so my first blog didn’t post…. just one of the downfalls of online thought-spilling… so ill write the first, type a line of stars, type a new title, and type an additional post…. “but sarah, why not just post two seperate blogs?”

i’m not sure how… so to the first which i will begin by introducing myself…. i’m sarah, a first year at knox college but the man at the door probably told you that and a lot more besides.

you ought to know why i am here in the big flooded easy-

1. because i have always admired ’salt of the earth’ types (whom i have proven i’m not one of simply by referring to them as such).

2. i will do anything to gain the approval of the aforementioned… particularly via tangible affection (baked (cookies, cakes, alaska) works particularly well in my circle of friends).

3. it’s better than sitting around a warm crackling television set all december…

AND

4. i’m a big fan of that darling cliche warm fuzzy (WF’s for our purposes).

### the daily

Papa Tony is Foghorn Leghorn… by way of The Sopranos.  He’s this wonderful… MAN… the real definition of ‘the great provider,’ having rebuilt the homes of his mother and son (a cop after his father)… now we’re demolding his place: essentially scraping mold of all these waterlogged boards in a skeletal house…. mostly busy work… until Papa Tony started throwing… dropping… recklessly chucking junk down from the attic… things like cardboard thanksgiving turkeys on sticks, open bottles of indeterminate chemicals, and huge lighted reindeer… and a plaid jacket which he generously offered to us…. he don’t wear them plaid jackets….

he told us today how he rescued people with his boat… a man with no arms, a man paralyzed from the waist down… and he made us spaghetti…

yeah…

people here are ridiculously nice…. deliriously… like not only are the volunteers giving, artsy, and guiltily friendly (one girl felt bad that she hadnt helped someone who fell… 20 minutes prior to telling the story), but the lovals who say hey babe casually to new faces.  People appreciate us… a lot… which, to me, is bizarre.  Perhaps it’s just because im really bad at accepting charity… i feel like Papa Tony is the same way.. strong ‘I don’t need nobody’ kinda attitude… almost guilt… Maybe that’s why he buys us lunch and why i bake for people… i can’t accept that other people are willing to be around me (help me) so i pay them back… is it pride of a lack of love for myself…. maybe that’s why im single… you’ll never love another till you love yourself…

also, creepy people are a lot less creepy here… like they look creepy (i saw a man in a wendy’s with no legs (lack of limbs is trendy here…) and i immediately thought he was a creep… and he wasn’t).  No one wants to hurt me or mug me… i dont understand how people can be so good after they’ve lost everything… the opposite of what i was expecting…

and then there were nine…

“when you die they make a list of every love you never kissed, of each regret, and each mistake, every choice you failed to make… oh well… oh well… oh well…” -Steve Page and Ed Robertson