was crying but it seemed to have been wearing on her mother for sometime by the time they’d gotten on the bus. I felt terrible and ashamed to sit back and watch as the parents yelled at the baby to ‘be quiet’ and to ‘shut up’ not a proper response to a child who just wants to be picked up and held. I do not think that a person should bring a child into the world just to neglect and raise them with no love and disrespect. After awhile the parents gave up on the child and decided to do the most immature and indecent thing in my book…they just let the child continue screaming and they sat there insulting it. They totally ignored the child and the screams continued to be heard by all who sat on the bus quietly waiting for their stop. I was on the bus till the end and I knew I had a good hour left till my stop. I was hoping that the child after being ignored by her parents would stop crying on her it’s own or that the parents would exit the bus whose confined space only seemed to just magnify the screams.

The bus rolled on and the baby continued crying and I felt that I was sitting back and ignoring the situation too much, everyone on the bus was uncomfortable by the scenerio and I watched as woman with children looked at the parents and shook their heads, I watched as men and woman alike covered their ears and sat back hoping that the parents would do their job in consoling their little bundle of joy… a baby on a bus crying for a half an hour is a ridiculous distraction from reading which I’d been doing.

I decided finally when the cries got deathly loud and exhausting to try to do something about the child and to take matters into my own hands since no one else was going to do anything I decided to get closer to the neglectful mother and her child for there was a seat that had cleared in the seat right behind them. I knew that since the mother was not a very good one that I could make the situation better and continue reading my book in peace and quiet. I love children and I had a feeling that sunk in my heart in looking at the little girl whaling and balling her little eyes out crying mama! mama! with her mother ignoring her.

I asked the young mother if I could pick the child up, a random act that I am surprised she allowed me to do as a stranger on a public bus. As soon as I picked the child up she stopped crying and became deathly silent. I asked her sweetly. “why are you crying cutie? What are we so upset about?” the little girl just stared at me in amazement, I felt that she was looking at someone who treated her politely and nicely for the first time ever. I instantly wanted to take her home with me and make her my own daughter.

I sat there on the bus holding the silent adorable little baby girl for the last thirty or so minutes of the ride, slowly rubbing her back and smiling at her as she stared at me and calmed down. She began to play with my shirt zipper…she looked to be just about two years old. I had an opportunity to continue reading my book with the child on my lap and I kept thinking to myself ‘was that so hard to do? Anybody can console a child! Why can’t these parents?!’

I feel that I relieved the tension on the bus for a lot of people including the driver who said ‘thank you to the girl who picked that baby up,’ into the bus’s microphone.
A man sitting behind me asked me if I had any children. I wasn’t sure if at the time I looked to be old enough to have bore children because I hadn’t done much to my hair and I was wearing a hat that I’d gotten while in Farming Minnesota with Leo and Tom that made me look kind of eccentric.

The man who asked me told me that he’d never seen such a sight in his life and that I’d make a wonderful mother. He pulled out his card and wrote his number on it and told me that I should call him and that we should get together for lunch sometime. I wasn’t sure if he was paying me a compliment for the sake of my random act of kindness or because he found me attractive and because he was trying to pick me up. It was interesting to read his card and to see that he was an admissions person for the University of Minnesota and that he had more than one degree and looked to be paid a lot of money. Surprising especially since he was riding a public transit bus.

When I got to the bus depot which was the last stop it hurt my heart to let the little girl go back to her neglectful parents. I asked the mother and father what the child’s name was and they told me that the girl was named Micah. I like the name Micah because it is the name of my pastor Matt Johnson’s new son. This situation brought a memory to my head of last Saturday morning the 17th when I’d held little Micah Johnson during a potluck breakfast for Life Group Micah Johnson is not in anyway neglected and he is completely silent and I have rarely heard him cry, it is amazing the two worlds these two Micah have to live in.
With me the baby girl Micah hadn’t made one peep. I felt with Little Micah like I do when I have Collin and Caylie I want to save them from the lifestyle that I know their parents are making them lead. No child should have to raise itself. This experience on the bus really made me feel obligated to the little girl and as her parents were leaving the bus depot I ran them down and gave them my number offering to babysit for them whenever they needed. I told them that I was good with children and that I’d love to watch little Micah and her twin sister anytime. I really hope they call me.

It is going through situations like that which depresses me and makes me want something new and more positive. While sitting in the Bus Depot waiting an hour for my second bus I watched as two men got into a fight over something ridiculous I watched as two men ganged up on the one and as a poor man lost four of his teeth in a bloody fist fight. I watched as the cops were called and arrived and as the men who had beat up the poor boy tried to get away from the cops by pretending to be like any other person waiting for the bus…only identified as the col prates by their bloody knuckles. Too much drama and stress for one day in my opinion.

so I’m done with the commute on the 22 and I’m looking for a place nearer to the city and a job that I can feel that I’ve accomplished something in…I’m hoping I can find it all in the next month before Leo finds someone else to fill the rooms of his new home.