Inside, out of love, what a laugh, I was looking for you

And so it begins.

The morning went pretty well. It wasn't as chaotic as last year and I would like to say I remained more collected. I can honestly say I am proud of the way I feel today. Last year we had never been apart and I didn't know what to expect but I feel okay this year. I'll see him as soon as we can figure out work and all that buisness. I'll talk to my boss at work and figure out how to take time off, how lenient they're going to be with me, and also, how much I'm making. I'll get my all my syllabi by Wednesday and I'll be good to go.

Mattison, Conor, and I went to see V for Vendetta last night. It was pretty good, if not a little over the top. Lots of holes and general "what the fuck" moments, but had some good points. Definitely not subtle. I like the coincidences, reminds me of huckabees a bit.

Speaking of coincidences, driving home from Ann Arbor I was feeling like shit, I had broken my ashtray, cigarette lighter and my Ipod couldn't be used, and a couple songs came on that hit a chord (har har) with my inner dork and made me feel a bit better (Ace of Base- Don't Turn Around, Edwin McCain- I could not ask for more). It's nice when the radio seems to sympathize with you.

I'm in the middle of unpacking. By middle I mean I just barely started. There's a lot to do but my family is gone for two weeks and if I don't get it done today, I can leave the whole living room a total mess. I think I'm going to at least get everything downstairs, eat dinner, go grocery shopping, get some sex and the city, paint, hot tub, and bed. It'll be theraputic. I'll go running tommorow and get some other stuff done, then dinner with my grandparents.

The key is to keep busy. It's when my mind gets quiet that I start to cry.

Hey I'm going to impale your mom with a stake and feed her to my dog with syphillis, don't worry. Inside joke.

Thank You for Smoking was pretty awesome. Aaron Eckhart did an awesome job and it was smart, funny, sexy (Eckhart and Adam Brody anyways), topical...everything a good movie should be. I approve.

I'm tired and I should be studying for my last final.

I don't want to move home. I haven't freaked out yet and I have a feeling this year I'll end up at home, watching a lot of sex and the city by myself, swaying from feeling very isolated and detached to having hysterical fits. Lots of running balanced by lots of sorbet and other sweets. What can you do?

I did some drawing the other day at starbucks and impressed myself. Maybe I'll do some more figure drawing on a budget aka creeping out people in public places while I draw them. I like to capture the motion of people. Strangers are nice because you don't know them and putting their energy into paper is spontaneous. You're not trying to put down all your preconceived notions into their expression. The sketch is your fleeting impression of that person. It's pretty rewarding.

Places to enact my drawing/stalking: Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, Tuscan perhaps. Coffee shops seem to work really well. I would wear my dark glasses to look less conspicuous, but if I'm inside I also don't want to look like a tool.

Obsessive

This is the time where I start obessesively checking my grades, say about ten times a day. I'm crazy. I hope I can bring up the GPA a bit.

It is amazing outside today.

Breaking in the birkenstocks isn't going very well. They're resisting.

About to be rid of my wretched Michelangelo paper and as of tommorow 3:00 PM, I will be done with winter 2006.

I want to go to Florence now.

Hell yes.

Winter 2007: The semester in Florence

Now that, my friends, is pissyourpants fantastic.

Summer Syllabus

Rereads: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Eggers and Blindness by Saramago
Shakespeare: As You Like it and MacBeth
Borrowed: Atonement by McEwan and Shadow and Claw by Wolfe
Nonfiction: Blink by Gladwell
New Authors, Returning favorites: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera, Raise High the Roof Beam by Salinger, Surfacing by Atwood, The Cloven Viscount and the Nonexistant Knight - Marcovaldo: Seasons in the City - finishing Numbers in the Dark by Calvino, and The Stranger by Camus.

I will be so proud of myself if I actually stick to this list. I just ordered Heartbreaking Work and Raise High from Amazon. I have so many books at home...goodness. Books are going to be my therapy this summer the seperation-induced-insanity from taking over my mind (when my friends are not available or I'm feeling too antisocial). I'm such a dork.

Still haven't really studied. Double poop scoop.

Let's just get it out.
Friday: wake up, running, paper due, seeing Mattison off to his race, dinner, packing, studying
Saturday: moving stuff home, hair cut, job appointment?, papers, studying, more packing
Sunday: running, papers, Mattison returning from race, studying
Monday: Latin final, appointment with Prof Willette, work, running etc
Tuesday: Allergy tests, 351 paper due
Wednesday: more packing
Thursday: 251 final
Friday: packing, crying, freaking out.
Saturday: Goodbye.

Yes. I'm starting to freak out. Am I really ready for another summer? Am I ready to start a new job? New classes? Moving home to an empty house?

I'm really not ready to grow up, to do all this. But maybe doing things before one believes to be ready is the way of finding your limits, or perhaps, hopefully, finding your confidence.

Whatever the answer. I'm still trying to keep the craziness under control.

Last day of classes

I realized today that all of the classes I've taken this semester have subject matter that precedes the early 17th century. Awesome. I love old stuff.

I also realized that after spring semester, I'll have 92 credits. I could graduate early if I shifted my majors, but I don't really want to do that. I wish I could minor in Latin, although I don't see that happening if I want to take Korean senior year. hm. I'll need 14 more art history credits (one junior proseminar, 3 credits 300+, various distribution), 10 more english credits (american lit), and race and ethnicity (which I think taking a lesser known language should count for aka Korean) after fall semester. Let's pretend I get 12 art history credits over study abroad, leaving 4 AH, 10 Eng, 4 RE. That's probably 2 arthistory classes, 3 english clases, one random class, 2 Korean, blaahhhrrrrggghhhhh I'm overthinking everything and not doing my work!

Basically, screw it. I'm not taking classic civ. Although it would be nice, I'd rather take Korean. So looks like senior year will be 2 AH, 3 Eng, 2 Korean, maybe Latin, maybe I'll continue Italian, and hopefully something different like film or polysci hell maybe econ or bio or philo or studio drawing or something else. I'm going to find a RE that fits into English or art history because I don't feel like honoring that requirement by taking some random extra course. Unless that course looks really cool. Stupid requirement. It's not the University's moral obligation to make me culturally diverse, especially when taking a foreign language would do that. Grrr.

This Latin final is going to kick my butt thought, I tell you.

*Especially if I don't get a grip and stop freaking out about my schedule two fucking years from now because who knows what I'll want then I hardly know what I want now!!!!*

oh man.

oh the days

I'm doing a lot better this year. I haven't completely freaked out yet and I'm hoping I can make it through without counting down the days until the move home. I guess I'm less scared than last year, since I kinda know what to expect. It doesn't give me any comfort though. I wouldn't call it depression, but I'll call it withdrawl. Maybe that's bad too, I sound obsessed or addicted. But maybe that's accurate. I'm going to be losing something I'm accustomed to having daily. I still get anxious when he's gone for a day or when I see him in the morning and don't see him again until night. I don't know if that's healthy or not. He makes me happy though, and it takes such little effort for him to make my day so much better. Love always sounds like a mix of euphoria and mental illness.

I don't feel a sense of closure coming to this year. I've had my last Shakespeare lecture, but the sense of ending hasn't hit me yet. Last year I remember feeling that things were slowly wrapping up, I knew when all the lasts where happening and when everything around home was to begin anew. This year its different. I feel that we've all spread out and my life is nothing short of chaotic. I don't know when my family is going to Gambia and I'm not looking forward to being by myself at home for the first couple weeks. I'm going to be broke, miserable, and probably pretty pathetic for at least a week or two. I think I can allow myself that. I need to get a pair of nice, extremely comfortable work shoes and to get my black pants shortened. I might have to go to my father's house for that. His birthday is in ten days and I'm not so sure how to address that issue.

I'm not forward to going home. Staying positive, I'm mapping out my summer reading. Shakespeare is up there, I'm thinking a play a month? I have to do Vergil, so my Latin will stay in tact over the summer, one hopes anyway. I have Seeing and that is number one on the list. I should read the two books Mattison let me borrow at the beginning of the year. I want to reread All the King's Men and Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but I probably should hold off. I have a few Calvino books, some Atwood, and Blink waiting to be read. Everything is Illuminated and The Unbearable Lightness of Being were supposed to be spring break reads, so I should get to those. Oh goodness. Such ambition. I doubt I'll get through all of them though, especially with my spring semester. I will be busy though, I can say that. Three jobs, Buca's for the whole summer, St. Thomas til mid June and Art 101 from there til the end of August. I might be going to Africa, I'll certainly be going to Baltimore, and who knows what else?

I'm happy thought, for the most part. At least content. I'll have time to run and get back into shape, maybe I can get Mattison to fix my bike. Who knows? Maybe I'll even patch things up with my father. People will be home for the most part, I think. I feel this summer will be spread out, much more so than last year. We're drifting apart.

I only feel time retrospectively and even then I can't gather up all these moments.

playing house

I've been housesitting for the Partin's for the last couple days. It's been going pretty well, minus the fact that their puppy is going nuts...whining a lot and just being a pain in the ass. I guess she's pretty new to the family and is probably wondering what the hell is going on, but she's really rather annoying. I love Sika, she's the cutest dog ever. She looks like a friendly wolf and is so warm and cuddly. I like being here at the house, I've been eating good food, lots of tasty salads mmmm and the extra space is nice. I'm really excited to live in a house next year. I need to learn how to cook.

It's been a good day. Classes were good, although Shakespeare is over and I'm sad to leave it. I really liked the plays we read and I'm going to try to make myself read the rest of the Henry tetralogy, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Comedy of Errors, and maybe some of the romances. I think I like his tragedies the best, I really like Hamlet but the Tempest is up there. Work was good too, they were crazy but it's a pretty nice job. I had a pretty good dinner of gyoza and edamame, although I usually don't like the dumplings nearly as much as I think I will. I don't think soy sauce makes the best companion. I've already done my Latin, I'm working on the little bit of homework I have for tommorow, and I'm in a pretty good mood. I made chocolate covered strawberries and Mattison is coming over to watch Memoirs of a Geisha soon.

This article http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1747821,00.html, well not the article, the the data made me a little upset. How does Pride and Prejudice make you feel glad to be a woman? How in the hell does Handmaid's Tale, while it is one of my favorite books, probably one of my top three, make you feel *glad* to be a woman? Handmaid's Tale made me upset about being a woman. Maybe it just changed the way the women in the poll saw themselves. The books on the men's list I liked a lot, although I wholeheartedly do not agree that they are simply coming of age tales or angsty. Catch-22 is one of the best books and I think speaks to all generations. I guess I've only read 11 out of 20 of them, maybe I can't say for sure. I don't know. ugh. The women's list kinda makes me want to gag. Mostly because I hate Jane Austen. Or at least I abhorred Pride and Prejudice. Or at least I remember detesting Pride and Prejudice and watching the BBC series, of which the only redeeming part was getting to watch Colin Firth. Either way, I have no interest in reading any of her books ever again.

Top three books (Alphabetical, not by preference)
All the Names, Catch-22, The Handmaid's Tale

The rest of the top ten (not by preference)
Sophie's World, The Solitaire Mystery, Invisible Cities, The Blind Assassin, Franny and Zooey (I think I actually like this better than Catcher...), If on a winter's night a traveler, and Blindness.

I would like to put up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but I don't remember it all that well. I guess you can say I like Saramago, Atwood, Calvino, and Gaarder. I like that none of them are American or British (Portugese, Canadian, Italian, and Swedish). I should expand my horizons better.

strange dreams and sundays

It's already Sunday April 9th. That means I have nineteen days left until I absolutely have to go home. Where has all the time gone?

Yesterday was pretty wonderful. I got up early to get bagels and take Mattison to his race at Western. It was a really nice day and I enjoyed seeing/ meeting all of the team. It went off pretty well, there were some crashes, but Scott took first in A's and everyone else did well. I think there were three top tens in B's. Mattison did well in his first A race, a long one (82 miles) through lots of wind. They're doing a shorter one today at Western. I took lots of pictures and chatted with the spectators, mostly parents and grandparents.

Came back to AA with grand ambitions of finishing work, but ended up eating dinner with Brett, playing raquetball (which is awesome), and watching undeclared with Colin and some of their friends. Good times. I start housesitting today so I'll be able to get some yummy groceries, unfortunately their oven is broke, which limits my cooking possibilities. I do have a lot of work to do today, finish the Tempest, lots and lots and lots of Latin, and finishing my Michelangelo rough draft. Double poop scoop.

But it's nice out and I don't feel like I have a whole lot to worry about right now. I've got my friends, two jobs lined up for the summer, the best mom ever, a car that works (mostly), and a most handsome boyfriend. Oh, and good music. Lots of really good music. I'm addicted to the Go! team's Bottle Rocket, I heart Band of Horses, Jenny Lewis' voice is addicting, and I'm still hopelessly devoted to Broken Social Scene. It's a way to feel good.

And the insanely expensive nosespray I bought actually has been helping. Woohoo!