April Blogging Challenge (And the End of the Christmas Quest)
It’s April 1—you know what that means!
No, I’m not trying to pull a prank on you. I’m just here to say that once again, the Smucker Writers are doing the April Blogging Challenge.
This year, besides myself and my mom, my sister-In-Law Phoebe will do a couple of posts, as well as my brother Ben. (Ben doesn’t have a blog, so he’ll guest post on my Mom’s.) You can expect a new blog from a Smucker writer every other day.
For my first post, I’m going to finish my Christmas Quest Saga. This past Christmas, I was alone for the holidays, so I made a list of fifty things to do. Turns out, fifty is an enormously high number for a holiday bucket list, so not only was I quite busy, but I’ve already written three blogs on the topic, and I’m still not done.
(If you’re interested in catching up, you can read Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here.)
List Item #18: Make a Pot with Backyard ClayMy list included some big, exciting things, but it also included a lot of little, fun things. For example, our yard is full of clay soil. Ever since moving here, I’ve wondered if it’s possible to make a pot with the backyard clay.
So I put it on my list.
Turns out, yes, it is possible. Of course, without a wheel, a kiln, or any potter experience, I have no way to make useful or pretty pottery. But I managed to make something vaguely bowl-shaped.
Someday, it would be cool to buy a wheel and learn for real.
Other small-quest items included:
List Item #10: Go to the same coffee shop every day for a week. I went to Starbucks since it’s the only coffee shop in my suburb (although oddly, we have ten donut shops). “Becoming a regular” was a really cool way to connect with people. The baristas complimented the mugs and cups I brought in, memorized what I liked to order, and once even gave me free scones.List Item #37: Meet with Sarah. There’s a writer in town named Sarah that I hoped to connect with, so I put it on my list, but her life was pretty crazy and it didn’t work out. Still, I was determined to cross it off my list, so I asked my friend Sarah Beth if she’d “meet” me by having a Zoom call and catching up. So technically, I still met with Sarah.
List Item #19: Bike to Sylvan Beach. Our little bay beach is only 2.3 miles away, so I borrowed Phoebe’s bike and went. This area is flat with wide sidewalks, and I presume it’s okay to bike on them because people drive golf carts on them constantly. When I got to the beach, I inadvertently completed List Item #24: Listen to a Street Musician, because for some reason, a kid was standing in the parking lot practicing his drums.
List Item #43: Ride the Bus DowntownHouston is the fourth-largest city in the USA, and it’s genuinely cool to be able to drive for an hour or less and experience almost anything—any culture, any band, any type of food, any random activity that’s ever seemed fun.
But other cities I’ve been in have had a distinct soul and an exciting big-city feeling. I haven’t found that in Houston. So I decided to chase that feeling.
My plan: Ride the bus downtown. Walk around enjoying the sights.
The Friday before my quest ended, I drove to the nearest park-and-ride, which, frustratingly, was 20 minutes away. No one seemed to be around. I climbed onto the bus. There was no driver and only one other passenger.
“It’s two dollars, right?” I asked the passenger.
“I don’t know, I just used my fare card,” he said. “I think there’s an app where you can buy a ticket.”
The truth was, the metro system has multiple apps and they don’t always make sense. I decided to wait for the bus driver, and when she arrived she confirmed that yes, it was two dollars. I paid cash.
Meanwhile, the ice was broken between me and the passenger. We chatted all the way downtown. He was an English professor named Carl—in my memory, he was wearing a sweater with leather patches on the elbows, but I think that’s just a figment of my imagination to match the sort of person he was.
You know, the kind who casually says things like, “You’ve read Joyce, of course.”
Carl got off as soon as we reached downtown, and I rode a few more stops to get off near what I presumed to be the center of activity.
I have to admit, downtown Houston was disappointing. I don’t know how to describe it except that it wasn’t hoppin’.
Some places are full of life, with street performers, people going in and out of shops, people who look like they’re on vacation, and people rushing to important meetings. And some places seem dull and lifeless, with the people-to-building ratio off in a way that seems vaguely apocalyptic.
Houston is a very indoor-oriented culture, which I think contributes to the dull feeling. But I know there are hoppin’ places here, like Galveston on nice weekends or the Kemah Boardwalk on New Years Eve. But downtown Houston on a Friday, with a drizzle of rain in the morning that turns into gorgeous not-too-hot sunshine in the afternoon, is not a hoppin’ place at all.
There was also a marked absence of old or historical-looking buildings. I found a few on random streets, but instead of being turned into museums or bookshops or pubs, they just looked propped up and waiting to die.
Even my search for a cute coffee shop was rather fruitless. I finally stopped in an empty, charmless bakery because I was hungry and tired, only to realize it was closing in five minutes.
That’s when I gave up and rode the bus back home.
I don’t regret my excursion because the hunt for beauty and charm is always worth it. I’m sure it exists somewhere in Houston, but I didn’t find it downtown.
P.S. I only took one photo that day, which you’ll understand if you’re a Swiftie and if you’re not that’s fine just ignore this silly picture.
List Item #36: Prank someoneI put this one on my list without thinking it through. How do you prank someone in an area where you don’t know anyone? Could I prank a stranger?
Maybe I could hide in the Starbucks bathroom but not lock the door, and when someone came in, I could yell, “Boo!”
No, I didn’t quite have the courage for that one.
I called my brother Ben and asked if there was any way he could conspire with me to help prank Mom.
“What prank do you have in mind?” he asked.
But I drew a blank.
“You could always put googly eyes on things,” Ben laughed. Once, Mom pranked him by sticking googly eyes on all his stuff.
I went back to the Starbucks bathroom idea. What if I stuck googly eyes on the mirror? So that if someone looked at their reflection they’d see googly eyes instead of their real eyes?
I bought googly eyes and sticky tack, and on Saturday, set off to do the prank. Only I decided against the Starbucks bathroom. I kind of knew the baristas now, and it was embarrassing to think that they’d probably know it was me.
So I went to Target instead.
Only once I was inside the Target bathroom I realized there were too many people around for me to unobtrusively stick googly eyes on the mirror. So I went into one of the stalls and adorned it thus:
I meant to slip quietly out, but when I opened the stall door, there was a woman right there, ready to claim this stall the instant I vacated it.
I dashed to the sink, and just as I wet my hands, the woman poked her head back out of the stall. “There’s eyes on the…”
I yeeted out of there so fast. Hands dripping. Feeling like a criminal. Climbed in my getaway car and haven’t been back to that Target since.
List Item #45: Go to a ConcertAnd then. Sunday. The last day of the quest. The day I went to a concert.
This was the pinnacle of my quest. In case you’ve forgotten, I wanted to go to a Tophouse concert, but tickets were sold out. So I DM’d the band, and wonder of wonders, they agreed to put me on the guest list in exchange for one of my books.
Now, I really have not been to very many concerts in my life, and I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. Should I give them my book before or after the concert? Am I supposed to go backstage? I didn’t even know which member of the band I’d been communicating with.
But I showed up at the venue with a bag of books—I figured I’d give them each one instead of making them share—and hoped for the best.
The venue was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was called a “listening room,” and was just a room with a stage set up in one corner. There was a bar there, so people could buy drinks if they wanted, but it wasn’t a bar. I mean, it was only open when there was music.
As soon as I walked in, I saw one of the band members, Joe, selling merch at the end of the bar. However, that end of the room was extremely crowded because the bar, the merch area, and the bathrooms were all in the same corner. So I didn’t bother him and figured I’d do the book-handing later.
Well, something odd happened then. A man with a brown fedora and a little gray ponytail started asking me about myself, and when I mentioned my books, he said he wanted to buy one. I had three extra in the car, so I ran out to get them. Then, this other lady overheard us, and she was interested, too—she didn’t buy one, but she took a picture of the cover. Then a third lady overheard us and wanted to buy one.
Honestly, I felt kinda bad using someone else’s concert as a book-selling event.
As it got closer to showtime, Joe-the-lead-singer left the merch table and went backstage, but on his way passed me, stopped, and said, “Hi, by the way. You’re Emily, right?”
Wow. I felt very special. What a night.
Anyway, the concert started, and it was very fun and lively and beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed it. One unexpected delight was how funny the band members were, cracking these awkward deadpan jokes between songs.
Afterward, all four band members hung around to sign merch and meet people. That’s when I thanked them for putting me on the guest list and gave them copies of my book. They all seemed excited and talked about the books they’d just finished reading and how many books they’d brought on tour. (Honestly they kind-of had homeschooler energy which was fun and unexpected.)
I decided it must have been Joe that I’d communicated with on Instagram because no one else recognized me until I said I was the “bucket list girl.” But they all acted impressed that I wrote a book, and I have to say, having people that you find impressive act like they think you are impressive feels amazing.
So that’s how I ended the quest: Listening to music I loved, feeling like my writing mattered, and knowing I’d accomplished what I set out to accomplish—fifty items crossed off my holiday bucket list.
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I hope you enjoyed reading about my Christmas Quest, and are excited to move onto other subjects this month! For now, be sure to check out Mom’s blog, Life in the Shoe, on April 3 for the next post in the April Blogging Challenge.
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