Thankful Thursday

I knew, sort of, what a non-traditional family was. I'd  used them a lot in my writing, too: Ralurick spends his childhood with a single mother and his adolescence with his grandmother; Ella's raised by her grandmother; Topher's raised by everybody on his mother's side except his mother, and Matt seems to be the only one who has the seemingly requisite mother-father-siblings dynamic.

I have that, too. I have two parents who are still married, and a sister. But my nuclear family has grown a little bit. It grew six years ago with the birth of my niece. And it changed two years ago when, on the outset, everything went to hell.

We've always been fluid. Sunday dinners during the winter are one of my favorite unofficial traditions, and I can't remember when we started them. Whether they're at our house or my sister's is up for grabs throughout the day, and sometimes whoever isn't responsible for dinner itself brings dessert.

When I first came home from the hospital post-surgery, stairs weren't really something I could handle a lot. The result was that I took a lot of my meals upstairs, sitting in one of my mother's straight-backed chairs. When I gained a little more mobility - and less fear of falling without being able to catch myself - and my mother started going to work for the latter half of the day, I ate dinner with my sister and niece.

That has been, hands-down, one of the best things about my recovery. The ability to see those two smiling faces on a daily basis, to help with homework (we're not large fans of Common Core math because sometimes it feels like two women with four-year degrees don't have a clue what's going on and the kid is only in first grade), to read with her, and to sit on the back porch and look with new eyes on an old, trusted view.

For these two I am grateful and thankful beyond words.

Cowheart

I've thought about how I would start this post. About what I would say. I've made it a point to be honest because I'm a bluntly honest person. And you can't sugarcoat something like this.

So here's the reasoning behind my newest, and most favorite twitter hashtag #cowheart.

I was born twenty-three years ago with an ASD - atrial septum defect - meaning there was a hole in my heart between the top two chambers. (Quick anatomy lesson - you have four chambers, two upper, two lower.) Only we didn't know I was born with this. I played fourteen years of soccer, starting travel when I was eleven. I was a three sport athlete during high school, including when I went to Holland, Belgium, and Germany for a week to play over there. I played my first year and a half of college, too.

And still nobody found it.

The heart palpitations started spring of 2012. They continued periodically for the next year. Doctors like to think that anything that goes wrong with the average college student is stress related. Which, maybe, could have been it. It had been a hell of a last six months or so, what with things going on at home, getting three D's on my transcript, and finding out that I wasn't going to graduate that May. But things like that don't really make me anxious.

But they didn't go away when I finished in December and moved back home to wait the four months to walk across the stage. So we kept at it. My primary care physician referred me to a cardiologist, who, first, hooked me up with an event monitor for a month. That was my wired for sound period, where I wore a monitor for a month straight and only unstuck myself to shower. If I had any palpitations I was to push the button, wait for it to stop screeching at me, and then call the recording in for the medical center to then send to my cardiologist.

There was nothing on the monitor at the end of the month. Still, I kept having palpitations where I thought my heart was just going to up and quit. So he decided on doing an echocardiogram. (An ultrasound, pretty much, for your heart.)

That's when, in March of 2013, they discovered the hole. We just didn't know how big it was, and because there was no baseline for this kind of thing, he decided he would monitor it. I had the instructions to carry on like normal - work, refereeing, whatnot - and did just that. Carrying on like normal involved going down to a soccer tournament in Gettysburg, taking a train to Chicago to take exams, and working 25-35 hours a week as a waitress. It also included getting a second job because my student loans went into repayment this summer.

A few weeks into July it was time for another echo. A few days after I had gone in for the exam I got a phone call from a nurse. One of my valves wasn't...functioning properly. And there was some enlargement. She royally freaked me out completely, and it took a visit with my cardiologist in order to basically be calm again. He did agree that the hole was larger than we had first thought, and that, as it appeared to have grown larger in a short amount of time, wanted me to have it patched. So he sent me to a cardiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Originally, when we talked with the cardiologist, he was going to use a little device like a double-sided umbrella to patch the hole. He needed a better picture of it, where it was and how big it was, and we scheduled a TEE - they knock you out, put a camera down your throat, and take pictures of your heart from the inside. It would give them what they needed to know. We scheduled that.

After the TEE is when things changed rather drastically. They learned the hole was huge, and couldn't be patched the little device. Using the device would have allowed them to go in through the leg, and involving a minimal hospital stay. And a shorter recovery time.

But you can't do that with a hole in your heart the size of a half dollar.

I had open heart surgery August 29. It's a heady thing, to know that in order to have a longer life expectancy you have to have your sternum cracked, heart stopped, and the hole patched with a piece of cow. Medicine has come a long way since they first started doing this type of repair, but it's still batshit crazy to think about. I was scared. Even when you know it has to happen, it's still terrifying on a certain level.

One of the things I remember from those first post-surgery moments in CVICU is writing "I love you" on my sister's palm with my finger. I stayed in ICU for 24 hours, and was moved a stepdown unit the next day. I was in the hospital three full days following ICU. I've since been back home.

I'm doing really well. We're following the recovery plan - dictates diet and exercise - and while it's driving me nuts to not be able to move my arms above my head or lift over ten pounds, I manage. I've done a bit of reading, some writing, and I've watched a whole lotta episodes of CSI:NY, and Flashpoint on Netflix. But it's also given me a lot of time to think about what I want to do with my life, and what my next steps are after I've taken my 12-14 weeks to heal properly. I've got an idea. But that's a blog post for later.

As for the cowheart? Well, I'm part cow. I joke that I'm Iron Man, and the family jokes that whenever anyone eats steak we're eating my new relatives. Sometimes a little humor goes a long way. And right now I'm just taking it day by day.

Better Late than Never

Seriously.

I know. It's been an interesting....well, closer to two months, probably.

Christmas was lovely. The whole holiday season was lovely, in general, except for when I nearly gave myself a panic attack really thinking the world was going to end according to the Mayans. As I'm still sitting here, breathing, and the sun keeps rising at the start of every day, clearly something was off in someone's calculations.

That and I kept trying to think about how they hadn't accounted for daylight savings and leap years and....yeah.

Anyway.

January saw me and my sister wandering through the streets of New York City. Festivities included the 12th Annual No Pants Subway Ride - we did not participate, in fact, we were damn confused when the people next to us on the platform started taking their pants off - a viewing of Avenue Q off Broadway, me wandering around for a media and entertainment day, and many visits to Starbucks and Times Square.

It was also where I got the idea for the next moment of brilliance. I applied to an internship with the Travel Team at The Huffington Post. They were one of the places we went to on media day, and it seemed to be a really good fit. So here's hoping.

I've also added another rejection to the pile for Sage.

That's where I'm at. Here's to a new year, and me crawling out of my blogging hibernation.

Jack of All Trades

College student. Writer. Potential professional baker. Science geek. Theater kid. Aunt. Daughter. Wandering Sagittarius. Dancer.

Dancer?

Back at the beginning of September, one of my FB statuses was that I was doing something so far out of my comfort zone it was practically on another planet, because a zip code didn't seem to cover an out step of this magnitude. My mother was appropriately skeptical when I told her, as was my sister, and I'm pretty sure some of my friends outright laughed when I said, rather brightly, I'm trying out for Koshare.

It was something I'd always wanted to since I saw my first show back in Fall 2008, but...didn't. Didn't in Fall 2009, was living in Wales in Fall 2010, and was absolutely batshit crazy a year ago in Fall 2011. Now it's Fall 2012, and guess who's name is in the program under the dance Miss Demeanors? Mine.

I've got no problems stepping out on stage and facing a packed audience and playing a different character with different words, mannerisms, and - the last time I was on stage - downright scary facial expressions. This is different. This is me, Molly Louise, only with a little bit of hip hop in my body, some heat in my cheeks, and the on-going thought process of don't let me screw this up. I got this.

I guess I hadn't really thought about the magnitude of what I was doing, and how far from the normal me it was until I read part of what my sister had put on FB when a mutual friend of ours had mentioned harassing me - in good fun, more or less - at the performance she's attending this weekend. My sister is always going to have my back, but there...I'll admit, I was rather speechless when I read this.

Just the fact that she is participating in Koshare, something so far outside her comfort zone, makes me incredibly proud of her. So, doing anything to embarrass her or take away from that accomplishment is the LAST thing I would do.

 Tonight is opening night. And this sometimes conflicting Jack of All Trades plans to bring the house down. Which, to be honest, reinforces that nice little phrase I attempt to live by.

Carpe diem.

Murphy and Me XXXXV

[I...I have no words for this. I'm actually almost in tears at this point. This is the last chapter of the first draft of Murphy and Me: Sophomore Fall. Thank you so much for sticking with me in what went from a smartass beginning to make my sister snort a banana through her nose to a full semester's worth of a love story between a science geek soccer player and a history buff football boy. Thank you.]

I stood on my tiptoes, balanced by Murph's hands on my hips to kiss him goodbye. The Honda was packed, Liam in the driver seat with Dev talking to him through the open window, the pair of them graciously giving us as much privacy as we could get in a public parking lot.

"You'll do fine tonight," Murph said, one hand coming up to cradle my face.

"Thanks." I looked over at the Honda. It wasn't fair to hold Liam up much longer. Not with such a ride ahead of them. Leaned up and kissed the underside of Murph's jaw, discovering he hadn't shaved when he'd gone back down the fishbowl. "Love you."

"Love you, too, Ollie." He gave me one last rib-breaking hug and a kiss, and headed for the passenger side of the Honda, bumping Dev's fist as he came around the trunk.

Dev and I stood on the sidewalk to watch the Honda pull out toward St. Claire, the twins waving from their respective sides of the vehicle. Dev gave me a short, one-armed hug before we headed back inside, him to pack and me to study for physics.

And to look up exactly how long winter was, almost down to the minute.


Physics was a train wreck. Not a HAZMAT-size train wreck, but more than train meets car kind of deal. I'd somehow pulled it out though, managing two C's - orgo and physics - an A- in acting, and pulled a B+ out of a random body orifice for T-S Britain. My GPA wasn't the greatest, but it would work, and there were more requirements for my degree done, which was kind of the point. And once grades came out - about a day before Christmas, which was about the best present ever - it felt like I could breathe properly again. Which was a welcome feeling.

Christmas passed in a bit of a blur. We had a full house, as usual - even the ones from Michigan this year - and the sheer amount of food was almost unreal. I could practically see Murph's eyes bug out of his head when I told him we'd had thirty-five people in the kitchen and, even more wondrous, was the fact we'd managed to eat at the same time and not in shifts. El had wanted to know about "Morephy" and my heart nearly burst, simply for the fact she remembered him.

A few days after New Year's the restlessness set in. Not so much to see Murph - he'd convinced me to sign up for Skype, and we had less-than-romantic, slightly awkward internet dates at least once a week - but to be busy again. In short, I was ready for the fresh start a new semester brought and more than ready to go back to class. That's just how I was.

As for being home and in my own bed, there were some nights when it felt too small. It was hard not to try to imagine a larger, furnace-warm body curled behind me, one huge hand splayed open against my belly. The way he'd snuffle in his sleep sometimes, other times murmur words - English or Gaelic, they were usually too low and garbled to tell exactly which language - into the back of my neck. The way good morning was said with a hug, a shift of a leg between mine, and the trail of kisses along the top-most knobs of my spine. Sometimes beard stubble, too, when he hadn't shaved in a while.

All of it was Murph, his presence, his comfortable-ness, and his love. And it was mine.

And it was good.

"Olivia!"

I jerked further awake, rolling over to stare at the stars on the ceiling. Sounded an awful lot like dad.

"Olivia!"

What did he want at - good Lord - eight-ten in the morning? "Yeah?" I shouted back, not inclined to get out of the warmth yet.

"Olivia Mae!"

Damn it. I rolled - literally - out of bed and jogged down the hall toward the stairs. Dad was at the bottom, looking at me with an expression of absolute grief that made my lungs forget to function for a second. "Dad?"

In this instance I saw my father - the strongest, most collected man I know - do something I hope to never see again.

Cry.

"Dad?" It was barely more than whisper, and about the only volume I could manage at the moment.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Harris died."

My knees gave out and I slid to the floor at the top of the stairs, head resting against the wall with a thump with my knuckles against my mouth, not sure whether to sob or puke.

Harris, my grandfather in all but blood, was dead. It was then the tears came.

Murphy and Me XXXVI

"You can borrow them, if you want."

I stood up and nearly whacked my head into the underside of Sasha's closet shelf. "Really? I mean - "

She chuckled. "You can borrow my hooker boots. Really." Her smile turned sly. "I think Murph will appreciate 'em." She outright grinned. "I'm just sayin'...He likes it when his girl looks good."

"And hooker boots make me look good?" Yeah, there was some skepticism there.

"Well, he likes you anyway, even when you wear those damn things - " she pointed to my ugly-as-hell plain black sneakers, my work shoes. " - so I think you could go barefoot and he'd be okay."

Which was true, too. "Okay." The boots moved from the closet to hear my backpack. Wouldn't look odd at all for me to be walkin' 'cross campus with those. Not. At. All.

I sat on the half of the pushed together dorm beds that was Sasha's. "Where's Cara?"

"Class." Sasha crawled onto the desk chair and nearly fell out of it. "Then she has some other meeting and then the choreographers meeting."

"I don't know any reason why they wouldn't let you two dance together." Was the truth, too. Cara, from what I'd heard, was a great choreographer.

"Oh, I know." She fiddled with one of the photos taped to the study carrel. "Anyway - How's Ford man?"

"Murphy's fine." My phone somehow appeared in my hand. Open. Shut. "He had a nice time Sunday." Open. Shut. "Elizabeth loves him."

"Which is code for everyone, am I right?" Sasha chuckled.

Silence stretched between us.

"Cara and I almost had sex last night."

That came out of left field.

"Oh." And...Yeah. No idea what to say to that. None whatsoever. "Uh...Things are going then, yeah?"

She bit her lip. "Yes and no. I think we're in some sort of odd transition state and, while it didn't feel weird last night it wasn't...I mean, we've been there before but this had a different feel to it."

"Good different or bad different?" Still trying to process that last bombshell.

"Just...Different."

Which, in an odd way, made both perfect sense and none at all. "What happened after?"

Sasha shrugged. "We kissed some more, then she held me and sometime later we drifted off." She looked at her fingernails. "The only thing that you could call different was that I was the spoonee and not the spooner."

Spooning was the Visa of cuddling - generally accepted everywhere. And it wasn't just for hetero couples.

Technically, I think Murph and I had yet to spoon. Technically speaking.

Also just realized my best friend slept either naked or mostly naked. However, not my business.

"Did she say anything during spooning?"

She shrugged again. At this rate she was going to strain a back muscle.

"Just that she missed me."

Which could mean more than one thing. Murph murmured "missed you" into my clavicle when we shared a bed on the weekend and he hadn't seen me since Wednesday.

Or, in this case, it could mean missing what Sasha and Cara had had. I think part of their simplicity was gone and it was going to screw with them for a while.

Then I asked a question that would normally not see the light of day. "How was the almost sex?"

Sasha smiled slowly. "Brilliant. She did this, this thing with her tongue and..." She blushed faintly. "Anyway. It was good."

Any almost sex she had was better than the slim chance or sex that was my life.

And the fact that I was terrified of my own body had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Let's factor in the fact that I was downright terrified to let Murph even think about glimpsing me naked. Considering he was male and my boyfriend, he had probably thought of me naked. Multiple times.

Which was a train of thought that needed to go away. Immediately.

"So that was normal?"

Sasha nodded. "Maybe...Maybe we've got past whatever we needed to get past."

Maybe. Or maybe it was the calm before the proverbial storm. Who knew - the weather was supposed to be shit all week.

"That would be a good thing." A very good thing as I could stop worrying that my best friend was heading for a breakdown of monumental proportions - and tequila.

"Very," she said quietly. "You and Murphy have plans for Halloween?"

I let the sudden change in topic slide, grateful to talk about something less awkward. "Yup. Costume party and...That's probably it." We hadn't thought much beyond Colby's costume party. We'd probably just come back and crash. Depending on what Dev was doing would determine my place or Murphy's. "You got plans?"

"Maybe order in, watch some slasher films and cuddle."

Cuddling was nice. Slasher films? Not so much. Chinese or pizza would be the deal breaker.

"That sounds fun." It did - I'd just pick a different movie. "How's classes going?" Breath. "How's Koshare?"

"Classes are classes." She picked up a pen from the holder on her desk and began turning it over in her hands. "No big emergencies or panics there. And Koshare...It's interesting to have your girlfriend as your choreographer. It's not a collaborative process, more like following her vision. It's a great vision, don't get me wrong, but it's a little awkward at times." She fumbled the pen. "Especially if you're not seeing eye to eye."

Dance move to dance move might have been more appropriate but I kept my mouth shut. However, couldn't resist in the end. "Artistic differences?"

Sasha snorted. "Understatement." She nearly dropped a second pen to the floor. "I mean, it's great but...There are some parts that would look better if I did them because they're..."

"Not her concentration."

Sasha nodded. "But it's all good. We keep the studio in the studio as best we can."

Which was probably not an easy thing to do. Maybe it was a good thing Murph and I didn't have a common extracurricular activity.

"How's your week look?"

It was my turn to shrug. "Same as usual. I'm kind of sucking at getting my teaching hours so far, but it's hard between lab, practice, games and...breathing." Looked at my hands, unsure if I wanted to drop this bombshell. Oh, what the hell. Live in the moment and all that. "I'm not sure I want to do this anymore."

She stared, pen thumping softly to the carpet. "What?" She reached for number three.

I slipped my Chuck Taylor's off and drew my legs up. "I just...I don't know. It's a lot of effort on top of everything else and I'm not really liking it as much as I thought I would. It kinda sucks." My socks were mismatched - one gold toe, one blue. El would approve. "I'm only doing it as a back up plan and not as that thing that I really want to do with my life. I mean, look at Murph. Murphy wants to be a history teacher. He's pumped about it. Wants to stay and do the MAT program. Me? Right now it's just another thing to worry about."

Between physics, keeping track of time, and soccer, I had enough to keep me occupied. And I hadn't mentioned orgo, yet.

"So why did you sign up?" Sasha moved her computer back a bit to put her rear on the actual desk. "Why apply in the first place?"

"Because it was a back up plan." Not the only reason, but definitely the simplest. "And I like to work with kids." Again, slightly more complicated than that. Why be black and white when you could operate in shades of gray?

"But you're not sure it's what you really want."

That right there summed it up quite nicely. "Yup."

And really, that's all there was to it. What it came down to was that I didn't know what I wanted, now much less wanted as a back up plan. Hell, maybe waitressing would just be my back up plan. It'd worked like a charm so far.

Considering I turned into a workaholic when I was home for the summer, it didn't really surprise me.

I looked at the time on my phone - it was nearly eight. "I gotta go - I'm having dinner with Murph."

"It's late for dinner, isn't it?" Sasha squinted at Cara's clock on her desk.

"Not when you're having a sort of date with your boyfriend." I uncurled and started to put my Converse back on. "I guess it's not really a sort of date, it is a date. Dinner and a movie." Dinner being ordered-in Chinese and the movie being from the boys' DVD collection. Depending on what mood we were in it might be an action film or something hopelessly romantic.

Hope we were more inclined toward action, truthfully. While I loved my best friend and the fact that she was in an exclusive, loving relationship with someone as great as Cara, it was sometimes a little hard to swallow. Maybe it was because my relationship with Murph was so new, that I was still trying to get past that infamous four month mark.

That damn four month mark I tried really hard not to think about since it made my blood pressure skyrocket.

Sasha stumbled off her perch to give me a hug. "Have fun on your date."

I nodded, turning serious while picking up the boots she was lending me. "You ever need me - to talk or listen or anything - just call. My phone's always on." It was. For her it always would be.

"Thanks." She hugged me again.

With footwear that made absolutely no sense being within fifty feet of me in hand, I headed out of the building and down the hill. And back to my original train of thought about those damn four months.

Bobby and I had been off and on all through high school - usually in periods of about four months. We'd be good as gold for a while and then things just sort of...went downhill. So we'd take a break for a little while and then after a couple weeks - maybe a month - we'd get back together for about another four months. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

Considering Bobby was my one previous decent relationship - though hindsight is twenty-twenty - I had to base things off of, I was honestly expecting Murph and I to follow that same pattern or a variation of it. Not what I wanted, but more or less what I was expecting.

Which, if Murph found that out, he'd probably have me committed. At least.

This was one of those times where I hated being in my own head.

A couple of Smithies nearly whacked me between the eyes with the front door of Jackson while I fumbled for my keys. Snark in check, the stairs to the second floor seemed a little longer than normal and I dropped the boots - and my Chucks - on the new, and, honestly, forty-year-old-homemaker welcome mat and knocked on the door of the fishbowl.

A breathless, wet-haired Murph answered. "Yeah - Oh. Hey."

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. "Hi." He was wearing his good jeans and a nice button down with a long-sleeved white shirt. Murph always looked good to me but right now? Hot. Damn.

Which had me worried I was under dressed. "Am I...?" Not the most eloquent question I've ever asked, I'll admit.

"No," he said quickly, "you look fine. Great."

He was a little nervous. Clearly. "I'm in jeans and a t-shirt."

Murph gave me that smile, the one that threatened to break his face. "Do I really have to say it?"

"Nope." His hand found the small of my back once through the door and the room smelled of Chinese take out. Lunch now seemed very far away.

As far as impromptu Thursday night dates went, this was quite excellent. And it technically hadn't even started yet. Sure dinner was ready but the movie hadn't been picked out and Murph seemed more on edge than he ever was. Especially around me.

There was another blanket down on top of the comforter, an older one, and while eating a Nutri-Grain bar was one thing, sesame chicken was quite another. Smokey sat proudly atop Murph's pillows and I settled on the bed, leaving Murph plenty of room. He handed me both plates to get himself up there and I handed the beef and broccoli back.

"We're away this weekend," I said, mixing the rice with the sauce. "So, I have no idea when I'll be back."

He swallowed what might have been a broccoli spear whole. "Do...Do you want me to leave the door unlocked?"

It was tempting. The only problem was that I was probably going to reek and didn't want to accidentally wake Dev. And where would my bag go? That didn't need to stink up the whole damn room at some beastly hour.

And him leaving the door unlocked was the equivalent of him giving me a key. Which threatened to make my head explode.

It was easier to look at my plate, pushing rice around. "I don't want to disturb anybody."

"It would be a Saturday, right? No idea what Dev's gonna be doing but I have a paper to write, so I'll be here." He moved an onion out of his way. "I mean, if you don't want to, that's fine - "

I looked at him. "I need to shower, at least, because I don't wanna crawl into bed - yours, at least - sweating and smelling like...sweat." Ate some chicken. "I'll let you know when I get back and shower and then I'll come down." Because chillin' with Murph on a Saturday night? Damn fine plan.

"If you don't - "

"I do." I did. "I just don't want to freak you out by how bad I smell."

"Oh." He blinked. "You don't have to worry about that."

"Call it a girl thing."

He popped a piece of beef in his mouth and nodded.

"What's your paper on?"

"It's our history midterm paper. Four to six pages."

Which reminded me I need to not only make flash cards for T-S Britain, but also needed to study them, too. "Fun."

We talked about classes, about flu season (and this year's flavor was swine, not bird) and ate our way through our respective Chinese containers. Murph deposited the empty containers in the hall trash and flipped one row of lights off on his way back to the bed.

"So," he said, easing to the floor and burying his upper body under the bed. "I have two potential movies."

I flopped ungracefully forward, feet against the wall, palms against the bed frame to steady myself and looked down at Murph's broad back. His movie collection must be under his bed. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He grunted. "Do you have your phone handy?" He stretched a hand back; I shimmied the phone out of my pocket and dropped it into his palm. "Thanks."

"No problem."

He thunked his head on the way out and stayed on his knees, resting his forearms on the mattress on either side of my head. Up close and personal, and he dove in for a kiss. "I have Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Stardust."

Good choices. Very good choices. Not what I was expecting, though that was fine by me.

"Stardust, if you're okay with that." He kissed me again and stood, firing up the DVD player and setting the TV on the right channel. I rolled upright and leaned against the wall. Murph tossed the DVD remote on the comforter and turn off the rest of the lights.

There was some jostling as we tried to find some comfortable position and still clearly see screen on the dresser across the room. In the end, Murph's back was to the wall with me tucked into his side, one arm around the small of his back and the other resting on his thigh, our fingers laced together. With my left shin across both of his, this could possibly be utter contentment.

Could? Let's rephrase: Is.

Ian McKellen's voice came from the TV speakers and I relaxed further into Murph, ear close enough to hear his heart.

However, while I was trying to melt into a puddle of goo, Murph was wound about as tight as a friggin' eight day clock. I dug the fingers of the arm behind him into his opposite hip.

Murph jumped spectacularly.

Yeah. Tighter than a clock.

"What's up?"

"Nothin'."

"I call bullshit." My fingertips creeped under his button down to rub his side through his layering shirt, mindful he was a tad bit ticklish.

He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles where our hands were joined. Took a deep breath. Nuzzled the top of my head. "Is this alright with you?"

That happy little phrase could pertain to a whole lot of things. My heart kicked it double time, sesame chicken churning in my stomach. "This being movie and dinner?"

Murph shifted a little. "Yeah. I mean - Dinner ordered in..."

It suddenly clicked.

Murph was afraid this date - dinner and a movie in - wasn't good enough. He was worried I wouldn't be happy enough with what he'd be able to give me. The boy wanted to bring me the moon and was worried I wouldn't be happy with the simple star he'd brought back.

He didn't need to take me anywhere fancy or to an eight dollar movie to make he happy. This, sitting here with him, stuffed with Chinese and watching a movie in the fishbowl, was more than enough for me.

Hell, just having this opportunity was enough for me.

"Murphy," I said, sitting up and effectively cutting him off mid ramble. "I don't need a nice restaurant or a movie in a theater. This right here is perfect for me." Just to make my point, I cupped his face and kissed him. Hard.

His hazel eyes searched mine in the darkness and he must have found what he was looking for because he all but melted as he relaxed.

"Wanna watch the extras?" he asked as we settled back in.

"Definitely."

Tristran tackled Yvaine and this impromptu middle of the week date was something I could definitely get used to.

SuperWomen

I know we have a few more days until Mother's Day, but that's right smack in the middle of finals and there's no guarantee that I'm going to remember to do this when I've already had my intro geo final and a Shakespearean performance to do in the afternoon, followed by more preparing for my hardest exam - physical chemisty II (quantum mechanics) - bright and way too freakin' early the next morning.

So, before my life gets a little nutzo and my brain decides to take holidays in its downtime while my Focus runs rampant through the dirty clothes all over the inside of my closet, I wanted to make sure I paid my homage to the mom's in my life.


The first mom in my life is my mother - Mama - and she is a fantastic lady. She has gone to numerous soccer games in various locations - up to nearly three hours away from our house, in some cases - and has gotten me through 4H projects, school presentations, growing pains and changes, multiple surgery recoveries, me living for three months in a foreign country over 3,000 miles away and then getting stuck there for 5 extra days, moving me into multiple dorm rooms (one more to move out of and one more to move into for undergrad) and just being a presence in my life (along with my dad, we'll get to him on Father's Day). She is my mother. The infamous non-existent temper (but really, we do have it, and it rears its ugly head on occasion) comes from my mother's side, as does my sense of responsibility and of doing what's right even if it downright sucks. My Mama is awesome.


The other mother in my life is my sister, Heather. She's a mother to a brilliant three-year-old, and she is amazing at it. The love that she has for that little girl, and the want to see her child happy and healthy and smiling....I can see that it's going to be projects and activities and learning and....she's a soccer mom now. M started soccer last week and now she's a soccer mom. Things haven't always been easy, but even through everything, I am so damn proud of my sister and what she has done and what she has become. So proud. Especially when it comes to her and that little girl and all that she has done. Makes me very proud to firstly be related to her and doubly proud to have her as my sister.


These are the super women in my life. Two Superwomen. They don't have to save the world at the large, or protect it, but they protect and defend their world.


Here's to them and to every Superwoman out there this Sunday, Mother's Day.

(I seem to be having issues with emedding the video that I want, so I'll just link it, instead. Superwoman by Alicia Keys.)

Lifetimes

Sometimes it feels like I've had more than one life in twenty-one years. Like, if you were to track me through the tail end of high school up until now, you could easily see where one part of me left off and the other started. It's a little harder to see what brought me here, the stuff that's on the inside and doesn't see the light of day except in extreme circumstances. It's hard to see the bad stuff because there doesn't seem to be a camera present when it all goes down the tubes. Why? Mostly because it's not a pretty picture. No pun intended.



Maybe it's because I realized this morning was the last morning I was going to register for fall undergraduate courses, and, well, that's got me more than a little freaked out and tooling through a bit of memory lane. The stages of me, not the pieces, because the important pieces don't fall off anymore. They chip - sometimes really easily - but they don't actually come off anymore.



I might have learned how to bend a little easier, instead of outright fracturing. Or I might have just morphed into stronger stuff. I don't know. And if I don't know, you people must not have a clue.



What I do know is that I can see the journey - the part of the journey - I've taken. I can the see the ways I've changed, both physically and in the ways that aren't so obvious.



Looking back might be a way to look ahead, too. I don't know where I'm goin', but I know where I come from, and I'm just fine with knowing only that. As for the rest of it? Well, I'll deal with it as it comes. One day at a time.

Things to Know XX

- A 2 am bed time is only advisable once a week.

- The crater holes where I had my wisdom teeth removed are still incredibly sore.

- This was evidenced when I got knocked in the jaw last night at rehearsal - nobody's fault - and made everything hurt.

- Geo lab tomorrow takes place more or less in my backyard.

- I sat through a class and a half feeling like my head wasn't functioning.

- Spent four hours (roughly) with no contacts or glasses due to a contact lens malfunction and knowing that wearing only one would produce a hell of a headache within twenty minutes.

- Watching DVD's of Law and Order: UK off of Netflix helps me pretend I'm still in the UK.

- I have a place to live next year - in a house - and get to pick my room on Tuesday.

- There's a project that's going to allow me to look at the quantum mechanics of a black hole.

- There may be a way to tie that back to either Star Trek 2009 or Stargate, of which I'm practically salivating over.

- There's a chance my mom, sister, and I will be able to make a sort of round trip to NYC to see the MLS All Stars take on Manchester United and then see RENT on Broadway.

- If we see RENT it will remind me of the last time we all went to see a musical together, which was The Lion King when I was still in elementary school.

- Sadly, though it would be really fun and a great experience, it's not going to be possible to do the Geo field course this summer (two weeks in Colorado) because it doesn't help for my major, and I would have to petition quite a few people to be able to take only three courses my senior Spring.

- I'm having mixed feelings about the fact that the theater department doesn't want me to take Intro to Dramatic Literature as an independent study (which would mean only three courses [all of them chem, with labs] in the fall) and want me to wait instead for next Spring and another dramatic lit course.

- I still have my ethics goal to fulfill.

- My adviser is quite happy that we're not struggling to fulfill the fine arts goal.

- I don't think I drink enough water in the day.

- I should make a cup of tea and get cozy on my bed doing homework.

- I have a card I'm going to send to my best friend in Rome.

- Speaking of said best friend, she'll be living across the street from me next year.

- One of these days, when it gets a little warmer, I'm going to lay on the grass, look at the sky, breathe, and simply be.

Habit

I've got no qualms about coming out and saying I'm a bad blogger.

How long as it been since I've last posted? How much upheaval have I gone through between then and now? Downright disgraceful on my part, truthfully. Never mind that I was running on about five hours of sleep that first official day back, still trying to reset my sleep schedule, and being bombarded with family and the fact that Christmas was only two days away. Excuses, excuses.

See what I mean?

Anyway, it's post the first of the year, so welcome to the first official post of 2011! Cue fireworks and singing of that damn song. Or, you know, you could just keep reading. That's cool too.

I thought about doing, before it hit New Year's Eve, a best of 2010 post to maybe reflect on what had happened, all the exciting - and not-so-exciting - and crazy, stupid, fearless, terrifying, etc stuff that I had done over the past year, reflecting on my three months (that feel like a dream, or that they happened to someone else and I watched) I spent in Wales, and whatever else happened that might have been newsworthy or just noted.

I didn't do one. Firstly because, like I've mentioned, I'm a bad blogger and secondly, I was just too damned tired to really focus and pull something like that together. I still have moments when it boggles me that I'm currently home and not still over on the other side of the Atlantic. Moments when I realize that I can walk down the hallway to my own bed, tripping over my own black cat, and not wander around the corner into the bathroom of some hotel in central London. Or wander to a public bathroom in an airport terminal.

So, things are adjusting. Or rather, Louise is adjusting to things.

But there are changes. If you were to sit on the back porch with me (proverbially, at the moment, as it's pretty damn cold here), with a cup of coffee, and just talk with me, you'll see changes. Little things, the way I'll go to say something and have to kind of think about whether that word means the thing I want it to or it means something different. The way my Facebook stream has a mix of both US and Welsh names in it, the way that one has subtly more or less switched itself to being sort of one top and the other a sort of background. Not that any of those people are to be considered background, but I'm hoping you're understanding what I'm having difficulty putting into words.

And that's partly why I haven't really reflected. For as good as I am with the English language, I'm struggling to put this experience into something that can be easily accessed, understood, and shared with the rest of the world. I don't know how to say what I'm feeling.

I don't know how to get what's going on in my head out onto paper or into a sequence of ones and zeroes that lets others read it, too.

Which, honestly, drives me up the wall to a point. We're used to me rambling, but this? For me to attempt to get this out would be crazier than what I normally post. Yeah. That's where I'm at.

But, hopefully - namely when I can find my camera in this post-holiday slow-down - I'll put up a couple pictures of those last couple days in the UK. Namely this post that's been in the back of my mind to do. Something about sneakers and a big, fancy word that I'm going to have to double check the definition of in a dictionary. Anyway. Hope everyone out there had a happy holiday season, a great New Year, and as for resolutions? That post (sort of) will come later.

Dear Baby Binsk

[This is a letter to my younger self from me now.]

Hey Binsk,

It's me. Sorta all grown up. We just turned twenty-one a little over a week ago, on Turkey Day. Yeah. You, me, our cartilege piercing, and our tattoo we've more or less named Otis. He's still rockin' the tan line from this summer, still lookin' for that horizon. Much like us, really.

Anyway, there's something that I need to tell you. Or rather, we need to talk about.

It's about Al*. I know you're going to have a hell of a time believing me on this one, but, Al got married yesterday. Before you freak out that I've somehow estranged us from the family and eloped in Mexico or anything, we're still single. We've got crazy curly long hair (though, I kept chopping it all off at one point, and now I'm letting it grow back) and, well, I'm currently in Wales. Yeah. You'll enjoy that, trust me.

Anyway. Yeah, Al got married yesterday. Don't look at me like that, all wide-eyed and whatnot. I remember just as clearly as you do freaking out in the kitchen when he came to the back door looking to drop off a can collection bag for Scouts and we thought he was there to see us and we freaked, royally, because we didn't want Mom or Dad to see him because we hadn't told them. I remember him and his dad and his friend turning up in the driveway during Italian Festival one summer, wanting to know if I wanted to go with them while I sat writing The Crossing from composition book to Word. I also remember being smooshed in the backseat, too, with the cake we'd made for Saint Mary's.

I remember all of that, just like you do. Just like I remember the way I felt junior year when I put on the dress I'd worn at Heather's wedding to go to my first prom. Eventually we'll be able to look at those pictures - and the ones from senior year - without tearing up quite as badly. For now, we'll leave them in the picture box in the living room with the ones from Music Club trips to NYC and other places we've been.

We're quite the wanderers, you and I. But that doesn't really hit us until we get to college and start blogging. Originally, we're Confessions of a College Coffee Addict but being a Wandering Sagittarius is what we are, so we change it.

I know it hurts, Binsk. I know it just tears at you to let him go that last time because you don't want to hurt him when you go away to college, and that's fine. I understand that. We don't regret that. We just thought he would wait for us. Can't really blame him for finding someone else, even if we think things moved a bit fast for them. And we were suitably stunned when we found out he was engaged.

Yesterday was their big day and you're over three thousand miles away living a very, very different life.

There's nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to regret. I know it's hard. Really hard. But you've done great things. You've got, at this point, 1,994 pages of composition book filled with a novel; you've got thirty parts on a blogging series that's more or less turned into a book called Murphy and Me; you've recently celebrated a birthday and can legally drink the US now; and you've turned out to be one strong, confident, bluntly honest person who, at all times, remembers to be herself before anything else. Because that's all we can do. Just be us. Even if it hurts.

I thought of how I was going to tackle this particular subject, wondered if there was a line I was going to cross that I shouldn't cross, and then decided, like with a lot of things, to screw it. Life is about crossing lines and this? This is hella personal, but at the same time, it's not. Don't ask me to explain that more fully because, well, I probably can't.

We're a little bitter, some days, I won't lie. We wonder how we can write such a wonderful romance between fictional characters, but can't live it in our own life. Our sister tells us to be patient, that God won't give us more than we can handle. But boy, it does seem like a lot sometime, if not in physical things, than especially with emotional.

Of course, this comes roughly two weeks before we head back to the US from spending three months in a foreign country. Because, well, if we didn't have bad luck we wouldn't have any luck at all. Coincidentally, that was the inspiration for Murphy and Me. And we haven't stopped writing since.

That, Binsk, is the biggest thing. We haven't stopped writing, living, breathing, loving, and wandering. We haven't stopped being us because of this fiasco. And it is a fiasco. It threw us for a loop when we got that random friend request, and it threw us for a loop to realize yesterday they got married. What we can do, though, is to recognize it, and not let it be more than a fading thing.

We can also sit back with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and wait for the wedding photos to crop up and crack up (in more than one way, probably) but that's a normal reaction.

The other normal reaction for us to write him into whatever we're working on, and we have. In little ways, we have. We'll listen to music, cry a little, and keep writing.

This will, eventually, be just another day to us. Another Saturday because, honestly, it doesn't have specific meaning to us. It's not our wedding day, not our anniversary (or one that we should be keeping track of, at any rate) and it's really not important to us. Mean? Slightly. Truthful? Definitely. And that's one thing we refuse to do, is lie to ourselves. Not when it counts the most.

We've come along way. And you've come further yet to get here. We've got more to go, too. More wandering, loving, writing, and most importantly, living. Live it up, kid, cause this life? It's the only one we've got. And to spend it freaking out about a path we didn't take? Not worth it, no matter what we thought he was worth to us back then because there's a Murphy out there for us somewhere. We've just gotta run into a few cars to find him, first.

Love,
Louise

Things to Know: International Edition VII

- Things to Know is a series that can be chalked up to disconnected moments of randomosity from the darkest recesses of my noggin.

- Or it can just be good fun, it's really your call.

- I love YouTube.

- I watched Cats last night on previously mentioned YouTube and have come to a few conclusions, first and foremost being that I'm in love with Munkustrap's thighs. The actor who plays him - quite well, I might add - spends most of his time in a crouch position instead of upright.

- Oh, those thighs.

- I'll be honest, that's probably about the depth of my shallowness, watching Cats clips repeatedly to see men in spandex.

- The costuming though? Absolutely amazing.

- All this talk of cats and Cats has probably freaked out my sister by this point, after her #DamnCats fiasco last weekend.

- I got home in fifteen days. By home, I mean New York.

- I found my plane ticket stub from when I came over here, and I started to cry.

- For as much as I want to go home, I'm going to have a difficult time leaving this place.

- I'm that (un)fortunate soul who makes home wherever she goes.

- I'm not entirely sure what I should do the packed but not sucked space bags currently occupying my bed.

- On the bright side, I can get the pillow out from one of them and sleep on that one more night.

- My flat mate, the one who has the vacuum, went home rather unexpectedly this morning out of fear of having to drive through a ridiculous amount of snow.

- They've canceled trains and such because of the weather - impending in places - and dumping snow in others.

- I'm hoping for snow.

- My hair's gotten longer, and this is fairly important as I've missed the amount of hair I used to rock my senior year of high school.

- It's a royal pain in the ass to straighten, but hey, every now and then is fine.

- This is going to sound a little odd, but, I think I've hit the point where wearing my incredibly curly, slightly afro-like hair down makes me feel....kind of pretty.

- Just found the missing plate.

- Said missing plate is sitting on my windowsill, with the empty Oreo wrapper on it.

- I can't remember the last time I shaved my legs and I really don't care.

- I might pack the shaver and send that home through the mail.

- My Twitter is a goldmine tonight. An absolute goldmine.

- Louise needs to go to bed.

- Once she figures out where to put the vacuum bags.

- I figured this out a while ago, but, I think there's a ghost that lives in my bathroom.

- No idea why he lives in my bathroom of all places. One would expect the wardrobe.

- Every night after I crawl in bed, he pokes his head around the corner, and then wanders back into the bathroom.

- No big deal; both houses in New York are haunted.

- I think I'm ready to go home.

-Might have to get back to you on that last one.

Weekend Wanderings

Just a little heads up for you - so you don't wonder quite where I've wandered off to and possibly forgotten to come back from - I'm heading out of town in little less than seven hours. First to Oxford to see a friend of mine from high school and then on to London proper for the rest of the weekend.

Yes, I have an entire day extra day in London which I will find lovely things to do and see, most likely including wandering aimlessly while snapping pictures like the overzealous tourist that I can be.

So, come Monday or Tuesday, expect a recap of the Madcap Misadventures that are sure to happen while I'm in that international wonder known as London.

If you'd like to follow to me while I'm away from my blog, you can more or less live vicariously through me via Twitter, as I Tweet from my phone, and of course, come Monday or Tuesday, there will be plenty of pictures on Photobucket for those of you who don't have access to my Facebook. Fear not, there will be plenty to, again, live vicariously through me.

And that concludes our general Public Service Announcement

Simple Little

I'm not overly complicated. The only place that I really get complicated and exactly organized (other than school, and even then that's sometimes a fail of epic proportions for all good intents and purposes) is work when I have anywhere from twenty to twenty-four people to look after and serve four courses to. Then it requires timing and, for lack of a better phrase, having all your shit together. Other than that I'm fairly simple. My favorite cookies are chocolate chip or sugar cookies - though there is, of course, a soft spot in my heart for my sister's Monster Cookies - and I'd rather spend a quiet night at the house than out on the town. Which doesn't mean that I don't get out. When I do, it's the little things. Well, okay, they might not seem like little things, but they're not what I would consider big and grand.

Big and grand is going abroad. Simple and little is going to the State Fair with the family.

And yeah, it's as easy as that for me.

After sitting in the car for about two hours and completely ignoring the end of the printed directions - because Mama knew sortakinda where she was going, though it had been a good twelve years since we'd been there last - we made it to the Fairgrounds in Syracuse. And started off the day wandering through the ox barn. Then on into the Youth Building. I didn't make it down to our county's display, but that was okay, because there were baby chicks at the one end of the building. They're such fluffballs. All cute and yellow and little. Mads wouldn't hold one because she didn't like the way their feet felt, but Mama held it and she petted it. It was soft, like "Morephy."

Have I mentioned lately that I love that three foot tall three-year-old?

Then it was wandering through the sheep barn. If I found one named Russell I think I might have laughed hysterically right then and there. There was one named Molly - and she looked exactly like a sheep looks - and some of them weren't overly happy. Somewhere in there we took a detour through the beef cows - who were bellowing worse than the sheep - and baby pigs are so cute. Baby goats, on the other hand...well, I'm not overly fond of goats.

Grandma E and Willis used to have a goat. Nasty thing, mean spirited and it hated me. It would come close enough to let me touch it, wait until I had my hand on the rope it was tied to, and then run in the opposite direction. Gave me the most wonderful rope burns on the palms of my hands when I was, like, seven. Needless to say I was not overly sad when the damn thing died.

Anyway. At noon we watched this fabulous thing called "Dueling Pirates". High-diving pirates. Yes, please. They were a little crazy, and that's okay. You kind of have to be to jump from seventy feet into nine feet of water. After some lunch it was on to the almost one mile trek to the middle of nowhere in the fairgrounds to get to the Hollywood Circus because you could feed a giraffe. I'm not joking. It was a legit giraffe and it could bend over the railing of its enclosure and come about head level and eat carrots from your hand. It was one of the most amazing things that I've done, being that up close and personal with a giraffe. A giraffe, I should remind you, that doesn't know the difference between carrots and fingers. Don't worry, I still have all ten of mine. And so does Mads.

By then it was getting into the afternoon, and it was a scorcher (don't ask how many ounces of water I'd drank because the answer would probably scare you) and we went back into the dairy building to have ice cream. Yes, they have an entire building devoted to dairy, including the butter sculpture. Which is an entire sculpture made of butter. Which is really cool when you think about it, pun not intended.

Mads was tuckered out by then with all that she'd done since arriving at the fair, and Mama wanted to take in the Beatles tribute concert so we were going to stick around. And we went and caught up with the rest of the family, catching the tail end of the Sea Lions show (which was free) and then moving onto the Wild Animal show. That was pretty cool. Monkeys are more spastic than you would probably believe.

I took a break then and indulged in some carnival rides. You know the thing with the swings? You sit in the swing and then it takes you up and starts spinning around? I love those. The swings are still my favorite playground apparatus, and to sit on one of these things, it's really cool. Only, the one that I rode at Darien Lake on Senior Day in high school wasn't quite this high or this fast but it was cool. Felt a bit like flying. I decided to wait a bit after that for the Ferris Wheel, because that's one of those things you want to do toward twilight.

Mama, Aunt N, and Uncle K staked out seats at the Beatles tribute concert and I went back through the midway to the Ferris Wheel. And standing on the ground and looking up...suddenly, this seemed like it might not be the greatest idea that I've ever had. Dad likes Ferris Wheels, though. When we could come to the Fair when I was little, he'd go on the Ferris Wheel. Not the little one, either. He'd go on the big one. So it was one of those instances of okay, go big or go home.

So I went big. You only live once. And the view was awesome.

And that Beatles tribute concert? If you had never heard the Beatles actually sing, you'd think you were watching them. It was quite lovely.

It was well worth the insane amount of walking I did, as well as the sunburn, backpack strap tan lines, and I did I mention that we brought fudge home? Any day that ends with fudge is always a good day.

Things to Know XV

- The stripes on my shoulders at work don't mean a damn thing. As I said to one of my tables earlier, we're all in the same boat.

- I cringed for nearly eight minutes after that last one.

- I was laying in bed this morning, listening to the traffic and wondering why it sounded like everybody was doing at least 65 by the house, and then realized it's NASCAR.

- Some people in this world, no matter how hot it gets, really need to keep their shirt on in public.

- There is such a drink as a "Vodka Relax". Whether it actually helps you reach your goal, I'm not sure.

- When a customer says to you, "When you get a minute..." they rarely ever mean for you to get them what you want in that minute. Because you rarely have that minute to yourself.

- Not a big fan of the phrase "When you get a minute..." since they usually want it right then and they wouldn't ask for it if they didn't want.

- Twenty-four people is a little much to have for a full four course meal.

- Then again, rock it.

- Greg laughed at me (after jokingly ragging on me) about my look of sheer horror as the spider dropped from one of the ceiling tiles to nearly land on some poor kid's shoulder on his way out.

- I am not a big fan of spiders. Seriously.

- Though Greg looks at me funny when I smash them into the wall, even though I tell him I'll clean it up (and always do).

- I've been reading a bunch of Age of Sail novels (Lord Ramage, anyone?) but I don't really know that much about actual sailing (schooners, sailboats, anything not run with a motor) so I've been asking Greg and Tony, who are a wealth of interesting if slightly useless (at times) knowledge.

- Greg drew me a little diagram on a piece of paper with an explanation about how a ship tacks.

- I'm still not sure I fully understand and the diagram got thrown away. I think.

- Some days I feel like Wonder Woman. Other days, more like I'm a bug and I've gone twelve rounds with a windshield.

- I really don't know anything about wines.

- Especially the differences between a riesling and a pinot grigio.

- Both of those, however, are white wines. That much I know.

- Other than that, you're on your own.

- I am completely craving bread pudding right now. The kind they make at the restaurant - homemade covered in some sort of icing, chocolate, and caramel.

- On that note, I think I might go get some sleep.

Murphy and Me XXIII

Whatever the hell that damned beeping was, someone needed to shut it off. As of yesterday, preferably.

The mattress rolled a little - and it was breathing, too. Smelled a lot like Murph, come to think of it.

The blaring ceased; a big hand traced up and down my spine. Murph shifted again, cheek pressed to the top of my head.

"Was that the alarm?" I asked what felt like his collarbone, eyes resolutely shut.

"Yup." He shifted again, rolling up on his side to curl around me. Something poked me in the chest. Further blind inspection produced Smokey and I finally cracked my eyelids apart.

Gray. Dark gray, more specifically. Stretched across a broad shoulder and wide chest. I'd never really taken the opportunity to look at Murph while suckered to his side; never really seen the way the clean line of his throat meets that of his jaw, and then further up, his nose. Straight and with the tiniest of knobs on the bridge. He's broken it before, probably.

"Morning."

I buried my nose in the dip of his collarbone with a grunt that sounded suspiciously like shuddup.

"Breakfast?"

Well...now that you mention food.

"M'up." Not really, but I was workin' on it. I rubbed my forehead on his t-shirt and sat up, stretching. Scrubbed my eyes and looked down at Murph, half-asleep on his back, comforter rucked around his waist. I was trying to figure out the best way to get off the bed without moving him.

"You need help?" He looked at me through his bangs.

"Nah. Don't move." I freed my legs from the comforter and crawled over his waist. The drop off was a little bigger than I was used to - the dismount a little sloppy - but I wound up on two feet all the same. Steadiness was a different story.

Murphy rolled out right behind me, pressing a kiss to the back of my neck.

Devan snored blissfully on from the other side of the room.

I gathered my keys. "I need twenty minutes and I'll be back down."

Murph rubbed at what morning stubble (wasn't much) that he had and nodded. I don't think all his neurons were firing yet.

Then again, neither were mine since I nearly whacked myself in the face with the door on my way out.



"He's not a morning person," I said to Sasha around a spoonful of Half-Baked. "Makes breakfast conversation real interesting."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Neither of us talk."

I though she was going to choke on a fish-shaped piece of chocolate she was laughing so (unnecessarily) hard. I stabbed at a piece of brownie, cheeks flaming. I glanced at the TV - Tristan was dragging Yvaine by a magical chain, prattling about Victoria. "How's Cara?"

Sasha looked at her melting pint of ice cream. "She slept at Danielle's last night." She swallowed, blinking furiously. "She slept somewhere else."

Not with me, in our room, was the unspoken lament. Which was understandable. Sasha had put a lot of hard thought into even asking Cara to be roommates - which had involved copious amounts of Ben and Jerry's - and had taken a bit of convincing on my part to get her to that point. And she'd been so happy when Cara had said yes. Hell, I'd been happy for her, and the entire situation had threatened to give me cavities. Still, Sasha was my best friend. It wasn't in me to not be happy for her with something like this.

And it wasn't in my to watch her suffer over this, either.

"When was the last time you talked to her?"

Sasha shrugged. "A few days."

So, face-to-face was not....good. "Texts?"

"Longer."

This was not good on any level.

"I think you need to talk to her. In person. In your room." In case it goes bad, was unspoken between us. I fished in the semi-melted pint by my hip for a piece of cookie dough. "That's what I think you should do."

She looked at me, wide-eyes and wobbly mouth. "Can we watch RENT?" she whispered.

"Yeah. We can watch RENT." It would turn us into a total sobbing, soggy disaster. But I think we needed that.



It was a very good thing I'm not lactose intolerant otherwise I'm prety sure I'd have been dead the next morning. My stomach was a little off - too much, too late - but nothing overly ridiculous. Nothing that prevented me from rolling (literally) out of bed to go to the breakfast with Jo. Followed by a few moments on our way out to ogle Murph as he went into the dining hall, dressed in his suit jacket. Well, paused long enough to know they had a game today and get three nearly identical looks. One was slightly different in that it said it was alright to miss the game.

I knew that. Still.

Like I said before, neither of us carry grudges when it comes to games, and I knew that we were doing something tonight.

So it wasn't a big deal to spend my afternoon in the lounge doing homework. Not at all. I did send Murph a message telling him I was coming down at nine. And fielded messages from my sister - Izzy - about said boy.

He your boyfriend?

Yes. Snapped the phone shut and stuffed it in my back pocket. Looked through my closet. Couldn't make a decision to save my life.

When you gonna change your Crackbook status?

She would. She really would. When i talk to murph. I picked out a shirt and tossed it on the bed. Phone buzzed again.

Did you tell him your niece has a kitten named Murphy?

I blinked. Forgot about that completely. Eh. Well. Murph should get a kick out of it.

I think.

You. Yeah, You. With the Hair.

[A fairly short letter to my fifteen-year-old self. This is not beyond you.]

Molls,

Hey kid. It's been a rough year, hasn't it? But if I'm writing to you, and I'm twenty, and you're fifteen, means you made it through it, didn't ya? Yeah, yeah, I can see that little half-smile, the one we wear when we're like, yeah, I'm good like that. You keep that smile. I wanna see it every day, at least once in the mirror. Even when you don't think you have anything to smile about, I wanna see it.

I know you feel twenty kinds of busted right now. I remember that. Wasn't a good time for us - lots of tears, lots of other emotion, and the fact that Ryan was going to go away to college was seriously freaking us out on the inside. Not that we let anybody see how much that bugged us. But you did good things, too. And good things happened. Remember, you got the highest score out of the freshman on that Language Arts Olympiad thingy? You got a medal, and were all smiley because most of the family was there to see it, too. And it felt like things were looking up again, like things were going right. Um..you win that again. As a senior. You can probably tell that you like English and writing a lot. Well, you more or less kick ass about it.

Another thing you kick ass about? You write one hell of a narration paper your junior year. And you read it in front of the class, and you shed a tear or two because it more or less feels a lot like healing. Takes you two drafts to figure out how to say everything without giving anything away to the only boy sitting in the room - who has an oblique reference in the narration - and you rock out with it. As only you can. Coincidentally, it's the same year that you really get a love of movies and write some pretty good stuff in creative writing. Both of which have appeared on the blog (this blog) and one that appears on a literary site on the internet (you get privileges back, don't worry) where people read and comment. They like it. Some are confused by it, others just roll with it.

You do really well ignoring the politics of high school as best you can. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You do well in the end. You graduate our lucky number.

Remember how we go off and on about every other year with being really sick? Well...you get sick. And nobody really knows what's wrong because our body is awesome like that. But the friends that you make in college - and I'm not telling you where, because I don't want to bias you in any way - are amazing. They buy you the twelve scooper from Friendly's because you went without dairy for two weeks.

There's a few more scars than you're used to. Some physical - you have three on your belly - and some are emotional - Ben - but you get through them. You take a shine to Ben and Jerry's ice cream and you do well. Granted, things have gotten rough the past couple of semesters, but you hang tough. You hang in there. Iron-Man soccer only with real life. Breathe. Sometimes you forget to do that.

You're a good person. You've got your moments - your days - when things don't go well, and you can't help but voice that opinion very loudly. That's okay. People listen (you've found the right ones!) and you have a blog with which to outlet yourself. This is your blog. This is part of your writing. Part of your personality that you share with people who won't know you in the world not made of the internet, and that's okay. Through your writing they know you. And that's how it should be.

You're still working on the novel. Six years later, and you're still working on it. Jack's dad's had three name changes. No pressure.

You get your ear pierced again. And by ear, I mean your cartilage on your right side. Mom and dad are pretty much okay with that. She's a little disappointed that you didn't tell her, but it's nothing like when you got the tattoo. I'm not joking. And they're okay with that, too. And believe me - you know this, too - it feels so much better not to keep anything from mama.

The hair. We have this philosophy that hair grows back. Okay. It just takes a really long time.

Eventually, you get a car. You will love this car. You will adore this car. You will name this car "Fred." You will park Fred next to a bunch of newer, more expensive cars when you go to college. And you will chuckle at this.

You're a special person to a special someone. She's three feet tall at the moment, is you incarnate at that age, and absolutely loves you. You stomped in the mud with her.

Heather. Feels like she's far away, huh? She's not. Not really. You have one summer when you get close - like you're three years apart instead of twelve - and it just grows from there. She's your sister. She's been there, done most of it, and lived to tell the tale. Trust her. And she makes these really good things called Monster Cookies - she will bribe you for writing with them - and she loves you. She'll always be your big sister, and you can't - and won't - ever forget that.

Not only do you have a job, you like it. Really. You've been there three years. And you'll hopefully be there three more.

There are a ton more things I could say about us - about our good stuff and our bad. The important part is this: even though it feels like the world is going to end, and things can't possibly get worse (you practically married Murphy, therefore you know things can always get worse) you lived through it. You grew stronger. More you. More us. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the person you're - we're - going to become, even if the way there was heavily under construction in places, and filled with gaping sinkhole craters masquerading as potholes in others. We did it. And that's all that matters.

Well done, Molls. Well done.

Love,
Louise

Roots

I'm not quite sure how many of you listen to as much country music as I do - and on a regular basis, too - but there's this song titled The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert. And I've heard it a couple of times. There are some wonderful lines in there, and while some of them don't really mesh with life for me (I can't play guitar, and probably will never learn - I'd rather learn piano first) they still conjure a potent image. A specific potent image.

A little green house - that used to be brown, and still is, on the second floor in the front - that sits beside a stone driveway. Stone meaning rather uniformly sized large gravel that's kind of sharp in the summertime when you walk down the driveway barefoot. Walking barefoot anywhere within a hundred yard radius is pretty much a given between the end of May and the beginning (if the weather cooperates) of October, anyway.

So there's this little green house in a place called Townsend. Ask me where I'm from and you're going to get that response, even if we don't have a post office, don't have a traffic light (but we do have a stop sign) and everybody has a back yard in varying degrees of largeness. This little green house sits across from what used to be the stereotypical country store where if it was dinnertime, and there was nothing to eat, it became a great night for cheeseburgers on the gas grill, and Louise, go get some buns from the store across the road.

The school bus stopped at the little green house from kindergarten all the way through junior year.

One of the song lyrics is, If I could just come in I swear I'll leave/Won't take nothin' but a memory/Of that house that built me.

The little green house built me.

It was a place where I learned to run before I walked (which is, rather ironically, still true of many things). Where I took naps on the floor (and more or less slept there at night, too). Did my homework curled up on the right end of the couch and usually had a cat lying over the textbook I was trying to read. Which still happens, now that I'm in college. I used to practice my soccer juggling skills in the living room. The shade for the overhead light has never been the same. And the ball was a bit flat at the time.

The house that built me was the house my grandfather grew up in. Where my parents had lived for thirty or so years of their marriage. Where I lived for seventeen years. Where I started my novel, on the back porch in August after the world more or less tipped, tilted, and slid off its axis for a little while. Where I wrote most of the book I'm still working on, six years later. Where, during breakfast, I used to watch that one spastic little fawn run from one side of the upper yard to the other while his mother looked on, thoughtfully chewing on an apple from one of the little trees.

The turkeys. Oh, the turkeys.

Actually, more like a flock of forty turkeys and one brave (stupid) gray, black, and white cat who thought he was invincible. And wound up making new friends that he couldn't catch off a bird feeder.

The apple tree that was basically scorched on one side hand in hand with the barrels dad used to bring home from work, and that first fire in the them. Be thankful if it didn't blow up in your face. Literally.

Some are more funny than others. That's true of life. The main point - that house and the people in it, built me. Much the same way that Miranda was built by the house she lived in. My roots are buried in the back yard, near the "stream" (use the term loosely) and the apple tree that's only half-living (and how it hasn't died yet completely I don't know) with a view of the sun settin' behind those western rolling hills. I'm not being poetic - that's just the way things are around here. The hills roll (my friend from Massachusetts called them "mountains" the first time she saw them, mostly because where we go to school is much more flat than a mere thirty-five mils south) the grass grows (exponentially from the first hard rainfall and warm spell, and good luck getting a handle on it) and the peepers hardly shut their mouths. Rain-clean earth is one of the sweetest smells there is - along with molten asphalt, and summer-breeze-dried clothes from the line - and an endless sky above makes you feel very, very tiny in the grand scheme of things. Very tiny and very much alive.

And if that doesn't work, jumping in the lake certainly will, as that hardly reaches comfortable temperature even in the middle of August.

Part of the house that built me is hearing the current hooligans (or people with much, much nicer cars than I drive - not newer; some are nearly twice my age, along with their drivers) going around the track. You get good enough to start recognizing the time of year (Porsche, BMW, or NASCAR) and the type of vehicle (Porsche, BMW, stock car) by sound. That and the type of people you start seeing in town. Wine Festival? Go the old way.

We're all built by different things, events, people, and places into who and what we are today. I was built mostly by a little green house in a place that not many have heard of - and partly by the house across the road, and those six months of inhabiting the same space as certain family members again, oh, yeah, and have I mentioned that we've been living here four years and only recently (November) got curtains for upstairs - and the people I share it with. There's a bit left in the building process. That's okay, though. I'd think I'd rather have it that way than not.

Beautiful

It's funny. The title, that is. Because I sure as shit don't feel like it right now.

For one thing I'm incubating a head cold. For another, I can't really sit up straight right now - my digestive system is running rampant and it's just downright painful in a way that I haven't had to deal with in a very long time. And I'm at a little bit of a loss as to how to deal with it, because it's intense. And I just want to curl up and sleep for about twelve hours (honestly, but I can't do that, because I have this lesson plan that I need to finish for tomorrow because I'm teaching it) and maybe invest in a hot water bottle. Or a heating pad. Anything to make it so that I can sit up straight at the moment and not look like I'm going to permanently damage my spine in my chair.

My nose is runny, I'm hacking up a lung to a point that reminds me of my Whooping Cough days (but not there yet, and hopefully not again), and I can't really breathe through my nose. My lips are chapped, flaky, crusty, and downright disgusting. I'm so bloated that I could pass as pregnant. If anything, I feel the complete opposite of the title of this post.

What made me feel slightly better?

Well, my sister is probably going to attempt to disown me for watching Glee (to which I blame my last perspective because she watched it, and now I'm watching it) and the song they did at the end, during their "pep rally" thing - after which the episode was spent about an upcoming reporter coming to do a piece on the cheerleading squad in which they wanted one girl to drop about ten pounds in one week (again, reminiscent of my Whooping Cough days) and in the end they realized, as people really should at that age (and my age, because it's something that people still struggle with) that people are beautiful the way they are.

So they sang Beautiful.

And I'm not going to lie it made my day a little better. I feel pretty shitty right now, health wise, considering that I keep breaking into random cursing because my belly thinks it needs to stab itself from the inside, and I'm wheezing. Especially when I sleep. Makes me wish I was home so the cat and I could sleep and wheeze together.

However. I'm currently 40 miles from home (and Pepper, the cat, and Corona [yes, most likely named after the beer, but you would have to ask my sister] the dog), still feeling like crap and occasionally barking like an asthmatic seal and more or less have to do this on my own. Lovely.

I got Ruby (the bear) and Edgar (whatever the hell he is, we're still trying to figure that out, but we do know that he's green and fluffy) and a dorm bed currently calling my name. And above all, I have the knowledge somewhere in my brain that to someone out there - and to myself right now - I am beautiful in ways that aren't necessarily evident at the moment.

Or maybe it's because of that that I am beautiful. I'll leave that up to you to decide.

Bad Road

I'm an honest person. A very honest, very open, empathic personality.

Occasionally it comes back to bite me in the ass. Hard.

This past week has been quite rough on your favorite (I know, I'm assuming a lot here) Sagittarius. It's a combination of lots of little things - and some not so little things - and everyone has a tipping point. It fluctuates a little (not wildly, otherwise that would mean some pretty big issues) and I tipped over it yesterday. Yesterday night, in fact (which, if you read that and you're slightly confused, yesterday night is also synonymous with the phrase 'last night') and it wasn't pretty. It's never pretty when someone who's usually completely with it completely freaks out and dissolves into tears for an hour while on the phone with her mother. At eleven, no less. On a Thursday.

And I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that everything was back to where it should be. For the most part, it is.

I have a legitimate to-do list in which I write things down, give them a number (not for ordering purposes, just because things should be numbered - it's a quirk), and cross them off when I'm done with them. I've used my planner more this year than I have ever in my life, including high school where they gave us one at the beginning of the year. Then again, it also doubled as our hall passes, and they greatly frowned upon you if you had no pass in the hall or came to class without your planner. I have a planner. I write things in it. I used red ink for the important things - major due dates, major events, things like that. Regular homework (you can find my physics homework in black ink) is a different color and not all capped. And my to-do list is folded in half (both pages - we hit page two earlier this week) is under the binder clip holding the front pages, the weeks already gone by, together so when I open it it's on the current week. It's hectic, messy, and largely reflective of the girl that keeps it.

Girl here is deliberate. I don't feel very much like a young woman - a young, twenty-year-old woman - one her own at college and striking it out on her own feet at her own pace and time. I don't feel much like that at the moment, even though today is, as my mother told me yesterday night it would be, amidst my tears, better. I'm frustrated, overwhelmed, and the part of me that's never quit anything in my life no matter how badly it's going is trying to silence the part of me that keeps screaming, You can't do this!! Silencing that voice is like trying to silence that voice in the back of your head that says, your tummy doesn't feel well today. Where's those pants, the big ones...and the sweatshirt and t-shirt, because your love handles look exceptionally large today, too.... Those voices live together, and when one starts clamoring, the others aren't far behind and before you know it, your self-esteem drops through the floorboards and the pints of Ben and Jerry's at Wegman's start lookin' real good.

I've already had my pint for the week. Wednesday. Em and I really need a RENT night, so I biked to Weggie's, got three pints (the cashier, a guy about my age, just more or less looked at me, asked me how I was, and then looked at the amount of ice cream. I merely replied it was a 'rough week') and then went back to the house where she lives (she lives in a theme house) and we walked to the corner of Jackson (that feels like a second home to her, dare I say like the one in Townsend does) and proceeded to bask in each other's company and the music, story, and love of RENT. Thank you, Jonathan Larson. And thank you, Ben and Jerry.

I'm going to point out that we laughed ourselves silly when Collins first appeared, after getting mugged, and burst into the loft with a cheery, "Merry Christmas, bitches!" around a cigar. We backed it up three times, at least. Same with Mark's first twitch-dancing in Tango Maureen.

Now fast-forward to Thursday. The paper proposal went fine (I changed my entire topic from poverty to education, and should mention that we have been denied access to schools in Toronto, cited as, 'invasive' and therefore most of my 'research' is going to come from any and all random conversations I have with people on the streets) but the test - the retaking of the second exam - started off good.

And rapidly went downhill like a freakin' landslide of monumental proportions. Village-leveling, even.

It's frustration. It's frustration and self-doubt, those two things that constantly follow you everywhere and that you can't seem to get rid of. It's not that I don't know the material. I can tell you what's going to happen, what you should do, and I can do it on the homework just fine. Put me in a room with a test and I, for lack of a better way to phrase it, freak the fuck out. I don't know why. I just do. And, yesterday started off great - rolling along through the multiple choice, doing just fine and dandy - and then that first question that you're not sure of pops up. Then you start to doubt if you know it well enough, because the next one seems a little trippy. From there, everything snowballs ridiculously, and there's really nothing you can do about it, but sit there, swear silently in your head, try not to look at the cute guy further on down the row that you've somehow developed a ridiculous crush on, and before you know it, it's been three hours and you and another girl are the only ones left. And by that point, I was so frustrated that I wanted to cry, my calculator had died, and I wanted nothing more than for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Test and everything.

Which led to the call home and freaking out, with much crying and sniffling, and I need to wash my one long-sleeved shirt before I wear it in public again, and Mama being Mama.

It's one thing to tell someone that you have enough faith in them for them to get the help that they need, and quite another to finally tell yourself that you can't go on the way you're going and that you need assistance. What we figured is that because the housing for next year, due to the fact that I'm going abroad is a little up in the air, that's been eating at me, in the back of my mind. I don't want to end up living somewhere in which I don't know my roommate, if I have one, or if I sign with someone in a quad, don't know the people I'm living with. That being said, there's also the frustration of not knowing what to do in order to actually meet these people going abroad in the spring, and the whole housing process in general. It's not like last year when I was looking for a single, and ran up two more floors and kind of scoped out, after the fact, where my room was and even looked at it because I knocked on the door of the girl living there. I knew what I was doing, what options I had. I don't know any of that, at the moment. And that's something that's probably been bugging me.

Another big, big issue is the freaking out about the tests. That's most likely not something the CTL (Center for Teaching and Learning, of which I'm not going back if I don't have to, simple as that - I thought it was maybe just multiple choice tests, and walked out of there feeling less intelligent than I was and like I hadn't accomplished anything) can fix, but probably anxiety related. And the way to fix that is to see someone at the Counseling Center.

Which, naturally, brings up a lot of internal conflicts.

The first, of course, being, I've got no problem telling someone who needs that extra person to talk to see someone. When it comes to yourself? You really have to tamp down every misconception you have, and a good part of your pride, too, because you need the help. I'm not going crazy in any aspect of my life other than the fact that there is something wrong when I sit down to a test. Some part of me that simply panics and goes blank, and gets frustrated. Something that I haven't been able to fix on my own, but that I need assistance with. So I have an appointment. It was really hard to do, but this can't go on. This disconnect between knowing the material - liking it, too - and shitty test scores can't go on. It's not good for my stress level - which is probably why my face looks like Louise a la middle school, again, and I'm really impressed that I haven't seriously started itching because of my psoriasis - and something that just keeps weighing you down no matter how you try to fix it on your own.

I'm not going to lie because there's part of me that's twitching sporadically at the thought of having an appointment at the Counseling Center, but if it's going to make things better (thinking and comparing back to surgery because nobody's really sure what's going on in there), then you hold your tears, let go of your pride a little, and reach out because it's what you need.

My very wise friend, who was lying face-down on the quad as I walked out of class earlier, told me, You can keep going on your own because you've always done it, alone. Or you don't have to do it alone.

It was hard. It was really hard to walk in there, and tell the secretary that you think you need to talk to someone because this whole freaking out about tests is not good. And that's that. Mama said last night that there was help available, and that all I had to do was reach out a little. People are willing to help; you just have to swallow enough times and allow them to. It's not saying that you can't do it on your own, it's just that you don't have to do it on your own.

Things are in a sort of fragile equilibrium at the moment. Taking little bites over a longer period of time (Mama) will help space everything out, and that way, when it comes time when everything is due, there is no freaking out. It's sound advice. Difficult for a recovering procrastinator, but sound advice.

Right now? Decompression is much needed. Which is why I'm going to spend the time until my appointment with Residential Education to talk about my housing for next spring working on some of my writing. Which, as usual, comes back at the most inopportune moments (not that I'm really complaining) and I've really made some headway with working on the beginning/editing slowly Sage, which is really due for an update. That, and maybe I'll get around to making more changes with The Crossing. And speaking of that, there's good news to come out of this whole emotional hurricane - I know where I'm going in the composition book. I know where things are heading from this last set of page-break stars. And I'm really excited for that.

Things are a little difficult. What's important to remember through everything is that there are people who love you, and care about you. And want you to do well, and look at the bigger picture when the details get overwhelming. Look at the bigger picture of coming home, going back to work, and seeing a smile on a little face. Normalcy in a way that's intimately familiar, and makes sense on a bone-deep level. See the bigger picture of what's in the Fall, and the adventures just waiting to happen, the new friendships waiting to blossom, and the chance to wander in a completely new place. It's entirely possible to drown in the details when living in the bigger picture, and you can't throw yourself a safety line. Or if you can, you're damn talented. I'm not that talented.

So now there's a bit of a plan, the repeated mantra of You can do this, and the reminder that there's a place that's always behind you. It ain't easy, but that's just life.

And this...well, this was a reminder. At exactly the right time, from someone who always knows what I need and when I need it.

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh?' he whispered.

'Yes, Piglet?'

'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"

—
A.A. Milne