Friday, April 30, 2010

Planning My Own Parties

So I have been wrestling with the idea of planning my own birthday party for the past couple of weeks now.  I really don't know if its (a) appropriate (b) desperate or (c) weird...

Well, I went ahead and did it anyway.  And I did it twice!! Once for my going away/birthday party and once for my coming home/birthday party.  And now I am really excited to celebrate!!!!!!!  I think I made the right choice sending out my own evites...even if people think I'm weird, at least people can plan and then I get to see everyone I love. 

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Today

Today:
  • I have a headache
  • I am trying to control my uncanny desire to do things that are bad for me
  • I resisted the 420 calorie blueberry muffin at Starbucks (that looked DELICIOUS by the way)
  • I am nervous about what to say to my office manager about leaving
  • I am way too homesick for my own good
  • I have mild anxiety
  • I want to sleep for like 2.5 weeks and wake up and be done with this "transition"
 I have so much to get done and so many things that are just left unfinished that it causes me to have anxiety, and apparently, overeat.  I was looking for something last night and I couldn't find it.  Because I couldn't find it I spent an hour looking for it.  Swearing I knew exactly where it was, and then wondered if it had already been sent to my mother in the three boxes that I packed and shipped home last week.  Then I wondered if it were gone forever.  Lost into the abyss of moving boxes and random crap I don't need but am still holding onto anyway.

I just want to be moved, and know I have a job, and be settled into my OWN apartment, and not be moving back in with my mom.  But I want nothing more than to be home in California.  I can't wait.  I keep thinking about all the wonderfully fantastic things that I get to do once I am home and about how wonderful it will be to finally be back in a happy state of mind.  And it brings me so much joy to think about the carefree and nice and fun loving people that I know from home.  And I get happy thinking about all the jokes and laughs and fun I will have.  So although today may seem kinda gloomy and I have anxiety, and I want to eat fattening foods, and I have to tell my office manager that I am leaving, there is a serious bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Just trying to remember: "Replace the fear of the unknown with curiosity." 

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Ex - Lovers

So I have recently come across some ex-lovers.  Or I guess they have come across me...and it's really got me thinking about writing a book about them.

So here is my attempt at one story in particular.

Cliche Bar Encounter

There used to be this really great bar in my college town called Tj's.  Or was it Tommy's?  Well, regardless, it had this rooftop bar area that had dancing and tables and was perfect for a July summer night.  There were white Christmas lights loosely decorating the walls and unlit tiki lights to create some sort of tropical ambiance.  People were packed to the max outside, and I remember you had to wait downstairs in a line to be permitted to go to the rooftop.  It often took a while to go up to the outside bar, because this was the only place in town that had an outside and on a hot summer night, there was nothing better than getting drunk outside and catching the eye of some dimly lit stranger.

This one night in particular I was out with a couple of friends and a guy I was "dating" at the time.  I was chatting with my friends when I notice this tall, handsome guy staring at me.  And I mean it's one thing to make eye contact and then look away, but this guy was staring.  Not loosing ground.  Looking straight at me.  Staring.  I met his gaze back with full force.  He was hot, why wouldn't I?  I pretended to be paying attention to the conversation I was listening to, but kept my eye on the guy.  I somehow slipped away from my group and walked up to him.

"I think you were at the last bar we were at," me.
"I saw you there too," him.

We had met eyes at a previous bar, and I had noticed his cuteness then, but up close he was even better.  He had these beautiful green eyes, dark hair and ever so enchanting smile.  He didn't look like he grew up here either.  Not a typical Colorado boy.  But I couldn't tell where he was from.  Wherever he was from they had fed him well.  He was tall, like 6'4", just the way I like them.  And he was slender and toned and he looked older than the rest of the twenty somethings at the bar.  Not like he was 21 and out for his first time, but like he was in his late twenties just out enjoying the warm weather and summer booze. 

"We should go out," him.
"Give me your phone."

I put my number in his phone.  I can't remember if there were text exchanges that night or what.  But the next day he called me and asked me when I would be free to go out.  Without wanting to seem eager, I told him I had plans that night (even though I totally didn't), but I was free Sunday.  

We decided on a nice Mexican restaurant that had the best margaritas in town.  We sat outside next to a bubbling fountain and I drank a mango margarita and we split the nachos.  He was sweet and talkative.   He was also very smart.  I could tell from the conversation that we were having that his intelligence wasn't just book smart either, he was people smart too.  He told me about how he grew up in Iowa, and how he had started his own company in our town.  He told me about growing up in a small mid-western town and I looked at him like a wide-eyed Californian.  I had no idea what it was like to drive a tractor, or spend an evening in a car in the middle of a corn field.  

He was very charming, and very enchanting.  I was nervous, which is unusual for me in a setting with a guy.  I mumbled and kept fidgeting and drank my margarita too fast, and then ordered another one...and then another one.  

I should have known not to drink so much, but I was nervous and he was cute and the whole thing felt surreal.  He was smart and funny and nice and tall and handsome and I was twitterpated over everything he was.  It was stupid really, but while he was talking I imagined what it would be like to marry him and how happy I would be.  I hardly knew this guy, and I had met him at a bar.  After dinner we wound up meeting some of his friends across the street a bar and hung out with them and enjoyed ourselves out on the town for a little bit.  It was nice.  Just getting to know someone and hanging out with their friends and sitting and talking and having a nice dinner outside in the summer warmth.

But then I did something really dumb.  Maybe it was the margaritas, maybe it was my nerves, maybe it was me trying to win over this guy who had somehow managed to wrap me around his little finger in a matter of hours.  I was such a sucker.

"We should go back to your place," me.
He laughs. "Okay."

Needless to say I left an impression.  I don't know if it was a good one or a bad one or a trampy one, but it was an impression none-the-less.  

Throughout the years we continued to hung out.  We went boating a couple of times over the summer at the reservoir in town.  We'd meet up at bars and chat, or I even went to his college graduation party.  We still talk every once in a while and now living in the mid-west I meet people who know him.  Since apparently everyone in the Midwest knows everyone else.  Without fail though, everytime I'd see him I'd get the same stupid feeling I got the first night we met outside, under the summer night sky, on the rooftop bar. 

Monday, April 19, 2010

A Week In The Life

One of my favorite scrapbookers, Ali Edwards is doing a project "A Week In The Life" and I am hoping to follow in her footsteps and do it as well!  I'm really excited about this project because my day to day routines are about to totally change in just 38 days!

I am going to track all the little things that I do, and the weather, and maybe even some of my thoughts and feelings throughout the day.  I have to figure out how to make the book, and I forgot my camera this morning, but I will make up for it the rest of the week.

I highly suggest this project to anyone, even if you don't scrapbook.  Maybe just journal or blog about your weekly happenings.  It'll be fun to go back and look at it. Ali Edwards has lots of different blog posts about "A Week In The Life" and I am sure you're bound to get inspired somehow.  Here are all the posts from Ali about this project A Week In The Life: Ideas.


Good Luck.  :)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

33 missed calls

33 missed calls.
How did I miss that?  How did I not wake up knowing the moment had finally come.  Hadn't I felt that sense of connection from the beginning?  yet, somehow, I slept through 33 missed calls.  I had known this would eventually come.  I had seen in the fine print from that first day.

I sighed knowing calling the number back was going to probably be worse than I could imagine.  But I dialed.  My heart cramped in my chest as I waited for the voice.

"Hey."  The voice on the other end sounded dead, tired and somehow swollen.
"Whats going on?"
"He's in jail."
 
What. Wait. How.  Really?  Did he screw up that bad?  Had he really thrown his life out the window like this?  What an idiot.  I honestly.  Honestly? I started to go down a list of potential reasons he'd have landed himself in the shittest place after being awarded a fabulous life and charming smile.  Oh my god, he was probably getting eaten alive in that place.  With his faux hawk and girl jeans.  He barely had enough muscles on his arms to comb his hair anymore.  How would he manage to defend himself against the men in jail?  Did he get busted for drugs?  If so, he had that one coming.  He'd been dealing and using since the day he moved away and it was about time that shit caught up to him.  I was sure the coke was the reason for the muscle loss in his arms. I knew it wouldn't be a big deal if he had gotten busted for drugs.  Just a slap on the wrist and maybe some community service.  Maybe he'd gotten a D.U.I.  He'd been driving drunk since the summer of his senior year.  His parents turned a blind eye and let him store 24 packs of Corona in the garage.  He'd one time shown me the flask of vodka he kept in his glove box and proudly taken a shot of it while driving on the freeway.  That was the same day he slapped me across the face.  I mean that was a sure fire sign he'd end up in jail, wasn't it?  I had to have known then that the innocence I once saw in the deep of his eyes was long gone.  But I held on, hoping for something better.  Something more. 

I kept running down the list of why he was in jail now.  Stealing.  He always did that.  Lying.  About who knows what.  Can you even go to jail for lying?  Did he get into a bad car accident.  Why would he be in jail for that?  Grand theft auto.  He loved cars.  As I wandered through the list and options in my mind I couldn't grab onto anything without my stomach turning.  He was in jail.  For who knows what.

"Hello?" the voice on the phone interrupted my thought process.
"Where are you?  What are you doing?  What happened?"
"I'm in the hospital."
What.
"What the fuck."
"He beat me up."
and it stopped.  my heart. the world. time. life. everything. stopped.  as i stood on the cement steps outside of my job, in the freezing cold of winter, trying to not pass out, life as I had known it stopped. 

Everything. Stopped. Dead.  As cold and empty as the winter wind in Colorado that day.

Although I had thought through the options of what he had done wrong it never dawned on me that he had spent the previous evening beating the shit out of his girlfriend.
"What?"
"I'm in the hospital because he beat me up."
"What?"
"Don't worry he is getting out in a little while.  His dad came down here, he's bailing him out."
"What?"  WHAT! WHAT! WHAT?!

I didn't understand.  It didn't register.  Code error in the message being conveyed to me.  I couldn't believe the boy I had known and loved for the past five years had wound himself up in this horrible mess of shit.  What was he thinking?  Was he even thinking?  I knew this was in no way her fault.  Knew that he had always shown the warning signs.  He had always loved the taste of danger.  Lived in the moment.  Feared being left out or looked down upon.  He always had to prove himself.  Be stronger, bigger, smarter, better, cooler, than those around him.  I always felt his battle.  The one with himself.  The one he had with the world.  The one where he was told to be something and he was, just so no one would look at him differently.  I saw him hit harder than he knew how to just to be one of the guys.  I saw him mask his feelings and his thoughts as a means of protection.  His heart often was fragile, if he allowed it to breathe.  Most often he spent his time crushing his heart into nothing so he could be an intellect and a thinker.  He never really wanted to feel.  Not in a long time anyway. 

When I first met him he was sweet.  He was also a big time charmer and a ladies man.  He wanted to get girls attention and he wanted to get the prettiest girls attention so he could be seen as someone worthwhile.  He certainly had the looks going for him.  Anyone who met him knew it.  He was cute and he had his own personal style and he was smart.  He knew how to say things to entrance a crowd.  He knew when to lie and when to tell the truth.  He had this charismatic way about him and there was no denying his personality. Everyone who met him recognized it and commented on it, to me and to him. 

Ironically, he hadn't charmed me though.  Not at first anyway, I was guarded around him.  Afraid of his game and his mesmerizing smile.  Plus he wasn't my type.  He was too short and he had dark hair.  I liked tall blondes.  I didn't trust this boys quick wit and intelligence.  In a way it intimidated me.  I didn't like to be intimidated, I liked to be the one scaring the boys off.  I walked carefully in the beginning of my relationship with this one.  I led my own life, didn't take his crap, and even dumped him when he didn't call me for a day.  I had no time for him and his ladies-man attitude.  But somehow I fell in love with him, over time.  It might have been the way that he was always eager and willing to do anything I asked.  Or the fact that his tricks finally wooed me into submission.  Whatever it was, I loved him.  I knew there was a really hard and painful side of him.  He had an arrogance about him that I knew was a cover-up for something else but when no one was looking he would cuddle with his mom on the couch, and had to sleep with a special blanket.  Perhaps it was that knowledge that made me hold on to the hope that he was really a good person but this frantic phone call was proof otherwise.

(more to come...)

Friday, April 9, 2010

Scrapbooking

Here are some pages that I want to make and love and I really want to scrapbook, maybe once I make some of my own pages I will post them on here:

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

blogs i borrowed these layouts from:
Cosmo Cricket
Sassafras
Studio Calico

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

New Favorite Quotes

There is one thing that's always been true for me, and that's the fact that I LOVE quotes.  Here are some recent favorites that I have found that are wonderful, and true, and honest:

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty. Believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

"I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

"Sometimes you have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down."

"Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should..."

"Always continue to believe, never lose faith and never give up. This applies to everything in your life. And it applies to every principal that one chooses to believe in. If something is worth believing in, it is also worth defending at all cost, no matter how mundane."

"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?" 

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."
 

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Belief

Today I am really scared that I will never become a teacher.  State wide budget cuts, teacher lay offs, deficits...it's all screaming that teaching in the near future is seemingly impossible.  So today I am trying to remind myself to believe in the voice in my heart calling me to be a teacher and listening and trusting the instincts that are mine. Instincts that know I will be a teacher. 

I can't let others fears get in the way of mine.  So these are my little reminders for today that if I just believe in my dreams then it will eventually happen.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket