My Labor Day

Well, as most of you were complaining about it raining on your holiday and how you had to stay inside and watch movies all day, I figured I would share my day.
I woke up at 7:00 to read and get ready for the day (drink coffee, write a few letters, watch the rain, etc). It was a really nice way to start the day.
I went to class at 9:30, yes, we have class on labor day. I've honestly never been upset about it because I've gotten used to it while being at Lee. I had class until twelve, when I got my lunch and headed home. I had a break until my class at 4, so I planned on eating, watching a movie, and possibly napping before class and then work after. I got a text, asking anyone who could to come in and help at work because they were slammed. I felt guilty that people were there in the hectic weather trying to deliver pizzas, so I decided to go help. And help. And help some more.
Suddenly, it's ten o clock and I realize that I'm still at the store. It's now twelve thirty, and I've been home for about thirty minutes. Let's just say, it was a looong day. And it isn't over.
I've got to read about fifty pages and write a project proposal for my classes tomorrow.
Here's to hoping that Lee does something awesome: CANCEL CLASSES! This would be awesome but will probably not happen. Although there are several roads that are closed, so I really could just say I couldn't get to school. That would be wrong though..Arg I'm so tired of moral dilemmas.
So yeah, my labor day was exhausting, but I function best when I'm extremely busy. I've been getting a lot more done.
In other news, I was quite happy last Thursday because I successfully paid my bills, all on my own.
Ok I really can't take any more time to blog because I have school work looming, staring at me and begging me to come do it. But my bed is also trying to convince me that I should be laying in it instead...who will win? We will find out.
I love the rain more than most things in this world. There's something very calming and peaceful about it.
What I don't love, however, is monsoons that make the roads dangerous. My friend Brittney wrecked on the highway yesterday because she hydroplaned. Its pretty serious stuff.
But I still love rain nonetheless. It makes me feel like I have a right to be relaxing.
Goodnight!

So I guess I'll do a little recap of my life the past two weeks.
I left Franklin, moved back to Cleveland. Suzanne and I found an apartment and signed the lease in one day, and we were even successful in knocking fifty dollars off our rent AND not having to pay a deposit. Yeah, we're that good. Our utilities are officially in our name, and the internet people are coming on Monday. It's a crazy feeling, being an adult. Now that I've decided to pay my own bills, life is more stressful, but also a little more satisfying. Not that I'm ungrateful or anything; I've been blessed beyond what I deserve with parents who are more than generous and willing to help me whenever I need it. Which is probably why I'm ready to do stuff on my own.
So we moved everything in, and our furniture is super cute! Suzanne's brother gave her his old living room stuff, so everything matches (including my futon, crazy!) and our kitchen is quaint, just like everything in this apartment.
In other news, my pending graduation in December is stressing me out to the max. I have five writing/reading intensive classes, which means 3 separate 20 page papers, three presentations, and two 15 page papers. Not to mention a grand total of 15 books that I will have completely read by the end of the semester. Ahhhh!! I'm trying to take everything a day at a time, so far I have successfully done at least an hour of homework and an hour of reading every night, which is new for me because usually I can do things the morning they're due and not have to read in order to get by, but I'm really trying to excel this semester, not just scrape by.
But that's boring school stuff. Unfortunately, it's my focus this semester. Part of me wishes I would have spread it out between this semester and next semester and just graduate in May, but I'm really feeling the need to just work really really hard to get all of this done in one straight shot.
Not to mention I also have a part time job (remember the whole paying my own bills thing?) which requires at least 20-25 hours a week of my precious time. Sigh.
I've never thought of weekends as a time to catch up on homework until now. I wrote two small papers today, and read 100 pages of one of my books. Who am I??? This is craziness. Instead of watching movies and napping all day until time to go to work, I'm actually being productive?? Good grief. It's like I'm an adult or something.
That's pretty much all about my life right now. I'm terribly sorry it didn't contain a lot of sarcastic observations about people or delightfully cynical insights of life. My brain feels so squished with information already (three days into the semester, yikes) that it's difficult for me to be witty right now. Hopefully I'll have some wit and charm in my next post. In fact, it will be my goal.
I worked until 12:30 am this morning, and I'm about to head back to work. At least I love the people I work with, because that makes all the difference.
Here's a quote from the book I'm reading, The French Lietenants Woman by John Fowles.
He is speaking about writers, and the reasons we write.
"We wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live."
Word.

Glorious Day

The day before yesterday was a glorious afternoon. I came home from work around 4 and immediately noticed how fantastic it felt outside. It was a mere 80 degrees with a lovely light breeze which contained the foreshadow crispness of autumn. I couldn't stand the thought of being inside any longer after working inside all day, so I grabbed my "yard laying supplies". For those of you who don't know, my top ten necessary yard laying supplies are as follows:

1. Blanket (preferably big enough to spread everything out on and lay down comfortably)
2. At least 1 book
3. Musical playing device
4. Journal and pens
5. Quote book
6. Letter writing material
7. Sun glasses or hat
8. Bug spray
9. Camera
10. Snack and/or drink

I may take all ten of these things, or mix and match a few. Depends on how much time I have. I also have to wear dirty clothes in case I decide to climb a tree. Which happened the other day, and it was fabulous, regardless of the fact that my dog freaked out and thought I was dying and kept jumping in the air, attempting to bite my foot to pull me down. Which of course was funny at first, but not so funny when he almost succeeded to pull me off the branch as I climbed back down. I have to say, it was one of the most relaxing afternoons I've had in awhile. I read a book called The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is set in England and so I read it out loud in a British accent to my cat. Yes, I did feel like Alice reading to her cat Dinah and no, I did not see a white rabbit. I've decided to have days like that more often. Even if I don't have time to do it for very long, I need to lay on a blanket outside and read a book as often as I can. It's good for the soul, and that's something you can't afford to be bad to.

This time spent outside reminded me of two things. One was an afternoon in Cambridge with Ashley and Molly spent in the park on a blanket. All three of us being English majors, it only seemed appropriate that we would bring an ungodly amount of books, journals, etc..



And we just soaked up the sunshine we had missed oh so much while living in England.

It was a magical day for us because warm days were rare, as you can imagine since we lived there from January to April!



I was also reminded of a little trip I took one day in Cambridge by myself. I went to a park that none of us ever went to since it was on the opposite side of town (bear in mind we were always on bikes!). I discovered this fantastic tree:





I mean, seriously, how stinkin AWESOME is this tree? Doesn't it make you just want to go lay under it, or climb into it? I decided to do the first idea and spent the afternoon relaxing under this magnificent tree.

I had a lovely view of a playground!

So as you can see, it was a great day in Cambridge that was spent exploring and wandering to my heart's content. That evening, there was an amazing sunset.


Ahh...talk about lovely! Man, I miss England.

That's it for now, folks. Take time to enjoy the little things!
If you want to read more about my England/European travels, check out my travel blog.
http://mydistantlands.tumblr.com/

Byeee!

Bloggers Galore

My dad mentioned to me awhile back that he was sad that I wasn’t still blogging. I replied with the obvious answer: I’m not traveling, so why would I keep up my travel blog? This answer didn’t seem sufficient for him, but I brushed it off and went about my merry way.

I’ve been really, really bored at work the past few days, so I’ve been reading a few blogs that have thousands of followers. I really enjoy reading them, but I’m beginning to notice a few things about them. First of all, these writers are young. Not young in the sense that they are under 30. I mean that about 90 percent of them are my age, if not younger. Second, the most popular blogs seem to be women (I say women even though I am their age and don’t consider myself a “woman”) with husbands and kids. People want to read about housewives! What is this about? Most of them have side jobs, but their blogs have gotten so popular that they are able to sell advertising and literally make a living off of their thoughts and musings about their daily activities! What the heck?

The last thing I’ve noticed is that while yes, these blogs are very aesthetically pleasing and include lots of visual aids, there really isn’t that much to them! They talk about their clothes, their hair, their husbands and children, and that’s it! Wah lah, they have a super popular blog that is now making them money! This is mind boggling to me, and I can’t help but think the thought that always seems to creep in my head when I’m reading most things, the thought that hey, I could easily do this. Now, I don’t mean this is in a cocky way, and I’m not even sure how it could be taken as that because these bloggers are not professional writers in any way, they are just good at getting their thoughts out. Which, in all honesty, doesn’t seem like a huge deal to me because I always tend to feel like everyone has the ability to put their thoughts down in a semi-interesting manner. But I guess that’s probably not true.

So, I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m going to use this blog as a bit of a practice blog. I’m going to force myself to write a few times a week (maybe? hopefully? we’ll see) and just see what happens. Unlike most bloggers, the thought that people might be reading does the opposite of exciting me, it intimidates me. I’ve never been one to let people read my writing or know my thoughts, mostly because I feel like I’m 90 percent crazy about 90 percent of the time. But hey, I’m 22, so I really don’t have much to lose by just putting what I think about life and random things from my day into an internet blog.

Did you think I was finished? Oh no, you thought wrong. This is my first attempt at writing about my day/week/life, so here goes.

Thoughts:

-I really hate how facebook keeps all of your friend requests, even the ones you deny (they don’t call it denying anymore though, it is the “not now” button these days). Even when you say no, it still keeps them, it just “hides” them. As if one day I might think, hey, what ever happened to that 50 year old creepy man that wanted to be my friend? He didn’t seem so bad, maybe I should go back and befriend him! Um, no. Not happening. If I change my mind, let me find the person and request them myself. Sometimes facebook tries to be too helpful.

-People seem to think that since I’m young and unsure of what I’m doing with my life, that entitles everyone and their uncle to give me advice. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is very helpful, but the ones that got married and had kids young always give me the “stay single while you can!” speech, at the same time the ones that stayed single for a long time give me the “find love and hold onto it because it’s the only thing that matters!” talk. I used to think I needed to take everyone’s advice as signs from God that were leading me in a certain direction, but I realize now that people are just trying to be helpful and I should heed warnings, learn from others’ mistakes, but blaze my own trail and do what I want to do.

-The more I think about my future, the more I’m realizing how different our generation is from the ones before us. Our grandparents didn’t think about what career they wanted to pursue; they just did whatever job they were given and pursued it with everything they had. Women didn’t worry about being independent and staying young forever, they just married if they fell in love and had kids and stayed content with their life. People from that generation seem to be so much more content with the cards they are dealt. Today, everyone’s motto seems to be “if you don’t like your life, change it! do everything it takes to get everything you want!” I don’t know, to an extent this seems ok but for some reason it just seems better to not be constantly wanting something different than what you have.

I think that’s all I really have to discuss right now. Maybe I’ll write a blog about my family’s medical mission trip to Panama soon. It was definitely a trip worth telling people about. We’ll see.

One more thing, I never read over my writing before turning it in. It’s a nasty terrible habit I have that is the cause for a lot of spelling and grammatical errors, not to mention typos. Maybe I’ll try and be better about this. Maybe I won’t. You never know with me.

Cheers!