Morning

This is the earliest I have been awake since school and I am NOT happy about it.

I woke up and went to the bathroom. I accidentally dropped the soap dispenser in the garbage can. I don't know what the hell was in the garbage/on the dispenser but I went back to bed and rubbed my eye. Then I got this awful, chemical burning sensation and my vision in that eye went so I tried flushing it with water but that hurt more. So I flushed it with this eye cleanser stuff we have and it stopped burning but now it still hurts to blink.

So I'm awake an hour and a half earlier than I needed to be. Luckily I don't feel that tired, I'll just end up going to bed super early.

On the plus side, a bunny just built a nest right by my mom's garden. I'm excited for baby bunnies to be running around!

Partying?

I think I'm headed out tonight and I feel a bit odd about it. It's not that I have a problem with drinking necessarily, I just worry about getting caught. The consequences in the state of Wisconsin really suck. I want to have fun this weekend (especially since it's the last weekend of the semester and I haven't partied at all yet) but I really don't want a $250 ticket. O well im off... Wish me luck.

"The voices expressed here reveal the transformative and re-creative abilities of being female, of being changing women."

from Sister Nations, a book we're reading in American Indian Literature.

Thought I'd share with you wonderful women. <3 :)

Everybody look left, everybody look right, anywhere you look I'm standin spotlight!

Oh I just can't wait to be kiiiiiing.

I'm in a really Disney mood today! This may have to do with coloring books yesterday.

I had something really embarrassing happen at work on Monday, but then (with the help of my coworker) I realized that it doesn't matter what other people think! And so I've been having a sassy, self esteem filled couple days. And I'm better friends with that coworker now too, ironically.

The lovely weather probably helps as well. So yes, I think things are looking up a bit. ^_^

"lazy sunday,

...wake up in the late afternooooon..."*

hey girls. I decided to blog here instead of reading this painful book for anthropology. I have been so unmotivated to do homework lately, it is not even funny. I'm kind of impatient with everything lately, really. Oh well. I'm meeting with my adviser soon to discuss my schedule for next year. Hopefully if everything works out I'll have some classes for fall semester that are more challenging and interesting. I think that'd help.

I went to a cardio boxing class with Nicole and Claire on Friday! It was super fun. I could hardly breathe about 20 minutes into the hour+ class. :D

Besides that, nothing much is going on. It snowed last night but it's kind of sunny and slightly warm this morning, so most of it is melting. We're watching a lot of movies and episodes of Criminal Minds; I've ordered a few awesome movies for cheap from amazon (one for my dad's birthday coming up)...I'm spending too much money though. Ugh. I need a job.

Oh, and the cafe I'm posting from (I refrained from buying anything this time though!! be proud!) is playing music that reminds me of Amelie. So that helps a bit.

Hope you both are doing well. :)


*bonus points if you know what this is from.

Sleep or Lack There Of

I've had real quantifiable sleep issues this semester. I really don't know what it is. I just get really obsessed about getting my 8 hours of sleep and then I start to count the time and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Tonight I'm just thinking too much. I think it's because jon and I had a disagreement and than we definitely completely resolved it but my brain is rather buzzing. I just could really do with a good enthusiastic conversation. Which probably wouldn't solve the problem but at least than my brain would stop buzzing..... I should probably just lie in bed with my eyes closed til I fall asleep....

Rawr.... Sorry this is so scattered I just haven't been sleeping well for a while which leads to severe crankiness and my brain definitely not working properly.

O well.... here goes nothing....

:)

CONGRATULATIONS KATIE <3

all grown up. :)
or, y'know, mostly. ^_^

Lack of Blogging

I am deeply saddened by how long the three of us have gone without posting significantly on the this blog. I guess we've all just been busy or preoccupied or I don't know what. But it definitely makes me sad. I know I'm also to blame but I'm not really the blogger type. Both of you to are infinitely more prolific than I am.

But I guess since I have not posted on this blog in a long while I should do a brief update on my life.

I shall start with the physical stuff and this section will be brief as I have a whole other blog devoted to that. But anyway, my fever is finally going down, now I'm not all the way back to my 97 normalcy but I haven't been in the 99s for a couple of days. Also, my new doctor is excellent, for more about that go to collegiately disabled. Also, excellently, I have been getting to the gym frequently and hopefully that will also help with my pain management.

In other excellent news, my social life is definitely improving. I absolutely love Kristin and Arielle. I haven't connected with anyone this deeply or quickly since I meet you two. Last week Arielle and spent hours on several different days gabbing and I really could just talk to that girl all day. I love it. I really missed having friends where there is nothing I am afraid of telling them.

They most certainly can't replace you guys but at least I have someone to talk to so I have stopped living in my room and only eating alone.

<3 s

just saying, I love you two. :)

Urgent Care

What an adventure.

So Friday night Reid started feeling a little sick. Saturday he got a fever. Sunday he was burning up, had a sore throat and stuffy nose, had sore legs (wtf kind of symptom is that. What good does it do the virus to make your legs sore?) and was getting nauseous. So I decided to go get him some chicken soup and cough drops and pick up a thermometer. Then we found out he had a fever of 102. So we called his parents and they said urgent care would be covered so off we went.

It was weird, that was the nicest, most caring doctor I've ever met in my life. She brought him gatorade and graham crackers, gave him a shot for the migraine, and offered stuff for the nausea too. She had him stay there and lay down so she could make sure whatever she gave him worked. She actually acted like she cared, I was shocked.

So apparently it's super contagious so he was banned from classes for a few days anyway, so his parents came and picked him up so he could rest at home for a few days. So I'm Reidless for a couple days. :(

I guess I should probably work on making more female friends...

teehee

Guess what came on iTunes shuffle today while cleaning my dorm room?

"Overrated!"
"Overblown!"

It made me think of you. ^_^

also, you girls might like this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29107616/displaymode/1107/s/2

My turn!

Hello again, ladies and gentlemen.

I have four job interviews this weekend. The first one is at the Wisconsin Humane Society Wildlife Rehabilitation Center on Friday. The second at the Wildlife in Need Center in Oconomowoc on Saturday. Then two at the Racine Zoo on Sunday. Holy lord.

I'm really hoping they go well.

Things have been pretty good lately. Working a lot, reading a lot for classes. Feeling kind of lazy today. Ah well.

We're growing up....

Common Decency

It's surprising how much I can hear about people and still not lose my faith.

Despite everything I have been told and everything I know, I still assume people are decent when I meet them. It takes significant evidence to prove to me that someone is not a kind person... I'm way too trusting and I don't understand why. My trust has been betrayed again and again, yet somehow I still assume that people have other best interests at heart.

What will it take? I know people who have been abused, I know people who have been raped. What will it take to make me stop blindly trusting the people I meet?

Will it get me in big trouble at some point in my life?

練習中文

I haven't posted to this one in awhile!

I have to put away laundry and practice and shower so it's going to be short, but I just wanted to share this. Our Chinese teacher passed around a list yesterday for us to put our emails on in case we wanted to be partnered with an international student from China so that they could help us learn Chinese and we could help them learn English. I of course signed up even though speaking the language makes me nervous (got to get over that sometime, heeee ^_^;). I got an email from a Chinese student already! We are just coordinating schedules to see when we can meet but wow I am excited and nervous. It doesn't help my confidence levels that all the international students' command of English is already amazing by the time they get here whereas I am just starting second semester Chinese... but I think this will be really cool. :)

I also started reading Iron & Silk, the one recommended in a previous comment on this blog, and it's a really good book so far (I'm about halfway). Excellent suggestion. :)

oh yeah, and happy valentine's day to you two girls. enjoy. <3

An interesting weekend.

Well, this weekend was interesting.

Thursday: Reid's birthday. Made him a cake, went out to get mexican for dinner.
Friday: I don't remember to be honest. I think just chilled in Reid's room. Some time after midnight we hear a ton of sirens and some guy walking down the hall swearing. We figured someone got arrested and went back to sleep. I thought about going into the hall and asking them to be quieter.
Saturday: We went to Oshkosh to celebrate Reid's birthday with his parents. Then we got a text from David saying that some kid from Thomson (Reid's dorm) died friday night by falling down the stairs. That's right, the stairs right by Reid's room.

So it has been pretty unsettling. We even saw his roommate (a guy in several of my classes) moving out his loft and stuff, we thought at the time he was just moving. But now he has a single room.

It makes you feel really mortal. That guy had no idea it was his last day. Treated it like a normal day. Spent $5000 towards a career he will never get to be a part of. Got drunk just to have fun like a normal weekend. Probably didn't even talk to his family that day. And dear god, his family. How sudden. He died in the hospital so I'm hoping they had time to get here...

It makes you think what if. What if that were me? Reid? David? Any of my friends? How many people would that affect? How would I feel?

And there's no record of it. Even though I didn't know him, I want to buy him flowers and put them in the stairwell. I feel like it's disrespectful to just keep going. Life doesn't stop for everyone just because it does for one person. The first time I realized that was back when Jack Doyle died. I took a walk and saw all of the people driving or walking their dogs and the sun shining and it just seemed so wrong. They didn't know, they couldn't care. It makes you wonder, what is that person you pass on the street going through at the time?

Moral of the story: You never know.

Sunday: Got to fly in an airplane. Reid's pastor is part of a club that owns a little 4 seater, so we flew from oshkosh to fond du lac and back. Reid and his brother Preston got to fly it. It was amazing! Helped bring the mood up a lot.

Animals have feelings too

I thought you two (especially Katie) would appreciate this link.

Bird Love

I'm sad no one's online. I really want to talk about my weekend... o well. I hope it means y'all are off having fun.

Well I had like a mini-party in my room which was exciting because I don't think I ever had any friends in my room first semester. And tonight there were like 8 of us which was nice. It's funny because by the time it ended it was me and 4 guys.... weird considering I never had many guys friends in high school.

All in all a very fun day. I need to have more weekends like this one.

Awkwardly Honest = Friends?

In the last weekend-beginning of this week I have had two awkwardly honest conversations about my social life. Both times the two people have been wonderfully nice about it and offered to be my people. I'm just hoping it actually goes some where. I'm chilling with both of them Friday and I really hope that will just be the first of many.

So this leaves me wondering.... is an awkward degree of openness required to start a friendship?

Excerpt I wrote for my philosophy discussion

I believe that anything with consciousness, that is the ability to think and process, has a soul. Basically, humans and animals. I believe there are two fundamental differences.

Soul- A drop of water in an ocean. The deep part of our self that is linked to everyone else. What is eternal, potentionally recycled/reborn. Potentially, the 'ocean' is what we sense that makes us believe, deeply, that there could be a god/gods, something higher than us. We are aware of it on a subconcious level, making us mold it into our seperate diety beliefs on a concious level.

Spirit- The personality or individual. I believe your spirit can connect to other people's spirits, and everyone you interact with connects to yours on at least a very basic level. Some people are called "free spirited" which I think means embraces those connections but is not tied down or trapped by them. They don't feel obligated to stay connected to people that could make them "down spirited" which is, simply put, feeling like your spirit is tied down.

Because of the basic human connection, when you have two spirits that are close, people do things like say the same thing at the same time or 'sense' what the other person is feeling.

Some people have very tied down spirits and therefore reject the soul concept. They like to deny the fact that they are connected to other people, especially if they were negatively affected throughout their lives.

Everything cycles from matter to energy and energy to matter. If this energy is part of the soul cycle, then everything could potentially have a 'soul' on a scientific level. I believe it is only the living, animate creatures that are a part of the thinking collective soul and consciousness.

that's awfully needy

The frustration streak continues!!

Also, I have no idea how this works, but I ended up eating just dinner at 430 today (and some dry cheerios in a box/half an apple in the morning), but I am having an 'I do not feel cute or little in the slightest' day today. I feel crazy self-critical and squishy and out of shape. (It's tough going from a shaolin workout 4 out of 7 days a week - now it's been 4 days without one.) And, cultural anthropology is three hours too long and on the other side of the Mississippi, and there's a girl in Chinese discussion who has a constantly scornful expression on her face and likes to shoot it at me, and I have no motivation to accomplish things I actually need to do, like work out a ton, contact my astronomy TA about not being there for the first lab on Monday, or make a resume so I can start applying for jobs.

I need motivation...I need to work out...I need a job...I need my books to come in the mail...I need people to talk to so I can complain. :-/

At least socially it's fun to be back. I <3 Katrina and Holly and Claire, and Claire and I watched 3 gossip girl episodes in a row yesterday and had some great girl talk as well. Which is always good.

But, gah. This is overall not a happy-simone couple of days.

Random thoughts

Hello interweb, I have been ignoring you lately.

Break has been a lot of work, it's sad. I'm okay with going back to school, I feel unproductive here, I dislike Barnes. I wish I could take my friends with me though.

I really feel odd tonight. Lots of thoughts swirling around. I think I need sleep and a really long Reid hug.

Thought #1: I wish people got a more accurate representation of him when he visited. It feels like I'm dating a different person than everyone met, it's odd. Just slow to open up, which is fine, so am I. I just find it interesting how quickly he opened up to me, I have never experienced the shy Reid, not like that. I still have a lot to learn. I had NO idea how he would react to my family/friends, I overloaded the poor guy. I hadn't really thought about the fact that I didn't know he was shy until he came here. How strange is that? He told me, but I just didn't know the extent of it, I guess.

Thought #2: This is the longest I've gone without seeing him and it is making me realize just how happy I am when I'm with him. I want everyone, you ladies especially, to know the wonderful person I do. I have never been attached to someone like this before, it's the strangest feeling, letting someone care about you. I don't know what I was so scared of for so long. Vulnerable is a negative term usually, but it actually is kind of a nice feeling when you know it's safe. I flash back to the first week when I think about it. I think I was shivering partly because I was cold and partly because I was scared in a thrilling kind of way.

Thought #3: I really like learning with someone else.

Thought #4: A lot of people owe me "I told you so"s

Thought #5: Something feels off right now. Maybe it's that my school life and home life seem so different and separate. It's odd that they mixed for a week.

Thought #6: Why am I the world's confidante? I should be a psychologist.

Thought #7: I often wonder why people do/say things that I never would. It bothers me.

Thought #8: I apologize too much. For stupid little things. I think every time you say sorry you admit to doing something wrong and it raises the person you're talking to up a bit because you wronged them somehow and therefore owe them. So every time I say it I chip off a bit of my ego. And I say stupid things like "Sorry I left AIM, I had to go to the bathroom" "Sorry I didn't answer the phone, I had no signal." And then I say it when other people step on me or bump into me or something, when it's their fault.

Thought #8: I should start getting people to yell at me for that.

Thought #9: I have no idea what yelling is. I have never been yelled at. I just use it to mean people scolding.

Thought #10: I work at noon and should be sleeping.

unwelcome repeat

I'm posting like crazy. 'Cos I'm bored. Deal.

I'm realizing that I'm sort of only superficially happy at the moment. I am in love with being at Shao Lin as much as possible (5 times in 8 days, 3.5+ hours each time) but this year/time in general is really messing with me. I talked to Hannah about this at length in the car on the way back from Madison/dropping Katy off... I'll develop these thoughts here later I guess, but I just wanted to put it out there while it was on my mind. I'm in a good mood, yeah; I get to see close friends and live with my favorite family and do kung fu all the time, and I don't have classes or homework to worry about just yet, but there are so many stresses and things on my mind. I'm good at worrying. And I do it a lot.

Freshman year of college is sort of reflecting 6th grade for me. And I loathed 6th grade. It was pretty much the worst year of my life. (Fuck you, 2001-02.) But. I got through it. It didn't last forever. So this won't, either. I got through that, I'll get through this too, and be really happy again. I'm already ready for it to change... but I might have a ways to go yet. Anyway. Bedtime, up early tomorrow. Joy joy.

They say, "This too shall pass."
all the worrying about the future and money and guys and friends and what to do and where to go and how to do it...will work itself out. somehow.

New crazy long blog post(s) to TTL if you haven't noticed! And, in case I haven't said it enough, I <3 Shao Lin. Dear god. Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, now Friday, and tomorrow Saturday class again. :D It's brilliant. Best thing ever.


Not best things ever:
-not a whole lot of break time left
-so many plans to coordinateeeee
-NO money. I honestly don't know how I'm affording next semester.
-China costing too much.
-one week left of shao lin classes
-living with parents
-not looking forward to going back to MN

Things to look forward to:
CHINESE NEW YEAR

Casa Barnett feels like it's finally back to normal but not in a good way. It's interesting I'm really not sure I feel okay talking about this online. Everything else I'm not too worried about but I have this fear my mother will find the blog and I really don't want to hurt our relationship by having her read anything I wrote while upset... So I guess I'm saying today was bad. And if you want to hear about it please call/message and ask but I really don't want to write all the details here.