So I'm home!

:D

Two of Mom's sisters and my 11-year-old cousin Josh came up from Chicago to visit us this weekend...they left this morning to head back home. We had such a good time catching up, showing off Heather's new house, playing games, telling stories (some of them even true!!)...mostly just enjoying each other. I forget sometimes how cool (like my mom) my aunts are...I am so lucky with the extended family God has given me.

So last night I played a game of monopoly with my two little sisters and 11-year-old Josh...who is, I've decided, 11 going on 25. He acts so much older than he is that half the night I mistakenly called him "Dan," confusing him with his older brother. I never really get to hang with Josh when we get together for family reunions in Chicago, since the younger kids usually hang out in one area and the adults in another, so it was really fun to do some serious hanging out with him and get to know him. I love hanging out with kids I like...I've never understood people who say blanket statements like: "I like kids." I gotta tell you, there are a LOT of kids I DON'T like. I couldn't say that any more than I could say: "I like adults." But Josh, him I like.

So the only plans I made for my break was to get my hair cut yesterday...which now that that's done, I have absolutely NOWHERE I have to go, nothing I have to do for the next WEEK!! (Not including homework of course, which of COURSE I don't) So I am pretty much completely, incandescently happy. Lazing is the bomb. :D

the anathema that is the weather, and other things in my life meant to "grow my character..."

i. am. going. nuts.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not even CLOSE to spring yet, but I am still a serious sufferer of spring fever. Spring semester is such a challenge...by February I am ready to mentally check out of classes, and by March I'm ready to kill the first person who has the nerve to tell me they are loving school.

So we watched the first half of the film Pride & Prejudice (Keira Knightley and Matthew Mcfayden) in my Jane Austen lit class this afternoon...that is one of the movies that every time I view it, I love it even more. Usually film adaptations of my favorite books bother me to no end, but in this case I feel like they did such a superb job of capturing the tone, flavor and voice of the novel. And wonder of wonders, I actually think Keira Knightley more appropriately captures the personality of Elizabeth Bennett than any of the previous actresses who've tried the same. To me this movie is Knightley's saving grace; the one film I've seen of hers that convinces me she has at least some acting chops.

Moving beyond movies...(which, after all, is rather hard to do when one is desperate for escape!!) I've decided my friend Samantha wins the game of "who had the weirdest Valentine's Day weekend," which, considering the stories I've heard, is a pretty major feat. She spent the weekend with her grandparents who not only fought the whole weekend, but preceded to drag her to a strip club thinly veiled as a bar, on Saturday night. Apparently they decided their 21-year-old granddaughter is too "straight-laced," and needed her horizons broadened. It sounds like, by FAR, one of the most painful experiences I've ever heard of. I felt so bad for Samantha this afternoon as she was relating this to me that I took her out for cheap coffee afterward. Never have I been more thankful for the relative saneness of my family... :)

So I went to the library last night, and realized after about ten minutes of browsing that I was being tailed. By a five/six-year-old boy. With a lot of hair. I eventually caught him staring at me from behind a bookshelf and gave him a little wave, which just about sent him into hyperventilation. He ran off in a panic, careening into shelves and chairs like a crazed ping-pong ball. I discreetly followed, and watched as he recovered himself in a quiet corner before setting off. He then targeted a new stranger (an older man this time) and began his little spy mission anew. This whole incident left me laughing to myself for the rest of my library visit. Sometimes I think I haven't yet lost this fear and awe of the world around me...or my instinct to play "spy" with it.

So Kody has become my one saving grace in my Post-Modern lit class. Every morning we meet up before class and convince each other not to bail. Tomorrow we get our first in-class essays back, and I don't remember being this unnerved about a test since my first semester of college. This prof is simply impossible to predict, and therefore incredibly frustrating to write an essay for. I can't wait until tomorrow is over...

So I've stuck with my whole goal of finding one thing to focus on that makes me happy...it's incredible how much easier it makes staying cheerful. Yesterday I was thankful for my car. One of my classmates told me about what it's like to take the bus ever day, and it made me want to run out to the parking lot and literally hug my wheels. Despite how claustrophobic I occasionally feel in Ypsi, I am not stuck like many are. I have freedom of a sort (even if I don't have money to really drive anywhere...) :)

Emerging Slowly From the Cave...or how it felt to leave my dorm this morning.

So at least four people asked me why I was so happy today. I've decided that my mood is ENTIRELY too dependent on the weather. I need to work on that. You'd think this would have occurred to me before, as Michigan weather is not known for being kind...but maybe I've just never been this sick of cold weather before. Either way, I've decided I'm going to find something to be happy about every day for the rest of this week. Since the nice weather isn't supposed to last, this might become challenging, especially since my class work load this week is a killer, but I am determined. If I really get in a slump, I can always just read the paper or watch the news...somehow I always come away from that both extremely horrified and incredibly relieved for my life.

:)

So my sound poetry prof overheard me complaining this afternoon that we had to be in class instead of outside enjoying the weather...so she made me write a love poem to the class; basically outlining why I love the class so much. It was slightly horrifying; the poem was very very horrible, which is I guess what makes it funny. Tim now wants me to write a satirical love poem, one he can give his gf on valentines day. I am now very incredulous and suspicious about the function (dysfunction) of that relationship...

Meetings, meetings meetings...I've made a discovery this week. I hold Elizabeth Bennett as my all-time favorite Austen heroine...and this week has made me realize another aspect of why that is. Elizabeth is quite aware of - and deft - at playing the social games; small talk, posturing, basically standing around and talking about absolutely nothing. She plays this game to a point, but simply can't help but point out the ridiculousness of it all. I admire that so much...I feel like I waste so much time sitting around talking about nothing, or listening to others talk about nothing. It's so frustrating...I get these incredibly strong urges to suddenly say something completely inappropriate. My family is forced to listen to these outbursts at home, when I'm in the mood, or just bored...but I don't often give into this anywhere else. I guess it's the fear that I'll sabotage myself; totally ruin my image and therefore my future success. Stupid. So I've now decided it's unreasonable for society to force me to squelch my inner genius and wit, simply for image and appropriateness.

:D


So as I was waiting for a nurse to become available to take my blood last Wednesday, I got into a rather fascinating conversation about peanut butter with a fellow donor sitting one chair away. Suffice it to say, I was a fan, and he was not. I don't remember how this conversation began, but it was extremely random and hilarious. I simply don't understand the mind that is not completely enthralled with pb, and this guy seemed equally confused about the mind that is. I hope I helped him come to some kind of understanding...but I doubt it. I think he's one of those unfortunate individuals who will never be able to rid themselves of their unnatural predisposition against pb. Well, I can only try to save them - the rest is out of my hands.

the guilt of the well-meaning but uncommitted...

People. It's hilarious that the one direction of my life from which flows some of my greatest joys is also the source of my greatest trials...

So last Thursday one of my classmates realized that since our poetry class got canceled, I was going to have to sit in the hall for over an hour to wait for my night class. So this friend decided to stay and keep me company. For an HOUR. It was possibly one of the sweetest things anyone has done for me. The completely awesome thing: he writes movie reviews for our school paper, so he and I literally spent the entire time talking about movies, our favorite actors and Hollywood's strange, rigid idea of beauty...and also how Alan Rickman is one of the great underrated actors of his time. It was simply a blast.

Yesterday, however, I was the recipient of a bunch of snide comments in my Avant-Garde literature class from a group of "bohemian" self-love type people who've decided the class belongs to them.

My conclusion: people are great, but sometimes they also suck. I guess that makes sense, since that is also a good description of myself...when I am able to think about myself objectively, anyway... ;)

Headed home this weekend, to celebrate Lucy's birthday, as well as simply my family in general. I tried to explain to Kody yesterday about how I feel about my family, and he finally made this really hilarious comment: "You know Linz, you tell me you've never been in love before...but do you realize that's what it sounds like when you talk about them?" It's so funny, because it's so true in a way...I love my mom, my sisters and my bro's family with so much of me. I really can't imagine feeling the same amount for anyone else...even if he was the most perfect guy out there. (Which, let's face it, the perfect guy would annoy the crap out of me anyway...)

Along that vein...I was considering yesterday as I was reading the strange combination of Austen's Northanger Abbey and Flaubert's Madame Bovary that as a young 20's woman, I'm something of a quandary. Everything about my life: my childhood, the example(s) I had growing up, the training I've received from my sisters and my mother - everything has prepared me for the eventuality of marriage and children. Yet every time I consider that life, I am filled with a strange dissatisfaction. I realized yesterday as I was picturing that life - my life like that - it's just not what I want, at least right now. I realize that may change, but the idea of being at home, running a home and raising my children alone while my husband works eight, nine hour days, five or six days a week is simply not how I want to spend the majority of my life. I feel like I have been made for something different. Not something better, or worse, just something different. Sometimes I think that is why God created me so autonomous; why I hardly ever feel lonely, even when it's just Him and I. I am contented alone, in a way that I think most people aren't. But as people keep telling me, this may change, and soon I will probably be filled with the same urge to find someone to share my life - and children - with that everyone else in their twenties seems to feel. Then again...maybe not.

the state of being bummed and psyched at the same time....

Christmas break was...well, practically perfect in every way. :D

I got to:

-Ice-skate
-go hiking in a foot of snow
-sledding!!
-shop numerous times w/ many different peeps
-eat tons and tons of amazingly awesome food prepared by Mom and my sisters
-go on a mini road trip
and best of all:
-spend Christmas and New Years with those I love more than anything else in the whole world.

It was difficult at times to realize in those occasional moments of startling perception that I was experiencing the holidays in the house of my growing up years for the last time. Out of all my family, I love change the most, and even I felt a sort of grief at the idea of losing such an important piece of my life. But we spent as much time as we could filling it with as many positive memories as we could cram into three weeks.

Sometimes I feel so unbelievably blessed, I am filled with a sort of fear that God is preparing me for unbelievable hardship. But in the moments that I am surrounded by the ones I love so much, and realize how much I am loved, I believe that as long as I can hold onto that, I can make it through anything.

And now, to escape the growing maudlin... ;)

Despite how hard it was to leave home today, I am filled with a growing excitement about this semester. It is shaping up to be completely crazy, but at this moment, I am filled with illogical optimism.

I'm okay with that.

:)

school is out: let the mayhem begin!!

I'm sick.

Actually very, very sick. But perversely, I could not be happier...this Plague's onset was the day after I took my last final, so really, who am I to complain?

:D

Still trying to adjust to life without classes...hopefully this will happen before I go back to classes in the beginning of January.

So I have an INFINITE number of fun things I want to do over break...now it's just a waiting game to get healthy, then the MAD FUN can commence!!

end of semester: triumph, or my ultimate doom? :O

So this will probably be my last post before the end of the semester. Even writing that I cannot seem to grasp the concept that Fall is almost over. And it really should seem real, because it is FRICKIN COLD outside!!! :( If only there was a lot of pretty snow on the ground to make the cold seem worth all the trouble. ::sigh:: Whatev.

Anyway, so my prof told me Wednesday that she wants to nominate me to present a selection of my work in her class at an Undergraduate Symposium in March. To over 150 faculty and students.

?!?!?!

I am of course highly flattered, completely overwhelmed, and insanely terrified. I actually normally relish public speaking...I typically don't even get nervous, and I really do enjoy entertaining or informing people. (Or maybe I am just an attention junkie. :D ) But THIS seems WAY over my pay grade. But overall, I am very VERY psyched that my prof feels my work is "outstanding in its field," and that she's willing to nominate me for something like this. Maybe she's actually nuts or something. :)

So Thanksgiving...it was very very weird.

Positives:
*I got to hang w/ Mom's extended family in Chicago, the side of the family with about 60 people in it. Which is always fun.
*We got to ride the El into the city Thursday morning to watch my cousin Jordan play in the Chicago Thanksgiving parade. That was really fun, though really freezing.
*I got to eat tons and TONS of good, homecooked food. It was kind of like what I imagine heaven is like.
*Mom, Gina, Heather, Megan, Shelby and I got to go to the Shedd Aquarium. Which was totally awesome.
*I organized a dance party with a drinks bar (non-alcoholic of course) in my uncle's basement on Friday night. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, doing the cha-cha slide with my cousins, aunts and uncles.

Negatives:
*Since Dad, Mom, Megs and Shelby are moving to Oregon, there is talk circulating in the extended family that we will not be getting together for reunions very often anymore.
*Megan and Shelby got the flu over the weekend, so I hardly got to hang out with them. This had me highly upset, as I was just as excited to see them as I was my cousins I haven't seen since the wedding in August.
*I had to deal with a lot of crap from certain HIGHLY conservative members of the extended family about getting the dance party together, especially because some of the music I played was non-Christian, I organized a mixed drinks bar, and I encouraged dancing. (Despite the fact that the drinks were non-alcoholic, all the non-Christian music was VERY clean, and because it was all family, there was absolutely NO grinding or dirty dancing.)

::sigh:: I really do respect my mom's side of the family, but sometimes I wish they'd just loosen up a bit. I am torn in two when I have on the one hand aunts and uncles criticizing me for trying to "recreate the worldly atmosphere of clubbing," and on the other hand cousins telling me that the dance party was the most fun thing we've ever done together. Ever. It was a good reminder though that despite how hard I may try, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to please everyone. And if my organizing this dance party was such a huge shock to everyone (after all, aren't I a good Christian girl, which means I don't dance, don't drink, and don't go clubbing??) then maybe my aunts and uncles don't know me as well as they think they do.

So I am ready for some serious Christmasing. The music, the cookies, late-night Monopoly and Scrabble with Christmas tunes playing in the background and snow on the ground...BRING ON CHRISTMAS BREAK!!!! :D