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!

Gotta Love the Blindside

You just can't beat the feeling of the blindside. You all know what I'm talking about, that feeling that borders on heart attack when a certain someone enters your presence. This isn't just any someone, it's THAT someone. You can't breathe, you can't think, all you can do is stare and grab onto the nearest availiable sturdy object to keep from passing out. And when that someone enters the room without warning, you have what I call a blindside. I have a someone like that in my life, whom I will refer to as Mr. Blindside because he has a knack for doing just exactly that. You can't live with them, you can't live without them. I see him maybe...once a month and every time I do he appears so suddenly. I remember being on a trip a few months ago, we had just arrived at our destination and were settling in. The back door opens and I hear a voice. He is there, pillow and suitcase in hand, come to stay with us. I nearly died of a heart attack. The problem is that I just can't seem to shake the feeling- Mr. Blindside has been knocking me senseless for nearly two years. And I can't let go. How do you let go of the one who makes your heart beat faster, the person you can't seem to live without? What if you have to let go? What if there is no other option? I try time and time again to redirect my focus, to concentrate on someone or something else. I cannot. When he is near, he consumes me. Then there are the times when I am literally living with him for days, even a week at a time- that's hard. When he is there 24/7- breakfast, lunch and dinner, night and day. This makes it difficult to breathe. They say that the things you want most are the things you can't have. They were right. You gotta love the blindside.

Jumping on the bandwagon

So maybe I'm a poet...and I didn't know it. Inspired by scores of interesting, inspiring,sometimes hilarious poetry on other blogs, (cough cough... Congdons) I have decided to make my return to the poetry world. I wrote this one a few months back... it is unfinished, still in need of working (There SHOULD be a stanza break every four lines, sorry).

Hope Beyond Reason

How can I make them understand

These miscreants, the unwashed masses

Walking dead without the light of life

Forever unable to comprehend_

Desperation breeds empty life

Disillusioned, void of passion

Deceased souls, hearts a vacuum

A gaping hole, forever unfilled_

I cry out, no one hears me

My soul speaks volumes

The world weeps as silently

I keep the vigil_

These hallowed halls, devoid of hope

As the dead hurry toward their destruction

Never realizing, never waking

To live beyond the moment_

Caught in the rush, lost in the battle

A challenge to assume my position

Again I fail to stand my ground

By the power of the One who won't yield_

The planet pulls me one way

My heart another, as I run the race

Faintly distinctly, I hear the call

The voice of the One and Only_

A silent prayer, in words so loud

By one who wishes to be bold

With fear and ever present doubt

Tearing at the words_

How I long for these souls to know

The treasure of life

More precious than riches,power,fame

A hope beyond all reason_

One day the darkness will hide

As hope returns, the world beyond darkness

Where death and decay can have no hold

As dead men walking return to life