A Much Needed Getaway...

Next week I'll be off to the beautiful mountains of Colorado Springs, Colorado for a little getaway at a dude ranch. Yes, I said dude ranch. Horseback riding, rappeling, hiking, and soaking in God's beautiful creation. I told a friend about this the other day and her response was "Dude ranch? Now how are you gonna handle that? Have you ever even RIDDEN a horse?" And though it has been about five years, I'm not the biggest ignorant suburbanite the world has ever known either, so I was a bit insulted. Anyway, I plan on conquering the mountains and coming home a little freer. We, the senior class are literally counting the few days left to our release from the walls of the brick prison we have known these four years. Twenty four days. What a wonder!! When the final bell rings, what will I do? Scream? Jump for joy? Dance? I imagine the end will be as anticlimactic as all the others have been, as I walk to my car at one in the afternoon two hours before the actual end of the day. In my heart stands a silent vow... don't look back. I knew nothing but pain there, and soon I'll finally be released. Our head principal resigned last week, another sign that the school is completely transformed from the place it once was. The old teachers, the few, the proud, the tenured, stand with an irrevrent knowing look in their eyes. This is not how it was meant to be. They stay for us, for if they were gone, the poor slobs that have yet to finish would have no one left. There are loopholes beyond number, but it's up to these kids to find them, if they ever have the grit in their bones to cross the lines. Personally, I have chosen to give up all hope for the future of public education, I can't fight that crusade. (who in their right mind would?) My children will be private schooled or home schooled, I couldn't begin to make them live in the hell of my upbringing. Regrets? Mine are many. But looking back knowing nothing changes the past, I know these failures have given me a strength I never knew I could have. Yet I have realized recently just how hard I have become. My heart is more twisted, bitter and cynical than those who knew me as I was will ever be able to understand. It's not a transformation I enjoy, but it's a reality. Now as I prepare to enroll in my college classes (in two weeks! hurray for honors benefits!!), I feel as I have never felt... fearful, excited, peeking over the cliff that I'm about to dive off into the rest of my life. Here's to the beginning of the end...

The Prodigal Daughter

I am a different woman now. I have changed beyond recognition, and no one seems to realize it. Reaching the age of majority was only the most obvious difference. I got my first "real" job, a thankless minimum wage drudgery, but I love it. I lost my best friend... to a higher rung on the social ladder, and I know now that our relationship can never recover. It will be many years before I can learn to truly trust again. I abandoned my plan of attending a public school close to home, in favor of small, private Christian one in another state... it was the best, most difficult decision I ever made. I've never felt "good enough" (and still don't) but I suppose they'll have to take me as I am. We lost our house in October, the only place I ever learned to call home. Thus ended a six year chapter of my life.

My heart has been broken, and slowly, I am becoming whole again. It is a slow, painful, gutwrenching process. There is so much regret, so many things I wish I could repeat and do differently. Memories of the year gone by dance around in my mind and haunt me. As I look at pictures of the good times that were, I've never wished so passionately to turn time back to a place where I was happy. If only briefly. I am the Prodigal daughter, shamed to tears, yet I know that my Father is ready for me to come home again, when I am ready. In so many ways, I've become the rogue woman I always judged so readily... I have been places I never want to be again, but at least I can now understand the others who have been to the bottom with me. My sins were, and are many. All that keeps me going now is the knowledge and promise of the future, which I call my Freedom. One day I'll leave all this and refuse to ever look back. Here's to coming back up again, the only place I have left to go. This world... has been hard on my bones.

To Delete...Or Not to Delete

Is a blog worth keeping when you realize that: a) No one reads it, and you are speaking to no one b) The blogging community is dying (slowly being replaced by oh so quick and impersonal Facebook) c) It suddenly matters whether or not people are reading ? Maybe I'm not cool enough for this online universe. But I do type faster than I write. So for now... whatever.

El Verano

I always forget how incredibly amazing this time of year is. Summer is a vacation for the soul-a time to do things you never during other months. Eating snow cones, biking across town because you feel like it, getting shaving cream smeared all over your body, diving into a lake and going tubing or wakeboarding, going on cross country road trips, vandalizing someone's house with common household items- all are fabulous things that can only really be accomplished in one season. While I wouldn't exactly call my first few weeks of break a vacation, I am having a great time. The days when I was desperate for something to do, pulling my hair out in boredom are long gone. I remember those long lazy days, and every once in a while, I miss them. Working a fifty hour week? Getting up at six every morning, weekends included? Not fun. But I am also free, and more independent than I was in the old days. Staying out and coming home when I feel like it is a fun thing. When I have a free moment (which is rare) it is a privelege to just be able to call someone up and say, "Hey, let's go do this right now" and being ready for a random time of fun. I think I am one of those people that thrives on never having a spare moment. My life has catapulted into this insane spin, and I'm not sure how, or if I want it to stop. I recognize the value of learning to be still, to appreciate life and soak the moment in. But lately, I have such a hard time being still. Like an impatient child, I am waiting to suck the marrow out of the next moment, to be fed on adventure and good times. My mom said the other night that she hasn't really seen me in weeks, except when I come home exhausted to sleep. I wonder if I'll ever have another lazy day again. Seven days, 11 hours and 12 minutes until DCLA 2006!!

Graduations...Endings...and New Beginnings

(Humming "American Pie") This will be the day that I die.... Okay, perhaps that statement is a bit exaggerated and overtly morbid, but the reality is fairly close. With four days left until our annual extended leave from WRHS penitentiary, I must say that the walls are closing in. The amount of work I still have left to do before finals is overwhelming, and the report card is not going to be pretty. But I have decided that I no longer care. Grades are so arbitrary and fleeting, and in no way are those seven letters of any importance to my future life or the scope of eternity. (Perhaps the Administration should think about this!). The seniors left us on Monday, and part of me wishes I were gone with them. School seems empty and pointless and all real learning has, at this point come to a screeching halt. It's like the calm before the stressful storm of finals that we will all weather for the next few days. I walk around school thinking, "Oh, where's ...?" and then I remember that they have gone, and except for a few parties and commencement on Sunday, I will never see them again. Thank you, class of 2006- you all have influenced my life in so many ways, and I'll never forget you. Saying goodbye is truly hard to do, but the saddest goodbye we all had to say this week was to our dear Susie. She is the choir program's acccompanist/ master musician extraordinaire and after eleven years she is leaving us. Even the most macho guys in the bass section were reduced to tears as we sang her our farewell song, secretly rehearsed just for her, on Monday night at the final concert. We also ordered white t-shirts that read 'I love Susie' in black letters which we donned before the final song. When the curtain opened to our suprise, she said "This is the best night of my life! It's just like a movie!" What a cutie. It is hard to believe that we have arrived at the wonderful days of summer, after nine months of darkness. There is nothing in the world that makes me happier right now than the knowledge that, in just a few short days, I will finally be free. It's difficult to even comprehend. What will I do with my spare time? Oh wait..it's nonexistent! Currently, I'm looking at a day job as a nanny, a possible night job as a clerk at Dillon's (if my app. is accepted), camp, DC 2006, several road trips, Summer Blast, and so much more. It will be exhausting and thoroughly amazing, I can't wait. Today, class of '07 we are SENIORS!! (can you believe that we actually survived the past 12 years of our education and are finally here??) Man, it feels good to be queen!

The World Traveler Returns...

Hola pollos! (For you non-Spanish spakers that's HEY CHICKENS!!!) I promise that this strange way to address my friends is indeed a term of endearment, not a putdown. (Insert Jena Parker quote here). Guatemala was the experience of a LIFETIME- if you have not had an opportunity to do short term missions work you absolutely must! Through ten airports (or five airports twice), three countries, three states, one ten hour delay in Dallas, sleeping on cement floors or any other place availiable, a hotel, some wonderful fresh pineapple and eight days we became experienced travelers. I had not ridden a plane in about six years, (note that's pre-9/11) since going to Los Angeles in 2000. If you think that you have never been attacked by Satan, try letting him know you're going on a mission trip. We were not even half way to KCI (at four a.m.) when the tire on one of the church vans decides to explode. On the highway. At seventy miles an hour. Not only did the tire explode, but something hit the antifreeze and that too began leaking all over the road after we had stopped. Imagine this...you are going to work on your merry way at an ungodly hour of the morning and you see twenty shivering teenagers in shorts and flip flops huddled at the top of a ditch on the side of the road. Do you stop to help? Absolutely not! So after about half an hour Mark tells us to head on down the road, about half a mile or so to the Rojo Mojo (aka red church van). Piling 22 people into a 14 passenger van was, exciting to say the least. For the remaining hour to KCI I sat half on a seat, half on the floor with four people next to me and someone's feet in my face and someone else sprawled across my lap. You want to talk about bonding?? Fast forward about nine hours. At this point the members of our team are in what we'll call the traveler's coma. I was particularly depressed because I'd just spent $10.95 on my LUNCH consisting of a sandwich and a smoothie. Although Dallas Fort Worth is, by comparison a travelers paradise when juxtaposed to KCI, NO ONE wants to spend ten hours in any airport terminal, no matter how nice. Just how did Tom Hank's character do it in that movie? So, we weary travelers see that it is finally time for our flight to arrive (praise God!), but we see no plane. An hour of anxious waiting later, we learn that due to lightning storms our plane could not land and had to return to Houston to refuel. Okay. I'm okay with another short wait....we're okay with that! Not short. Flight left at 6 pm. We get to El Salvador after a ridiculously long and boring flight in the dark. Because our flight was so late, the airline had to put us up in THE MOST AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL HOTEL EVER overnight. We ate dinner at about 11 pm- a smorgasbord of gourment El Salvadorian food, 95% of which I did not recognize- but it was so good. The pineapple in that beautiful country, and all the fruit for that matter tastes as if it just came off the tree. It was incredible. The flight to Guatemala left at 9 am the next day and we, in our day old clothes arrived safely. This experience was.... beyond description, beyond words- thoroughly wonderful. Check out this picture of this beautiful country:

The Final Sprint...

Only forty-eight more hours. My mind can concentrate on nothing else. I live for nothing but for forty-eight more hours. It is then that I will FINALLY get to leave this hell hole behind, to run away and hide myself in a foreign country several thousand miles away...for a week. I've never been so far away from home. I am beyond excited- it's euphoric. Unfortunately there are still those forty-eight hours to contend with, and I'm not sure I can survive. The walls are closing in and Andrew Fairchild has his Ipod on way too loud. I think I'm going to be sick. GET ME OUT OF HERE!!! Get me to KCI...get me to Dallas....get me to El Salvador...get me to Guatemala City- for a week that is sure to be mind blowing. And it doesn't hurt (okay it does) that the Blindside will be right there the entire time. Lord help me! Forty-eight hours. Happy Spring Break Everyone... Who's at Dimple Donuts on Friday at midnight? I'm there!