Death by Butterscotch

I walked into psychology class past only a handful of other students, plenty early, and sat dead center in the front row at my usual perch. Withdrawing my laptop and a notecard from my bag, I realized I still had some butterscotch hard candies leftover and decided to grab one so as to occupy my mouth. Unwrapping it and popping it between my teeth, I went about my business and unknowingly inhaled strongly.
The candy launched back and lodged itself in my throat. I sputtered and gasped, acutely aware of what had happened and panicking thoroughly. My heart hammered, stuttering in my chest and my body grew warm as adrenaline flooded my bloodstream. So fast.
I swallowed, alarmed, and found it was very difficult to do so. The candy remained in place.
I sat there, clutching the edge of the desk harder than meaning to, wondering if this was the end. If today was the day my clock ran out. What would my classmates think if I suddenly quit breathing and slumped over on top of my computer? How long would it take for anyone to realize what was going on?
Forcibly I had to calm my pinging nerves and tell myself to breathe, that my windpipe was clear and I could still breathe. I snatched my canteen from the ground and attempted to gulp down some water to move the candy along, but the clog was too great. All the liquid came back up through my nose, having no other exit.
I coughed and gagged numerous times while trying to control myself, my breathing, and my swirling thoughts. Did anyone in the room know the heimleich maneuver? Would they even try to help if I made it known I was in desperate need of it?
Desperately, I swallowed hard several times in rapid succession, resolute on getting the stupid piece of sugar down. It seemed to help, if only a minuscule amount.
Dissolve faster, I thought. Dissolve, dissolve, dissolve.
Gradually it lowered and lowered until I could feel it beside my spine like a swallowed wad of gum. It felt as though, if I dug hard enough, I could pull it out right from under my skin. Pain radiated in soft waves from it, but I was just relieved it had left my throat and proceeded to my esophagus.
The panic slowly left me and the alarm bells going off in my head died away. I heaved a sigh and prepared myself for today's lecture just as my professor walked in. She greeted everyone and asked how we were. I replied, "Good" and it was only after I'd said it that I agreed it was true.
I was glad that dumb piece of butterscotch hadn't been the death of me.

-----

True story. This was the highlight (and by that I mean something I wish to never experience again) of my afternoon. I literally thought today was the day I was meant to die.
Didn't happen, though, so I guess its not quite my time yet.
Moral of the story? Don't swallow an entire piece of butterscotch hard candy unless you desire to be scared out of your wits.

Until next time,

V

Dormancy

Heya,
So I haven't been writing a whole lot lately and I'm thinking it's mostly because I've got a large idea stewing around in my head and I don't want to write anything on it/write anything else to pollute it. Well anyway, this is something I wrote the other night at least concerning a couple of the main characters. It's not really apart of the story in any way.

Till next time,
Vicki

---

The smoke filled her lungs. The gunfire unloaded into her mind. Her chest grew cold and hot simultaneously. Blood oozed.

Her vision blurred and came sharply back into focus – she closed her eyes against the suddenness of it all.

When she opened her eyes again she realized she was lying in the mud. When did I fall?

Rapid, frantic feet raced toward her and warm arms cradled her.

“Riley? God, Riley, can you hear me?” a quivering voice whispered. Hopeful.

She’d been parched of hope for a long time. He’d find none with her.

She nodded and realized how difficult it was, how much strength it took.  A surge of lethargy washed over her and she slumped into him more.

She felt as if she was watching it all unfold from above, as if she didn’t really exist and was a passing spirit, pausing for a moment to see. To see the unbecoming of a powerful boy.

“Why does it have to end like this?” she heard him murmur brokenly. “I can’t ever make it in time to save you, I can never beat the clock.  No matter how hard I try, it’s like running into a brick wall.“

“Fixed point,” she slurred slowly. He clutched her harder, closer, as if that would banish her words. She could smell his effort – all the grime and dirt and sweat he endured to get to her. Pity it was all wasted.

“I just want you to come home with me, to come back home and laugh with me, tell me I’m doing it wrong, tell me you can’t understand me sometimes,” he said. She could hear his throat closing up. Liquid warmth seeped into her shoulder and she realized he was actually crying.

“I feel no pain, Malachi,” she said feebly. Her mind was beginning to go fuzzy the more she felt blood ooze. It painted his shirt red, but he didn’t care. Who really cares about stains when your love is dying in your arms?

“Good,” he choked out, partially in relief and partially to humor her. He began to tremble against her body and she wanted to comfort him, but there was no strength and no ground to stand on. What could she say to make him feel better, anyway?

“I love you.”

He sobbed.

I guess that wasn’t the right angle, she thought as her mind began to drop off completely. She was being whisked away with the wind.

“I love you, too. I’ll miss you,” he replied as steadily as he could manage. His body gave him away.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Me too.”

He felt her heart stutter and stop against his soaked chest. It rattled finality throughout his entire being and he started to realize she was dead and he could never bring her back. From the place she was going he couldn’t retrieve her.

Three - Four Years Compiled Word Count

So, I was struck with the idea just the other day about how many words I've written (by hand or typed) my whole life. Now, I know this is not possible to know, but adding up all the word documents I have from the past 3 or 4 years is. So, I did it. It took a couple hours (and a few frustrating moments with Word in particular) as well as three whole Word documents to hold all the bits of information, but finally, I reached my overall estimate. Word decided to freak out and erase everything at around page 900, so I had to find out another way to calculate my overall word count as opposed to cramming all the words into one doc, since apparently the amount overwhelmed Word. And I wanted it to be as accurate as possible, although I understand without precision (which I didn't have) there are bound to be errors. However, I do believe the my answer is close enough to the truth. Just for a visual, I've included the amount of pages as well, although I know for a fact there are spaces and such.

First doc: 459,203 words (875 pages)
Second: 104,595 words (429 pages)
Third: 44,547 words (117 pages)
Which gives me a total of: 608,345 words (and 1,421 pages)

In the past 3-4 years, based off of what I've written and saved, I've written around 608,345 words. This number consists of novels - finished and otherwise - school projects (essays, research papers, etc.) and miscellaneous writing stuffs. My (rough) finished novels alone take up 205,733 words (29.57%) of that total.

....

Never would I have imagined the total reaching this high in just four years.

Anyway, time for the history of this endeavor. In my Faith and Reason class on Friday, my teacher mentioned something about an average word count for college-aged people that had compiled throughout their lifetime. Now, I can't exactly remember the number* he came up with, but I keep thinking it was somewhere in the 100,000's. Maybe in the 150,000-200,000 range somewhere. (I'm not entirely sure where he'd get such information, but I trust him not to just pull a number off the top of his head.) Regardless, I knew as soon as he'd said the number that I had most likely surpassed it, being a writer and all. Thus, this planted the seed of thought that grew into the desire to attempt to figure out how many possible words I've written in even just the past couple years. And there you go. This is my conclusion.

Phew.

To go even further into calculating this, I could try to figure out what the average word-per-day count is. Let's say roughly 4 years.
365 days x 4 years = 1,460 days
608,345 words / 1,460 days = 416.674658 words per day

Wow.

It can only go up from here! :D

Now I feel inspired to write more.

Ta~

V

*EDIT: I talked to him today about it - it was a calculation of hours someone might have spent writing and that number of hours would put them at a certain level from complete novice to professional writer. How different I translated that, eh? From hours into word count. Perhaps that's just the trigger I needed anyway. Well, whichever. Still intriguing (:

You Left Me; You Lost Me

You left me. You lost me.

I’m that childhood toy you used to worship and adore and take everywhere but now have fatally misplaced. Or you reached a state of boredom; you’ve worn me out so much all you can think to do is throw me away in all my ragged rawness. And so you are left with only memories, finding yourself often stuck in fond reverie, but that’s it. Memories, figments, files in your mind; I’m no longer around and I am no longer yours. 

You left me…so, you lost me.

You destroyed me.

------

Something I wrote after I watched a particular scene in a movie (can't think of it at the moment - forgive my sluggish mind at nearly two in the morning). It moved me to write something. Words just began forming sentences in my head so I decided to tack them out before I lost them in the sometimes unreachable recesses of my mind. 
It is thus far still pretty raw, but whatever. I never said this blog would hold perfectly polished thoughts.

Night,
V

Mileage

Home to New Jersey: 5 hours and 2 minutes (263 miles)

New Jersey to Home: 5 hours (264 miles)

Home to Kalamazoo, Michigan: 10 and ½ hours (650 miles)

Kalamazoo to Manistee: 3 hours (195 miles)

Manistee to Kalamazoo: 3 hours (184 miles)

Kalamazoo to Home: 10 and ½ hours (640 miles)

*Total mileage spent driving/riding in ten days (June 30^th-July 9^th): 2,196 miles

Total time spent in a car: 37 hours or 1 day and 13 hours

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Most of these times are estimates based on what Maps on my phone tells me, (because I can't quite remember the exact addresses of the places we stayed in certain areas) but as far as mileage, I'm pretty certain it's really close to accurate. After these ten days I was curious to see just how much ground I'd covered.

To put the distance somewhat into perspective, it would be like driving to Michigan from Virginia 3.378 times. (Virginia to Michigan, back down to Virginia, back up to Michigan, and almost halfway back to Virginia). What a trip that would be.

And yay math.

* - I didn't include little 10 mile trips (like from one house to another or to the beach and back) because it would only be little chunks. Granted, it would add to the overall total probably in a larger amount than I'm thinking, but I decided not to record all that. So, the total total is probably more than 2,196 miles. Oh well.

Prepare A Place

She found herself in a waiting room.

The pallid room had an ethereal feel to it, almost a dream-like quality. It was all so relaxing and peaceful; she closed her eyes and let the atmosphere take her in. Her sandaled foot bobbed absently to the beautiful orchestral music flowing from what she assumed was hidden speakers, since she didn’t see any, but she didn’t know. Frankly, she didn’t care. She hadn’t felt so tranquil in a long time and decided to revel in it as much as possible. It didn’t even give her a sense of complacency; it was pure, unaltered peace.

Somehow she knew she was waiting for something, but it didn’t make her anxious like waiting rooms usually did. Even the fact that she knew no more than that didn’t frighten her. She had nowhere to be. There was no rush to make it to work on time or get the grandkids to soccer before the game started.  Worry was completely unnecessary.

A man with an extremely pleasant and comforting face poked his head through an open door she hadn’t seen before.

“We’re ready for you, Jenny,” he rumbled languidly. Jenny had never heard a deeper, more cordial voice in her life. He smiled as she got up slowly and grabbed her hand to lead her down a long hallway. It seemed endless and yet she didn’t tire.

“Here you are, my dear,” he said finally, stopping to direct her into a very quaint, very lovely room. Jenny gasped at all the decorations, the bedspread, and the curtains. She quickly overlooked the fact that the only object in the room was the bed. Aside from that, there was nothing; not even a couple knick knacks on a table or some shoes strewn across the cream carpet. In fact, there wasn’t even a dresser.

“It’s perfect,” she breathed, running her hands over the cherry red down comforter. An amused chuckle emanated from behind her and it wrapped her up in a feeling of joy. She hadn’t the slightest idea who this man was and she didn’t care. He was treating her with such gentleness and kindness she almost felt she didn’t deserve it.

“I know,” he replied, stepping forward to take her wrinkled hand in his again. He led her to the side of the bed closest to the humungous window, pulled back the covers, and helped her into the bed with delicate, strong arms.

Jenny sighed blithely and sunk into the mattress with a giddy grin on her face.

“Why are you doing this for me?” she asked quietly. The man smiled and continued to gaze at her face much like a proud father to his daughter.

“Because I choose to,” he replied simply. “And I love you.”

“Who are you?”

This elicited another chuckle from him. He came closer and tucked the sheets around her tighter before speaking again in a soft whisper.

“I have many names, my dear, and my face is one not recognized. But none of that really matters. I love you more than you can fathom and you are my precious daughter. That is all that matters. Now you should rest, Jenny. Good night.”

He kissed her on the forehead and without so much as another thought, her eyelids were closed and she was gone.

-----------------------------

John 14:1-3
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.  My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Playlist Timeline

Tread lightly - musings roam these parts...

I suppose this is more for me than specifically anyone else, but I figure people might find it interesting. For me, the music I listen to almost betrays my state of mind/what I'm really feeling. It can sometimes be confusing, however, because in some instances, I'll listen to certain songs just because I think they're pretty, not necessarily that I feel like I can relate. (I.E., I really like "break up" songs, but obviously they don't apply. I just think they're pretty and sad.)
So, I've arranged this playlist timeline in tiers of pre-Peru, Peru, and post-Peru. The songs that I include are listed generally because they held some kind of significance (or I just liked how they sounded).
For those of you who care, pay attention to the type of music and how it changes and grows over time (although some tastes overall stay the same). I think it's intriguing. 

Pre-Peru (during the year of preparation leading up to moving on Oct 4, 2008): Paramore (All We Know is Falling; Riot!), Avril Lavigne (When You’re Gone; Innocence), Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Soundtrack, Pussycat Dolls (When I Grow Up), Apocalyptica (Worlds Collide), Cobra Starship (Viva La Cobra!), Evanescence (Fallen), Fall Out Boy (From Under The Cork Tree; Infinity On High; Folie A Deux), Family Force 5 (Business Up Front, Party in the Back), Lily Allen (Knock ‘Em Out), Matchbox Twenty (How Far We’ve Come), Nickelback (Savin’ Me; Far Away; Photograph; Rockstar; Someday), Skillet (Comatose), 3 Doors Down (When I’m Gone; Away From the Sun; Here Without You)

Peru (Oct 2008-May 2011): Angels & Airwaves (Breathe; Sirens; Secret Crowds),  Breaking Benjamin (Phobia; We Are Not Alone; Dear Agony), Christina Perri (Jar of Hearts), Coldplay (Parachutes; Viva La Vida; Prospekt’s March; A Rush of Blood to the Head; X & Y), Copeland (You Are My Sunshine; In Motion; Beneath Medicine Tree; Eat, Sleep, Repeat), Daughtry (Leave This Town), A Day To Remember (Homesick), Eluvium (Copia; When I Live By The Garden And Sea; An Accidental Memory In The Case of Death), Enur (Calabria ft. Natasja), Ferraby Lionheart (Ferraby Lionheart – EP), A Fine Frenzy (Almost Lover), Blue October (Into the Ocean), Flyleaf (Fully Alive; Cassie; There For You; Perfect; Breathe Today), Future of Forestry (Twilight; Travel I; Travel II; Travel III), Hans Zimmer (Marry Me (Overture)), Hinder (Better Than Me), Jars Of Clay (The Eleventh Hour; Furthermore – From the Studio, From the Stage; Good Monsters; If I Left the Zoo; Jars of Clay; The Long Fall Back to Earth; Much Afraid; Who We Are Instead; The Shelter), Jem (24), Jen Titus (O Death), John Mayer (Dreaming With a Broken Heart; Heartbreak Warfare), John Foreman (In My Arms), Kelly Clarkson (Beautiful Disaster), The Killers (Mr. Brightside), Lifehouse (From Where You Are), Lily Allen (Smile), Linkin Park (Hybrid Theory; Meteora; Minutes to Midnight), Mae ((a)fternoon; (e)vening), Maroon 5 (Won’t Go Home Without You), Mika (Happy Ending), Mindless Self Indulgence (Mastermind), Moloko (Sing It Back), Murray Gold (Doomsday), Muse (Time Is Running Out), The National (Fake Empire), Never Shout Never (Lovesick), Nickelback (Dark Horse; Into the Night), OneRepublic (Waking Up), OneRepublic & Sara Bareilles (Come Home), Papa Roach (Lifeline; Forever; Getting Away with Murder; Scars), Parachute (The Mess I Made), Paramore (Brand New Eyes; The B-Sides; The Summer Tic – EP; Other Unreleased Tracks), A Perfect Circle (Counting Bodies Like Sheep), Pillar (For the Love of the Game), Rains (Liar), The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (Don’t You Fake It), Regina Spektor (Begin to Hope), Rihanna (Disturbia; Breakin’ Dishes), A Rocket to the Moon (Like We Used To), Secondhand Serenade (Fall For You), Seether ft. Amy Lee (Broken), Shinedown (The Sound of Madness), Sick Puppies (You’re Going Down), Simple Plan (Perfect), Sixx A.M. (Life is Beautiful), Skillet (Awake; Collide), Snow Patrol (Chasing Cars; Open Your Eyes; You Could Be Happy; Run), Superchick (We Live; Stand in the Rain), Switchfoot (Oh! Gravity.; Awakening), Tenth Avenue North (Over and Underneath), Theory of a Deadman (Scars and Souvenirs), Three Days Grace (Riot; Pain; Never Too Late; I Hate Everything About You; Animal I Have Become; Home; Life Starts Now), Unkle (Burn My Shadow; With You In My Head), The Used (All That I’ve Got; The Bird and the Worm; Burning Down the House), Vanessa Carlton (Ordinary Day; A Thousand Miles; Twilight; White Houses), xi (Death Piano; Midnight), Yiruma (First Love), ZOEgirl (Scream; Dead Serious), 3 Doors Down (Your Arms Feel Like Home), 30 Seconds to Mars (The Kill)

Post-Peru: Angels Fall (Call On Me), Chevelle (Jars; The Fad; Send the Pain Below; The Red; I Get it), Copeland (The Last Time He Saw Dorie; Good Morning Fire Eater; Love Affair; The Day I lost My Voice (The Suitcase Song); Coffee; Chin Up; Should You Return), Counting Crows (Colorblind), Daughtry (Break the Spell), David Cook (Avalanche; The Last Goodbye), A Day to Remember (What Separates Me From You), Disturbed (The Animal), Cage the Elephant (Shake Me Down), Coldplay (Mylo Xyloto), Flyleaf (Red Sam), Foster the People (Pumped Up Kicks), Gotye (Somebody That I Used to Know), Jimmy Eat World (Bleed America*), Linkin Park (A Thousand Suns), Mae (Suspension), Mumford & Sons (The Cave; White Blank Page; Little Lion Man), Neon Trees (Animal), The Offspring (You’re Gonna Go Far Kid), Oh Land (Sun of a Gun), The Script (Breakeven (Falling to Pieces); For the First Time), Secondhand Serenade (Awake), Serianna (Lose Yourself), Shinedown (45; Simple Man; I Dare You), Snow Patrol (Crack the Shutters; Run), Story of the Year (The Ghost of You And I), These New Puritans (We Want War), Three Days Grace (Life Starts Now), The Ting Tings (That’s Not My Name), Train (Hey, Soul Sister; Marry Me), Woodkid (Iron), 30 Seconds to Mars (Kings and Queens; This is War; Closer to the Edge)

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* - From Bleed America, a specific song that really hit me was My Sundown

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Interesting? I hope so. 

For some of the artists, I put the entire albums (for example, for Copeland in "Peru" I listed four albums) because pretty much all the songs applied or I loved them all. That can be said for a lot of these artists. However, sometimes albums are named after a song in them, so that makes things a tad troublesome. Oh well. Determine what you will.

You know what would be even more challenging? Picking just one song or album to describe my entire time in Peru, and before and after. Yeesh. To be honest, I'm not even sure that would be possible. 

Over and out,

V