Slacker

A tree stood just outside my apartment.  It was pretty big considering the trees we get around here.  But it was beautiful.  The trees were green and the leaves were spaced apart just right... kind of reminded me of The Lion King I guess.  I wanted to draw it, and I kept telling myself that I was going to as soon as I had some extra time.  But even if I had extra time, I'd put if off.  I'd make excuses.  Such as the light's not right or I'm too tired or I want ice cream.  Grant it, some of the excuses were good like Penny hasn't been on a walk in a while or I should clean my apartment.  But I never got to draw the tree.  The people who own the property next to my apartment took it down.  And the tree was so pretty too!  I didn't even take a picture.

So I've decided to do a lot more for myself, especially since everyone's going back to school.  If I leave my life to work, sleep, and Star Trek I will go insane... or at lease burn out.  I mean there are so many creative endeavors I have planned- about six story ideas, a painting of Penny, and a chalk drawing of the lilies my landlady had planted earlier in the year.  And I should really get on those.  I don't want another thing like the tree to happen... Sadly, I'm really good at saying I'm going to do something and then never do it.  So we'll see what happens.

Papa's Chair

When I was little my grandfather was one of my biggest heros.  I wanted to be just like him.  I'd sit in the basket of the hot air balloon and pretend to be a pilot or sit on the floor of my grandpa's workshop and play with scraps of wood and spare nails just like papa.  Things that I only used at his house were assicioated with him.  For example, salami was called papa's meat.  I still call it that sometimes.  Or papa's juice, which was some kind of orange flavored drink that my grandparents got from who knows where.  But one of my favorite things I came to associate with my papa was his chair.

It was an old, ridiculously comfy recliner.  The springs were broken in just right so that I could snuggle in it comfortably whenever my grandpa wasn't in it.  I don't know if I can really describe the color... brown with just a hint of purple maybe, and it had little black dots forming some sort of pattern.  It wasn't in the best place if you wanted to watch television, but you could still see the screen alright I guess.  But it was still my favorite spot to sit.  By the time they decided it was time to get a new chair, the thing had a faint smell of a mixture of sweat and propane.  Not disgusting, but just enough to remind me that this was my papa's chair.

I just about cried when I found out they were getting rid of it.  And they were just going to throw it away too!  Grant it, it was probably time to get a new one, but they could have stored it in the basement or in my grandpa's den or something.  My mom wouldn't even let take it over to our house.  It was so devesting.  That chair represented to much.  Maybe it was the memories behind it; I don't know.  But they did manage to replace it with a nice leather recliner that is slowly getting more comfortable as time goes on.

The Lost Blog

When I copied all of my blogs over, I missed a couple because areavoices was having some sort of melt down or something, but now it seems to be up and running just fine.  Here's one about Penny that didn't get put up.  God, I forgot how cute she was when she was a puppy.

MY <3 BELONGS TO A WELSH CORGI

7-21-10
I am sitting in the dark, staying up late, and waiting for a friend to come home.  Curled up beside my thigh is a small ball of fur named Penny.  She’s asleep now, like I should be.  Her little chest moves up and down as she breaths, but other than that she’s still.  Even as I gently run my fingers down her back, she doesn’t even flinch.  Her ears aren’t perked up like when she’s awake.  Instead, they are flopping down off to the side in relaxed exhaustion.

So far Penny is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing.  She’s getting me up in the morning to feed her and walk her.  My day doesn’t end at four o’clock after I get off of work anymore.  Instead, I can go let Penny out of her kennel, run around with her outside, take her for walks, play tug of war, teach her to sit… the list goes on.  She’s so cute when she comes running up to me; I just melt.

She’s so playful, like most puppies I suppose.  But she bounces around and jumps to go like two steps to her ball.  It’s so adorable.  It’s also entertaining to watch her butt twitch when she’s excited.  It’s like she’s trying to wag the tail she doesn’t have.  Penny’s smart to.  She can already sit.  I’m so proud of her.  She can walk up and down steps.  She walks on a leash okay, and plays with Blitzen and Charlee.  It’s really fun to watch her herd them around the house.  It doesn’t work so well with that big German Shepherd though.

My mom says she hates to find out what I’ll be like when I have a baby because I keep talking about Penny like this.  I’m waiting for the exciting of a new puppy to fade and for me to be, "Oh my gosh, what did I get myself into?!"  So far she hasn’t completely destroyed anything.  I hope if she gets ahold of anything though that it’s mine and not one of my roommates.

As soon as Kelsey gets home I’ll join Penny and go to bed.  We’ll cuddle for a while until she decides she needs her space then she’ll find a cool spot on the hard floor.  Then at some point during the night I’ll wake up and she’ll be right back by my side again.  Kelsey took a picture of the two of us sleeping.  I like it.  I think there’s one of Blitzen and I like that too.

Trixie

I haven't written about my new car yet!  Ever since I was little, I've wanted a Beetle.  We went on a lot of car trips and the "slug bug" game was a favorite of mine.  Only we used to say "bug bug beetle bug no bugs back."  That's because some little kid in our family couldn't say it right.  That could have been me.  Anyway, it was one of my five dream cars, and now that dream has been made a reality... as long as I make all my car payments and it doesn't get taken away.

As you may have guessed, Sheryl broke down.  She was my first car- a grand am that was handed down to me by my mother.  Although, Sheryl never really belonged to me since my mom payed for the thing and it stayed in her name.  But my new Bug is my first real car.  It's a 2005 black one.  And I'm completely in love with it.  It makes delevery driving so much easier when I have a car that actually works.  And the gas millage doesn't hurt anything either.  It's so small I can park almost anywhere.  When I drive it feels like I'm driving in some huge bubble.  The back seat isn't very big, but my friend Sarah tells me it can seat one person quite nicely without feeling too cramped.

I went through a lot to come up with the name Trixie.  It's sort of after my favorite character from Harry Potter, Bellatrix Lestrange... but only sort of.  A friend of mine wanted me to name her Bellatrix, but I said it didn't fit.  The car just isn't totally crazy with a very strong evil side.  I went through a bunch of other names too- Zoey, Betty, Beatrice... Then one day I came up with Trixie, and I really liked it.  It eventually came down to a choice between Scooter and Trixie, but Scooter, as cute of a name as it may be, just didn't fit.  I decided later that Trixie could be short for Bellatrix.

As much as I love my car, I am worried for winter.  I can't imagine that bugs do great on ice.  A guy that came in to the Kegs one day told me to get these special tires and I should do just fine.  I also don't want to get stuck.  I mean, Trixie is pretty low to the ground.  But I love it, and I hope it lasts me a long time.  Right now I can't imagine having any other car besides a Bug for my entire life. 

Fireworks

This Fourth of July was interesting to say the least.  My day started off at seven o'clock when I opened for the first time at Jimmy John's as a PIC (person in charge).  That week we were getting ready for this huge special we were going to have on Thursday, so there was a lot that needed to get done.  And on top of that we had this gianormous truck shipment that had to be put away.  Thank god Shawn was there or I never would have got it put away on time.  I don't know how he made all of it fit, but somehow he did.  I do know that he had to take out the light bulb in the freezer to get all the bread to fit, but other than that the day went pretty smoothly.  I only made one mistake on the paperwork that was easily fixable.


After work Sarah and I went to go watch the fireworks.  I made the mistake of bringing Penny with.  That is one thing I will never attempt again.  See, last year she was just fine at the fireworks... she was also two months old and a lot easier to control.  This year she completely flipped out.  The poor thing was so scared.  Towards the end of the show, she slipped out of her collar and took off running away from the loud noises.  I took off running after her, but she was going really fast.  I've never seen her go so quick.  She must have been really freaked out.  Because it was at the end of fireworks, lots of people were already getting in their cars to go.  I was starting to panic because I thought she was going to get hit.  I'm so glad Sarah was with me.  She asked for some popcorn from some guy so that when we found Penny, who was hiding under a bush by my house, she coaxed her over with a treat.  Meanwhile, I was dealing with an asthma/panic attack- not fun.  I'm glad Penny was smart enough to run home or else we might never have found her.  After I got Penny inside and safe, we went over to Kaitlin's and she drove us around for a while in her car.  Then we went back to her place and had a bonfire.


I think I enjoyed the third more than the fourth.  The Hanson Christmas party was on the third and my mom and I drove out to Alexandria together.  We were at Phyllis and Vern's lake cabin.  I had wanted to go out to a lake so badly, and the weather was so nice that day.  I went tubing and just layed in the sun for a while.  I didn't do much swimming though.  It always takes me a while to get used to natural bodies of water... it never used to.  On our way back my mom and I stopped at a casino and I won eighty bucks.  I thought that was a pretty good deal.  It got me gas money that I desperately needed.


That night Annie, Sarah, and I went and shot off fireworks.  I had never actually done that before, so I was a bit nervous.  The only ones I could actually light were the fountain kind that I knew weren't going to blow up in my face.  There were times I panicked when ones were lit too.  I was already way far enough away before Annie would light it, but once it started going off I'd take off running more.  I'd get out about twice as far as Annie and Sarah were.  Better safe than sorry I guess, but it was still pretty funny.  The only thing I'd change is picking a different spot.  We were on a hard gravel road with lots of bumps and divets on it.  So we'd go to light something off, turns to run, trip, and then have to get up and run for our lives.


Once we ran out of fire crackers, we just sat on Annie's car and talked about whatever nonsense popped into our heads.  I got to learn a lot about Annie.  We watched to stars, even saw a couple of falling stars. I thought maybe there was a meteor shower or something that night since there were so many.  All in all it was a really good night.  I felt at peace with everything while we were just sitting there under the stars, the lake in front of us, tall grass all around while fireflies lit on and off.  I think it would be well worth it to spend the night there sometime.

The Fair

Last night I went to the county fair with a couple of friends.  I love fairs and I enjoyed myself a lot.  The past couple years I haven't been able to find people to go on all the rides with me.  And a couple of times I've had people puke on the ride with me.  But this year Sarah and Annie went on all the rides with me, and no one threw up.  Good deal.

I just think there's something magical about the fair.  And maybe it's just that it brings back childhood memories or something, but I really love everything about it.  The food.  The rides.  The lights.  The carnies.  While I was there I kept trying to write a poem about the magic of the fair, but nothing came right away and it's usually best not to force anything.

Oh, and I went through a petting zoo for the first time.  Yeah, I'm twenty one and it was my first time going through a petting zoo.  I was proud of myself though, I fed some of the animals and everything.  But a baby goat bit my thumb so I stopped that for a while.  There were some cute baby pigs with swishy tails.  I kept calling them Wilburs.

My favorite part of the fair is definitely the rides.  I love the adrenalin rush that comes with them.  Going on the ferris wheel at night is cool too, because you can look out over the whole fair grounds and see all the rides lit up and whizzing around.  When I go on the Kamakazi I always look towards the rest of the fair just as the ride flips upside down, and I get to watch the entire earth flip.  I just think it looks so cool.

Laundry Day

There is nothing I hate more than laundry day.  Maybe I wouldn't mind it so much if I had a free washer and dryer to use in my apartment that I could use every other day or so whenever I wanted.  But unfortunately I do not.  Instead I have to wait until I have a day off, which usually comes once a week, and then I drag it all over to my grandparents so I can do laundry without paying two dollars a load.  Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal if I didn't miss some weeks.  I swear, I let laundry build up until it becomes mountains.

I love Tuesdays.  They are my day off.  My day to do whatever is that I need/want to do.  Usually Tuesdays are my day to play catch up on all the things I didn't get done in the week, like laundry or just cleaning my bathroom.  Lots of times I use Tuesdays to watch the Vlogbrother videos from the week before.  I miss having three days off a week to do whatever, but with working two jobs it doesn't really work out that way.  Don't get me wrong, it's my choice to work as much as I do.  I enjoy the money, but I wouldn't mind a little more me time.

So now I'm just sitting at my grandparents waiting for my last few loads of laundry to be done.  I hate that it takes so long.  My grandma would tell me it takes so long because I pack the thing so full, but I think doing that extra load would take just as long as the way I do it.  I should time it one day.  Or get together with my friends and hold the laundry olypics.  Have races to see who can get it done the fastest or fold the neatest.  At the very least it would make laundry interesting.

Baseball, Make Way for Ducklings, and Mono

Wow, okay so talk about a writer's slump... three months since my last blog.  That's kinda bad.  On my old blog it used to bother me that there was one month missing on the side bar thing.  Now on this one there's going to be three... terrific.

So if you know anything about me at all, you know I am a Red Sox fan.  And so my birthday my mom gave me the ultimate twenty-first birthday present.  She took me on a mother/daughter trip over to Boston to see a baseball game at Fenway Park.  I could have died of happiness.  Well maybe if they had won I could have died.  And it wouldn't have hurt if the game was just a little more exciting.  I mean, they played the White Sox and all the runs were scored in the first three innings or something like that and it was seven to three.  Most borning baseball game of my life.  But it was at Fenway park.  Freaking Fenway Park!  It felt like a baseball game should be- out in the fresh air and the fans were really close up to the feild.  And the fans were amazing.  It was so much fun.

Before game day, we walked the Freedom trail, and being completely honest here I think that stuff's a little boring.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad those men did everything so that America could be independent and all, but I don't exactly need to see the buildings everything went down at or the cemetaries in which their burried.  I just don't think that sort of stuff is exciting.  My mom however, happens to be an elementary school teacher.  She works with kids in fifth grade when they learn about the revolutionary war.  She had a blast.  If anyone decides to go walk that thing, my only words of advice I have for you is to not wear Converse Chuck Taylor high tops.  You will get the worst blisters.  The trail's about three miles.

We also went to the Public Garden, which was so fun.  There's this children's book called Make Way for Ducklings, and my mom used to read it to me every Easter.  It's about these two ducks, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, who look for a place to hactch and raise their ducklings.  They eventually decide on the island on this little island inside the pond at the Public gardens.  So of course, my mom and I had to go check that out.  There are these boats with Swans on them... not real swans.  When I was a kid I thought the swans on the boat were real.  But anyway, my mom and I went for a ride on those, and we got to see little ducklings near the island that they thought were just hatched the day before.  I thought that was cool, just like the book.

At the garden, we also checked out the statues that have been put up in honor of the book.  It's of Mrs. Mallard and her eight little ducklings.  And of course I thought it would be a good idea to take one of the dorkiest tourist pictures ever.

It took forever to get that stupid picture though, cause these stupid kids kept climbing over the all the ducks.  But I thought it was cool that they put up those statues and everything.  After that my mom went to the bar that the show Cheers was based on, and both my mom and I got a little tipsy off our sourvineer drinks.

So Boston was fun.  We got back, and about a week later I end up with mono.  And believe me, that's no fun at all.  I had a 103 degree fever yesterday when I went into the emergency room, but I feel a little better now.  My throat just hurts real bad and my face looks like a balloon.  Oh yeah, and it looks like someone slugged me in the eye.  Putting it bluntly, the whole thing is a bitch.

Flashback Poetry.

Well, I could not for the life of me think of what to blog about.  I was thinking about doing a freewrite, but usually when I do those they turn out way random and no one can follow them anyway.  So I dug through some old journals and notebooks of mine and found some poems I wrote.


Here's a poem I wrote while I was busy failing my way through college.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I wrote this one during one of my classes- Humanities I think.  I was pretty sure life sucked and was pointless at the time.  This was before depression had completely taken over though and I just fantasized about letting it consume me.


I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.
Drops of regret lie in
puddles on top my pillow
as sunlight leaks in
through closed blinds-
meant to shut out the world.


How did I get this way?
Too exhausted to pull
myself out of bed.
Too logical to put
it all to a painless end.


School books lie ignored
in stacks as loads of
homework build up-
crushing me under its wait.
Weeks of laundry litter the floor
like mountains too big to climb.
Even guitars sit-
neglected in silence.


Nothing seems worth the effort.
Time feels frozen
Yet I know it passes.
It is marked by unanswered phone calls,
hunger pains, and sleep cycles.

Writer's Slump

Wow, it has been a long time since my last blog.  I tell myself sometimes that I'd like to blog at least once a week.  Maybe even a little more, like five blogs a month.  But that never seems to happen, which is sad because writing of any kind greatly reduces my stress level.  There are some stories I've got going on, but I'm kinda stuck.  I'm not sure if it's writer's block or just some serious ADD going on.  I can't get myself to sit at the computer and just write.


These are the times I miss creative writing class.  Write a poem or fail the class.  I've been told I should join a writing group, which I like that idea but a lot of times I don't feel like I'd fit in.  I feel like the people in writing groups would have so much more life experiences than me and there stories would be so much more involved.  I mostly write about depressed teenagers with social problems.


I just need to find the motivation.  I don't even know where to look for it.  Inspiration isn't the problem as of late.  I have about five or so ideas that I think would make solid short stories, maybe even something longer.  But do they exist in written form yet?  Nope, just in my head.  I'd like to be able to say that I have no time to write.  After all, I work about forty-five hours or so a week.  But I can't even do that because even though I work non-stop four days a week I am free the majority of those other three days.  So I guess the solution is to just buckle down and simply write.  Maybe even schedule it in for a while until it becomes a habit.

Snow and Game Night

I was delivery driving yesterday.  As I've said before, I really enjoy it.  But I hate driving in winter, especially when it's hard to get my car moving through snow and over ice.  Now, yesterday it really wasn't that bad out, but I sill ended up stuck in a snow bank.  The best part is though I didn't drift in there or slide in there.  I just drove right straight into it.  Why?  Because I could not for the life of me see where the road was.  There was just a bright white blanket of snow over everything and it made everything look flat instead of looking like there was a giant snow bank to my right.


The last delivery I had in my car was across the street, so I decided to run it over on foot.  That's true dedication for you, considering it was across a busy street and I had to trudge through a ditch.  But I figured I could get it there quicker than if another driver came and picked it up from me and then drove it over there.


Some co-workers, along with the help of a nice man whom I assume works for Maple View, came and shoveled/pushed me out.  It took some effort because I was on ice and my tires kept spinning.  I keep thinking about going to pick up some kitty litter or something in case this happens again.  Putting a shovel in my trunk would also be an excellent idea!  I need to get an ice scraper too because Holly broke mine.  She was using it as a shovel and it got caught under the tire.


After I got off work a couple of co-workers and I got together for game night.  It was fun, and I really hope we do it again.  If we play Pictionary again though I don't think Kristine and I will be allowed on the same team.  We were totally in sync with each other and kicked some serious butt.  I also just kept guessing stuff until I got something right.  I must have guessed hula dancer about twenty different times. Over all it was a good time.

Star Trek

Let me start off by saying (well, writing) that I do not consider myself a Trekkie in any way shape or form at this moment in my life.  It is possible I'm heading there though.  We'll see.  As most of you probably know I have been proudly calling myself a geek for years now.  I consider it a large part of who I am.  But how can I say that I'm a geek if I've never seen a single episode of Star Trek in my life?  So to maintain my title "geek" I have set out to watch not just one, but the entire set of star trek episodes.  In total there are thirty seasons.  My new years resolution, among other things, is to watch all of them by the end of 2011.  Should be a geektastic year.


It's weird that I've never watched them before.  I'm only a little ways into the original series and I already am in love with it.  I have a tendency to fall in love with cult classics though.  Any one who knows me knows I love Rocky Horror picture show.  So maybe I won't get into the other series very much, even though they're supposed to be the good ones.


I'll admit I don't understand all of it.  My brain's just starting to get used to the science fiction universe.  I mean, I can grasp the concept of Gambit and his kinetic energy abilities but when it comes to worm holes and other galaxies it takes me a while to fully understand what they're talking about.  It could also be my lack of understanding for anything scientific.  In school I never liked science or math much, at least not when it started to get kinda hard.


I'm happy I finally discovered it though after twenty-years of showing no interest what so ever, but like I said I'm not a Trekkie.  Star Trek fan/newbie?  Yes.  So there you go.

New Apartment

I finally found a new apartment, and I've spent the last two nights there even though there's no furniture in here yet.  The plan is to move all my stuff over tonight after my mom's done teaching school.  I have a couple of blankets, a pillow, some cleaning supplies, and all of Penny's stuff over here at the moment.  I've been sleeping on the floor and keeping myself entertained with Star Trek episodes online.

Penny wasn't sure what to think at first, but I think she's getting used to it.  There's a couple other dogs that live in the building too.  They're precious, like most dogs.  They bark a lot, which I don't mind but I thought it would get Penny going too.  She's been pretty good about it.  I think she's confused about where the noise is coming from, especially when it travels through the air vent.  Poor thing.

I love this apartment.  I love the location, not too far from downtown.  It's kind of a bummer that my job is all the way across town, but in the summer it will be right next to the Kegs.  It's a cute little place too.  It's a gianormous house that was turned into eight apartments.  Everybody has their own separate enterences too, so it's not like I have to go through someone's living room or something to get to my place.  It's a little small and a little old, but it's perfect for Penny and me.  I'll have to put pictures up once I get all my junk in.  It looks a little boring right now.  I can't wait to get my stuff here.  I have some cute plans for decorating.