Here Am I

Warning: What follows is the first post of what will probably be an increasing trend. In the last 10 days, I have become obsessed with my field of study, and I have started applying things I'm learning about to everything I see. Yes, I'm aware that it is beyond nerdy.
In my School Counseling Services class tonight, we had to write what is known as an "I Am" poem. We were given a template of thoughts to complete, and we were able to learn a great deal about ourselves and each other just from reading this short poem. I thought it was the coolest thing, so I thought I would share mine with you.



I am a bookworm who can't wait to fall in love
I wonder how the Postal Service gets the mail sorted so quickly
I hear the soundtrack of my life as I walk down the sidewalk
I see photographs of myself in exotic locations
I want to experience a "movie moment"
I am a bookworm who can't wait to fall in love

I pretend that I am starring in a Broadway musical
I feel ecstatic when I am in the presence of my best friends
I touch freedom when the wind blows my hair
I worry that I will never find what I'm looking for
I cry at weddings because I miss my dad
I am a bookworm who can't wait to fall in love

I understand answers to prayer don't always materialize immediately
I say that God won't give me anything I can't handle
I dream of the future
I try not to be so hard on myself
I hope the people I love know how much they mean to me
I am a bookworm who can't wait to fall in love

'Tis the Season

This weekend marked the official start of Wedding Season III for Heritage Academy's Class of 2003. Save up your days off. Get your best frocks ready. Have your camera batteries fully charged. The next 10 months are going to be wild.

I can't wait.
We kicked it off yesterday with a kitchen shower for Katie, and it was so great to get to see so many faces... even though it was pouring down rain! I actually think I totally neglected my hostess duties in favor of catching up and laughing with some of my favorite ladies.

Next up was Patrick's engagement party. I had the greatest time catching up with him and meeting his precious fiancee. I can only imagine what it must be like to be an eighth grade science student in Patrick's classroom. Oh, to be a fly on the wall...

Last but certainly not least I headed to Tori's camphouse for Hope's bachelorette/lingerie party. I had the greatest time laughing and telling crazy stories with some of my oldest (we're talking longevity here, not age...) friends, and I was so glad to be included in such a fun night. It was worth it just to see Hope's reaction to Suzy's racy gift!

The weekend got me really excited about the coming months, and I'm so looking forward to the parties, showers and, of course, weddings heading my way. Let's be honest, we're a pretty fun group. And in case you were wondering, every moment will be well-documented by yours truly.

You know I wouldn't leave you hanging.

Time Starts Now

As we speak, a monumental occasion is taking place in my life. It is a Friday night, and I am at home studying. Okay, maybe it's not actually taking place "as we speak," but you get the idea. Even more shocking, I'm okay with it.
I know, right... I'm not too sure who I am either.
This week has been one filled with highs and lows. I've fallen in love with my major and future possibilities that lie before me in my field, but I've also had to come to terms with the fact that I will have to make sacrifices to achieve the goals I want so much to reach. I've settled into a routine in my apartment and enjoyed having my own space for the first time, but I've been blindsided by the loneliness that crept in when I was least expecting it. Everywhere I look I see recollections of "how things used to be," except that there now exists a whole new cast of characters. Other people are living my memories, and I'm left feeling a little disoriented. I'm already taking steps toward the future, but I know it will take me a little while to keep from looking over my shoulder hoping to see my memories come to life behind me.
I must admit, these past few days, I have painfully missed the people who made Starkville so great the first time around. I wish they were here with me tonight. The friends I have here are wonderful, and I am so very thankful to have them (I have to be... they keep me at least marginally young), but I miss my OLD friends. The ones who were here with me five years ago when Gavin DeGraw performed here for the first time. The ones who still remember when Mugshots was the Courthouse Grill. The ones who remember that one great semester at the Hunt Club. The ones who have t-shirts from parties before 2006 (or, God forbid, before 2004...). The ones who remember the Pub. I don't necessarily miss these things; I just miss the people who were around for these things.
Growing up sucks.
To provide the icing on the proverbial cake this week, I came to terms with a situation that has been plaguing me for about the past year. After hours and hours, months and months of debating and soul-searching, excuse-making and daydreaming, I finally laid it to rest. Do you ever have situations in your life that, as much as you want them to work out a certain way, you just know will never turn out the way you hope? That's the case in point here, and I think I've finally reached. Free of anger, sadness, distorted reality, malice or apprehension, I simply know what has to be done, and, more importantly, I'm ready to do it. I do not fool myself into thinking it will be easy, but I have been praying about it a great deal, and I know that God will bring me through it.
I apologize for the slight Debbie Downer, Negative Nancy vibe that some readers might pick up from this post. You know some of the stigmas that go along with graduate students... philosophical and overly self-involved... looks like I'm fitting in fine...

The World This Week

So... It's been a little while since my last post, and lots has been going on. (I know you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats, right?)
I finally made the much-anticipated, highly overhyped move to Starkville, and I adore my apartment. I would be hard-pressed to say what I love most about it. The back patio has taken an early lead, but I love my bedroom an awful lot, too... As I have told several of you in the past week, if you can't find me at any point over the next two years, I am probably sitting at my apartment reveling in how much I love the place.
Along with the new apartment, I have had several firsts. The activations of both the cable and the power/water were interesting experiences to say the least. I have also had my first grocery trip (which cost far more than I ever imagined, and undoubtedly I will not finish the jar of mayonnaise I bought until sometime in May). I've already had a number of friends come and hang out, and I look forward to the visits of others as football season gets started up.
I have loved being back in Starkville these past few days and falling in love with the place all over again, although I am seemingly seventy-five years old and know practically no one here anymore. (Another reason I am probably extra excited about football season.) I've had several low-key nights out, as well as a few crazy nights (shocking, I know.)
Yesterday, however, I started school, and everything changed. For all those people who say graduate school is not that hard and that's it not that different from undergrad, consider yourselves lucky. Today was my second day of classes, and I studied for 2 hours today. 2 hours!! After the second day of classes!! Even though I was caught a little offgaurd by the humongous workload I will be carrying this semester, I really could not be happier. I really think this is what I'm meant to do; I was absolutely enthralled through two of my classes, and I'm so excited about getting further into them.
I know, I know... I'm a geek to the core.
Let me pause while I push my glasses up on my nose.
Aside from the piling on of work, there was one other thing I experienced in my first two days of class for which I was totally unprepared. Seeing as I lived on campus all four years of my undergraduate career, yesterday was my first day ever to commute onto campus. Quite frankly, it sucked. Like, it REALLY sucked. While I endlessly circled around the parking lot with my eyes pealed for a parking place, I have never missed Walter and the Gray Route more. Not only was that a place where some of the most important social networking of my college career took place, but apparently it was also a four-wheeled gift from God.
All in all, the past week has been great. I could not be more excited to be back in Starkville, to be back with my precious friends who are here (though they may be few in number, they are some of my favorites), to be back at Mississippi State, to be in my fabulous apartment and to feel so great about what I'm beginning. I can't promise you won't occasionally hear me whining about how much reading I have to do... but I am going to try to keep it to a minimum, though.
I'm really going to try...
Really...

No Distance Too Far

All of a sudden, it feels like everything is changing. I've been hoping, praying, wishing and waiting for it all to happen for so long, and now it finally is. Parts of it are fantastic,... but parts are bittersweet.

I found out yesterday that Bailey got a job and is moving to Washington, DC in three weeks. While we were in college, I got used to not seeing her as much as I would like, and looked forward to road trips between Starkville and Auburn. Since January, however, she's been back in Columbus, and our weekly lunch dates are always one of the highlights of my week. It's been so great to make up for just a little bit of that lost time. From the time that she and Sage got engaged, I have loved getting to hear about all of the wedding updates and the things that are changing in their lives. Our weekly meetings will quickly come to a close, and, although I could not be happier for this new opportunity in her life, I will miss our time together.

On Monday, Nick and I drove a U-Haul filled with furniture from my grandmother's house in south Mississippi to Starkville. (It was quite an adventure, let me assure you. If Nick and I weren't already going to be friends forever, I think that day sealed the deal.) During that time, we talked a lot about friends we have lost touch with and the way our lives have changed, especially over the past year or so. It's just so much harder to keep in touch with friends when you add in the factors of jobs, serious boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses, running a household and, the one that seems to plague me most, DISTANCE. I wish I could stumble onto a bag filled with nothing but plane tickets that have no expiration date. What a dream that would be...

As I look toward the few remaining days before my final move to Starkville, I think of a few things I am going to make a conscious effort to include in my life. I almost look at this transition as worthy of New Year's resolutions, as ridiculous as that may sound. (Yes, I am one of those people who, year after year, makes resolutions to do things differently. If you know me well, that should come as no surprise.) One of New School Year resolutions for 2008 is to keep in better touch with my friends, who mean the absolute world to me. Be it through e-mail, telephone calls, facebook, g-chat or, my very favorite form of communication, however archaic and Pony Express-like it may be, handwritten notes. Quite often, the things for which I have to work the hardest are the things that come to mean the most to me in the end. For my friends, for the people I love, I'm willing to work as hard as I have to.

Just FYI: the picture featured in this post is of Bailey and I during our senior year of high school. We were at the cast party for "Footloose: The Musical" (no, I didn't generally wear blue eyeshadow, gigantic hoop earrings or side-ponytails), and I believe we frequently snuck outside during this party to drink red wine coolers. As you can see, we were the epitome of cool.

Never a Dull Moment

As many of you know, I have a special knack for getting myself into situations that can only be described as "wrong place at the wrong time." Just to update everyone: it is a fact that some things in life NEVER CHANGE.

I took my car to the shop today to get an oil change, etc. and left it there while my mom and I went to Tuscaloosa to play for the afternoon. We got back into town about 8:30, and I wanted to run into Old Navy (which is right across the street from the place we left my car) before we went to pick up my car. So far, so good.

I was not in Old Navy more than about 25 minutes, but when I came out I could hear a really loud alarm going off in one of the surrounding buildings. Neither my mom nor I could figure out exactly which building the alarm was coming from, so we headed across the street to get my car. As we pulled into the parking lot of the car place (exquisite terminology, huh?), it became glaringly obvious that the blaring alarm was coming from this very business.

Of course, my mom freaks out, believing that a team of squad cars will come barreling into the parking lot at any second, and pulls back out of the parking lot and into the Taco Bell across the street. We proceed to pull into a parking place angled toward the car place, I guess so that we could have a prime vantage point for our Miami Vice-like stakeout of the impending action sure to go down... or something like that.

Suddenly, the alarm stops just as unexpectedly as it began.

We pull out of the Taco Bell and back into the parking lot of the car place. Everything looks normal. I get in my car, adjust my seat and start the car. I'm just looking into my rear view mirror to back up when a pair of unfamiliar headlights sweep over my shoulder, and a blue light flashes behind me. Just great.

One of Columbus' finest pulls up right beside me and rolls down his window; I'm expecting him to ask me just what in the hell I think I'm doing, and where exactly do I think I'm going. By some stroke of providence, he manages to understand that I'm simply there to pick up my car, and I have no connection to the insanity that is the alarm. As I drove out of the parking lot, I could see him "checking the perimeter" of the building and brandishing his flashlight at all suspicious shadows.

All in all, this was one of my luckier scrapes, and it was actually pretty funny. Only I could make something as mundane as getting the oil changed in my car into an adventure involving the police. If asked to make a list of adjectives to describe my life, dull wouldn't even be one to consider.