Happy Birthday!!

to my bestest buddy Shannon!!



(technically it was yesterday, but I know you love me anyway.)

BTS!

I'm not ready!! Too late...my first day included a class of 24 (I have 24 seats, so full house). Four girls...20 boys. Freshman boys.

Most of my attention was directed towards maintaining order. Which is rather hard to do when you're busy biting your lip to keep from laughing. Silly boys.


And where did summer go, anyway?

5 Years Ago

Do any of you journal? I used to keep a journal, the only place I could jot down my thoughts on a regular basis and free my mind. Since I picked up blogging, I don't journal. But while I was cleaning out some magazines this morning, I ran across my journal from 5 years ago. It has a list of To-Do's for each room of the house...things to paint, refurbish, buy, etc. Almost none of those lists were ever completed.

The pages where I jotted my thoughts are gone...ripped out, although I don't remember when that happened. 5 years ago this week, I shared too much with a friend, who shared too much in return. And instead of dealing with the fallout, I decided to walk away for a while. We haven't spoken since.

I tried conjoling, teasing, joking, pleading. This had to be attempted entirely online since he refused my phone calls. I seriously considered actual begging. In person. But the logisitics of it all weren't in my favor. The ocean was a problem.


So I waited. Waited for a phone call, an email, a letter. Waited for forgiveness, which never came. Meantime, I journaled my thoughts. At some point, they must have been painful to re-read...thus the ripping and removing.

Five years ago, I sent an apology fruit basket (don't laugh yet, it gets better). All the way from Scotland filled with exotic fruits & nuts, obnoxiously large and extravagant. It was intended as a joke, but also a plea.
One month later I received a notice in the mail that I had a package too large to deliver. Filled with ominous foreboding (hehe, that's me being literary) I went to my tiny local P.O. to sign for my package. A 3 x 3 foot box was hauled out, it's corners stained and leaky. From the UK.

Mortified I signed for it and raced (as fast as you can race with a 3 x 3 leaking box) out to my little 2-door car. The box wouldn't fit. I couldn't wedge it in the back seat, and I couldn't fit it in the miniscule trunk. Meanwhile, I had gathered quite a crowd of observers because it's not every day someone in my little town receives a package from o'er the pond...not to mention one that was apparently VERY INTERESTING.

I squished it as much as possible and got the trunk closed, thankfully able to rush home. But dare I open it? Obviously, it reeked. I can't imagine how it ever got through customs. Inside the box was a sad, once-extravagant, exotic fruit basket. Bow now limp, fruit now mush, nuts intact.

Of course I didn't hesitate to paw through the smelly mess hoping for a letter, a note...but no. Nothing. Just the basket. I actually enjoy this story now, although at the time I thought it possible my heart would never be pieced back together.
I felt so much frustration because we weren't communicating. With time and distance, I can now see the dialogue I refused to see then. Because we were definitely having a conversation when I sent the large tub of fruit, and he in turn sent it to me. It just wasn't what I wanted to hear.

Five years ago, on our birthday, I sent a funny card. It had been picked up long before the email that ended all emails. When I mailed it, I didn't include a return address so there was no way to return it to me. Victory! (Shut up! He did too read it!)

You see, we share a birthday. Just one of those coincidental, odd trivialities that once was a blessing("HA! Now you can never say you forgot my birthday!") and became a sort of curse. Because it's true...I've never forgotten.

This week I lost a favorite girlfriend (who turned out to not be much of a friend at all.) It wasn't as painful as 5 years ago, but maybe I'm numb. I've learned enough in the past 5 years about friends and people to know that...people aren't always who they seem. I don't know if that makes me wiser or jaded.

But you know what? I have a whole lot of friends left. And maybe it's true that your heart has to break a little to grow. Not to get all mushy or anything, but I'm thankful for all of you. For distracting me from my troubles, for making me laugh, for emailng to check when I'm absent, for passing the bottle when I need it (and even when I don't. you know who you are).

I ♥ my girlfriends!

The payoff if you made it to the end of this extremely long and non-sew-isty post was, of course, the LURV.

Fly-By

Ok, back to school cra-,erm, stuff is kicking my butt. I haven't gotten to work on my wardrobe at all.

If I was a nail biter, I'd be chewed up by now. Lurker1 : "Will she finish?" Lurker2: "Finish? You moron. Will she start?"

me: "Oh, shut up."

And...my fabric is prewashed, so there. Well, OK. Not ALL my fabric. But my first piece! I'll be laying out and cutting tonight because I've nothing better to do. And it's the perfect Olympics watching activity.

Did you see this?


I missed viewing in real time by 4 STINKING MINUTES. But the replay video over at NBC is every bit as exciting as the real thing. Oh, ok, maybe not as the real thing but it's close.

I've developed a bit of a phan-girly crush on Mr. Phelps. And the fact that he calls Dara Torres (who's a whopping 4 years old than me) "Mom" diminishes the phan-girl not at all.

Here's a shoutout to my girl Tamara, who's been lurking, and who I will forever think of as my "Stepsister".

This is the vulgar-ist, raunchiest, wrong-est movie EVER. And we laughed our butt off. Hee.

Ugly

So you may have noticed my absence from the internet for a few days. I went to a conference last weekend, but more than that I've been avoiding all things WWW because of this:


I love me a good vampire read, and I got hooked (deep) on Twilight by Stephenie Meyer about 2 weeks ago. I've been reading nonstop for the better part of 10 days to race to the conclusion of the 4th and final book, Breaking Dawn. (roughly translated that means I've read the better part of 3000 pages in the past week.)

I was avoiding the internet (and TV! Folks this was serious!) so as not to be spoiled to the ending.

Maybe if I HAD taken time to peruse the many online sites about Breaking Dawn (or even Amazon.com) I could have saved myself a couple sleepless nights.

Breaking Dawn sucked.

I won't spoil it for you, but the only thing CLOSE to this disjointed and erratic is my own writer's notebook filled with story ideas. I've never actually read anything released that appears so rushed to publication. Plot & characterization are, frankly, missing. And to say it's hard to sit through 700+ pages of disorganized storytelling is putting it mildly.

I'm pissed. (Although now that I've allowed myself back on the net, I discover I am NOT alone in my pissery. "Legions" is being thrown around quite a lot to describe the number of irate readers. )

Having said that, however, the first will remain one of my favorite reads for its poignancy, the characters, and the magical storytelling. It's a well-known fantasy--with a twist. I highly recommend it!


On the bright side...the sewing can resume! Mini-Wardrobe countdown starts now!