Who, Me? An Unofficial Official #PitchWars Mentee Bio

I should not be doing this. I should be frantically cleaning my apartment because my landlord is showing it to someone this afternoon while I'm at work since I'm moving this month. I feel like Loki's I DO WHAT I WANT gif his highly appropriate here, and, you know, maybe one of these days I'll teach myself how to put gifs in my blog text. Pictures I can do.

PitchWars is back! Yay! If you're not sure what PitchWars is, go here and see the lovely Brenda Drake (she has the details).

So who I am, besides a clearly Wandering Sagittarius? Weeell....I'm a performance grade asphalt binder technician for a construction company in Central New York. I work with the stuff that make roads and can use my BA in chemistry on a daily basis. Pretty much. So, my life is kind of like this.

Maybe not that extreme. More like this, really.

My coffee has clearly worn off. But this happens when you work 40-60 hours a week.

Righteo. Some cool things about me.

1) I'm Part Cow
Yes, you read that right. I'm part cow. I found out in March 2013 that I was born with an ASD - atrium septal defect - in which the hole between the top two chambers of your heart don't close when you're born. My cardiologist wasn't comfortable with the size of the hole (huge, apparently, and we later learned that huge meant size of a half dollar) and sent me to another cardiologist who was going to put an artificial patch in. Well, when he looked at the size of the hole, not only was it huge, there also wasn't enough on the one side of the heart wall for it to anchor to.

About a year ago (August 29, 2013) I underwent open heart surgery at the age of 23. They put a patch made of cow (they usually use pig, but I have cow) over the hole, wired my sternum back together, and my cousins dubbed me "The Iron Cowheart Lady" when they gave me an Iron Man arc reactor t-shirt while I was recovering in the cardiac step-down unit.

2) I've Always Been a Writer
When I was six I thought writing a book was taking a published book and transcribing it into a notebook. Now that I'm significantly older, I know that's called plagiarism, and I've since then started really working with my overactive imagination and ideas. As a result I've finished five novels - two of which belong in a series - and three of which I'm seriously querying to find an agent/get published. This includes my PitchWars entry, FROST, which is a retold fusion of Jack Frost and The Pied Piper set in a small town in the New York Adirondack Mountains. What's pretty cool is that FROST didn't start off as a novel, it started as a dramatic text I wrote for a class I took in 2010 while studying abroad in Wales. 

Though I still haven't managed to finish that ten composition book monstrosity I started my first year of high school, I did decide to start to rewrite it. There's something really fulfilling about reconnecting with the first set of characters you ever worked with.

3) A Dead Poet's Practical Magic
I'm a movie junkie. I have an ever-expanding crate of them, a years-old Netflix subscription, and can basically quote you certain films line by line. My favorites are by far Dead Poets Society and Practical Magic. My current favorite TV love is the BBC's The Musketeers, though I am a lover of all things geek, including various series of Star Trek and shows like Stargate: SG-1, The Big Bang Theory, Stargate: Atlantis. Superhero movies? Love those, too. My BFF came to visit a couple weeks ago and brought me mini action figures of Data and Riker. I squealed loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood at 1 am.

A Few More Random Fun Facts
- I can't have pets in my apartment, so I consider Henry the Houseplant my pet.
- My writing tends to have either alternating POV's or multiple POV's.
- I am not the world's biggest fan of first person POV, though there are some exceptions - like Kenneth Oppel's Matt Cruise series (which is phenomenal).
- I put together 750-piece puzzles in my spare time.

That's pretty much me in a nutshell. I'm also a hot mess of crazy most days, but nobody needs to know that. Thanks very much for stopping by, and good luck to all my fellow mentees, who's fantastic bios can be found right here. Go check them out!

Through the Looking Glass

My first legitimate college paper for my first history class was done via my first academic all-nighter in the lounge outside my first dorm room and I ate nearly an entire package of Oreos by myself. I was also pretty damn sure I was going to fail my upcoming Chem 110 exam, and then there was also exploratory abdominal surgery to look forward to over winter break.

Good news was that I didn't fail my exam, surgery went fine, and I later went on to graduate with a BA in chemistry.

During my sophomore year I wrote a blog post titled Definition. In that moment I not only felt beautiful, but looked it. At least to me. As someone who had played over a decade of competitive sports having a positive body image was, sometimes, difficult to manifest. I later read this same post aloud in front of a room full of my peers - while wearing that same flannel shirt - during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I did some tabling for NEDAW, too, as one of my good friends used to have an eating disorder. All of those involved worked hard that week putting up sticky notes with positive messages on bathroom mirrors, showing how out of proportion a life-size Barbie is, having an open mic night, and much, much more.

The bottom line is that women, men, people in general come in all sizes and shapes. There are those who fight constantly to look in the mirror and find one good thing in a sea of negativity.

Which makes it frustrating beyond words when Fat Shaming Week actually becomes a thing.

I'd like to be kidding. Unfortunately, I'm not.

To the men at Return of Kings fat shaming is not only acceptable, but something that must be done. In a recent post about the success of their week, cultural blogger and RoK creator Roosh writes: "Fat shaming is less about bullying individual fat people than reaffirming the fact that obesity culture is not okay in America, and attempts to brainwash people of that fiction must be immediately be destroyed with logic, science, and schoolyard insults."

It's things like this that not only make me lose a little more faith in humanity, but also drive home the importance of To Write Love on Her Arms, NEDAW, and other social movements.

As a woman and a person, I wasn't put on this Earth to be someone's object. My body is my own and, like one of my recent Twitter updates - found here - it has been to hell and back in the past two months. If a man isn't as fond of my wide hips and love handles as I am, that's fine. Nobody wears my skin but me, which is why there's absolutely no justification for anyone to make me feel ashamed of it.

RoK wants to change the cultural mindset of America. My advice is to start with their own.

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.

The Sleepless Writers

Many of you know I write. Many of you also know I know quite a few people who share the same passion for writing and hopefully one day being published. We talk on a regular basis, and then, one day, somebody had this idea that we should start doing vlogs about writing stuff.

With the power of the internet at our disposal, we became The Sleepless Writers, made our own YouTube channel, and got busy making vlogs every day about a variety of different topics. After some feedback from our viewers, who thought our videos every day were a little heavy-handed and kind of spam-like in their feeds, we decided that we would take some time, have some interesting Skype discussions, and figure out a new way to do what it is that we love to do and what we offer to the wider audience.

Re-vamped, with newer purpose, and with our relaunch approaching on August 20, we are The Sleepless Writers, a collection of bloggers and vloggers. We'll talk about writing, book reviews, the life of a writer, and general randomosity, and we'll give stuff away, too.

You can follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook...we're pretty much everywhere.

We also blog.

This could quite possibly be the start of something really, truly fabulous.

The Sleepless Writers

Almost Like a B&N

I'm not one for self-promotion - especially when it comes to my writing - but I thought I'd try something a little bit different.

Many of you have probably figured out that I'm a little stuck with Murphy and Me. Mostly because I finished Sophomore Fall and started Sophomore Spring to have an excerpt to apply for the Trias Writer in Residence Workshop, and I kind of haven't touched the new writing process really at all yet, and I've been trying to edit my way through the first 59 pages of printed manuscript. So that's kind of stalled out right where it's at and I'm not entirely when I'm going to be doing something new with it, since I chose the retyping the whole damn thing route in terms of editing. I was already leaning that way, my professor also suggested it....

Anyway.

Maybe some of you knew this - and maybe some of you didn't - but I have this tendency to work on more than one project at a time. That way, if and when writer's block (yes, it's a real thing, and really frustrating to work with at times) hits, then I'm not totally stuck not writing for however long it takes to break out of the funk. In some cases - like with parts of The Crossing, that massive thing in composition books - it could be anywhere from a couple weeks to over six months. Patience, when writing, is key.

I have other projects, other novels in progress, that while not in the same sort of genre as Murphy and Me are somewhat in the same style and voice. So I thought I would go ahead and share their blurbs, their links, and a little bit about the inspiration behind the story. That way, while you're waiting on Murphy and Me to do something or actually go somewhere - hopefully in the direction of a publishing contract - you might find something else you like just as much, maybe more.

Sage
Eleanora Hope knew from the tender age of four what she was destined for – she was the latest in a long line of Sages, those charged with keeping the dead beneath the graveyard ground – and she had more than willingly accepted the task at hand. At eighteen she was the youngest Sage, a byproduct of the passing of her grandmother, Lynette, fifteen years after the murder of Ella’s parents. And while the dead might deem otherwise, Ella was more than content with the life she had reconciled herself to.

Until Azrael and Aeryn literally drop in and introduce her to part of reality she hadn’t rightly considered. With two voluntary fallen angels – one who might not be as angelic as he should be – they turn Ella’s quiet existence as Sage sideways. Now with the possibility of an apocalypse and a power-hungry council of women after her graveyard, Earth seems to have become the proverbial war zone, and the lines between angel, demon, human, and Sage are more than a little blurred.

But if life weren’t complicated, it wouldn’t be worth living. And life for this Sage is far from simple.

Sage was born out of the cemetery by the Colleges and walking through there with my best friend and her camera in the fall of our sophomore year. It originally started out as my National Novel Writing Month story, but I didn't finish even remotely close in the month of November, and it's sort of turned into an ongoing project. 

The Icicle Man
Mari's life was to look after the animals on the small farm she and her mother kept in the New York Adirondacks. Other girls had come back from college looking to settle down, shack up, and raise babies. She'd come back to the farm and its simplicity. It was all she wanted. Until she met Jack. Or rather, Jack met her on her way through the forest to her grandmother's.

Convinced she was one of those piper-stolen children, he cages her into returning to his palace, for he is the Icicle Man, Jack Frost. Mari's not sure what to believe, but she knows she's no piper's child. Jack's plan, whatever that may be, is turned on its head when Mari gives him a challenge he can't refuse - what it means to be human. As Jack steps out of his centuries-old role, Mari discovers what makes the frozen Winter Prince tick.

And what it means to be truly human.

The Icicle Man started out as a play text - and is actually still in that form, as well, though not here, here is the novel form - and was started during my semester abroad in Wales in the fall of 2010. It's a retelling of the European fairytale Jokul Frosti (Jack Frost) mixed with a little bit of The Pied Piper. And a whole lot of fun.

I'm hoping that while I figure out what I'm doing with Murph and Ollie that you'll take a look and maybe find something you enjoy just as much. Or maybe you spam my inbox with messages looking for more Murph and Ollie and that will kick start me into writing them again. Either way works for me, truthfully.  

300 Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies

A girl can wish, can't she? Apparently the six dozen my dad made for the house and delivered yesterday while they took my car to get it an inspection wasn't enough for the ravenous horde - and I say that with all the love in my heart - I live with. Considering these are also the people who ate their way through 74 homemade meatballs in one meal, I'm really not surprised.

I've had a fairly long day, including a rather awkwardly placed nap (which I really needed), and I've done some thinking. Normally Valentine's Day is a day when I feel more keenly the fact that I don't have a significant other. That I haven't had a date in three, almost four years. A day when it hurts just a little bit more to see girls wandering around with bouquets of flowers or boxes of chocolate-covered strawberries. The idea that they have someone for them in that capacity. And let's be clear, it's not just hetero couples. For those who have someone in that specific capacity, it's hard not to hit this particular day and feel a little left out.

The trick is to say to yourself it's only another day. All day. It's just Tuesday, February 14. Any other day.

There was class this morning. Then roughly two hours spent working on math disguised as chemistry. Looking back on that, my professors are the greatest. Especially for this independent study. They didn't have to take the time - we more or less worked through "lunch" though there was a package of Oreos out in the hallway to snack on - to work through this particular problem, and then work on another to make sure I really understood it, but they did. For that, the faculty in the Chemistry department are incredible.

And playing with little GC machines that used ambient air as the mobile phase? So totally cool. And yes, I will explain that further on down the road at some point, but the gist of it is that it was really cool science and a giant leap away from the monstrosity we had been using last semester.

Bottom line is that when you treat a day you might have problems with like any other day of the year, it gets more bearable. You don't necessarily remember what you think you're missing out on, but you realize more of what you can do. That it's possible to be an independent young lady (in my case) who's had to shuffle and reshuffle priorities and is still, sometimes, shuffling the deck again to find the perfect combination. Only it's probably not going to be perfect; merely workable. And then you work it.

That was for the "Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies" part of the title. Here's the really fun part for today.

This is the 300th post for the Wandering Sagittarius.

I have this ridiculous smile on my face. I don't know why, but I have this smile on my face that won't seem to go away with the fact that I'm typing the 300th post in a blog that's not-quite three years old yet. That I have somehow managed to find enough in the life of an undergrad to write about for 300 posts. It's a little mind-blowing.

And thank you - a big thank you - to all of my 43 followers. Thank you, essentially, for listening. Ups, downs, those odd movements sideways. Thank you for hearing it all.

On a final note, while I raise my coffee cup to you wonderful people, happy 300th. Here's to looking forward to many, many more.

Fantastic

This is going to sound a little odd, but one of my favorite bands is The Barenaked Ladies. I've been listening to them since I was in late middle school, early high school, and I have both their greatest hits album and their earlier album, Stunt. This is one of my favorite songs from that album, and I found a version of it where they're playing it in somebody's bathroom. Two men. A guitar. In a bathroom.

So. Some Fantastic (Ivory and Ivory)

Crooked Orbit

While I grab the gumption to go back to wrestling with analytical chemistry - which is kicking my ass, by the way, thought you should know - and waiting for my coffee brewed this morning twenty minutes after I decided I was sleeping for another hour to reheat, I figured I should say something fairly worthwhile.

For those waiting on Murphy and Me updates, I'm working on it, but my current schedule doesn't really allow for a lot of time to do anything other than homework. I broke it down the other day, more or less, into what I think I do and wound up with:

Time Usage (Outside of Class and Lab)
95% - Homework
5% - Sleeping, Eating, Soccer, Writing, Community Service, Teaching Placement, and Relaxing

Go figure. Anyway, whatever this might look like on the outside, it's been keeping me much more calm and everything is going great so far. That's on the academic front.

On the Weight Watcher's front, some days it feels like it's working a little more than others. Predictably, I have my good weeks and my bad weeks, but none so bad as to make more than one trip to Cold Stone during the week. That is positively a thing of the past. I'm not entirely sure how accurate my housemate's WW scale is, and as I'm making at trip home this weekend for a little bit, I'll check in on the one in our home bathroom to see if there's been some progress.

Oh, before I forget - and how could I, considering they were moving furniture at lovely times of the day yesterday while moving in (which is expected) - we have 3 new housemates. They're men. No idea who they are, but I have run into one of two of them as they were on their way from the bathroom to the stairs to the third floor, though I don't think any of us have actually met them. We think they play a sport, but as my one housemate didn't see them during hockey warm-ups last night, we're not actually sure which sport they play.

Wandering into the bathroom in the morning just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

The email from our house manager said they would only be staying 1-2 weeks. Knowing our Residential Education system, they're probably going to be here for the rest of the semester, which is just fine with all of us. It's actually feels good to have a full house, believe it or not.

Last but not least, I'm approaching 300 posts. I'm a little excited about that, having been around long enough to have 300 posts. So, because of that - and because I have a love of this particular song in general - I'll leave you with the song I have stuck in my head nine times out of ten.

A Cool Kid Friday Night

It's been a long week. Granted, I don't have class on Mondays, but I haven't heard from the teacher I'm supposed to be in with - I'm debating literally just showing up on Monday because I don't want to continue screwing around with this - and Wednesday's lab was spent making "Bouncing Putty" (Silly Putty, really), but in general, it's been a really long week. Wednesday was the day I stayed up the latest I've stayed up this entire semester - one in the morning - and then had a quick turn around to be in class at 8:45 the next morning with the entire afternoon spent at our Professor's house for food chem.

It's just been a long week.

The constant reminders coming through email and campus mail, along with the signs around campus for the Senior Event: Cap and Gown Measurements got a little difficult to handle. It was one of those days where it automatically gets filed under difficult because, you'd think with the technology we have today it would be feasible for them to get me off that email list. Hell, throw me onto the juniors list in the emails. I'm still a senior by the virtue of the amount of credits I have, but when you're not graduating, it hurts some deep part of you that doesn't quite have a handle on the fact that you're waiting a year.

I'm not entirely sure I'm making sense right now. I'm tired. It's 11:23, and I'm more than ready to crawl into bed. I hesitate to do that, though, because I told some of my friends I would DD for them. So I dropped them off a few houses down from one of the fraternity's and told them to call me when they were ready to be picked up. I didn't want to drink tonight, and I wanted them to be safe - someone was attacked earlier this week - and I figured I would just drive them rather than have them walking back this late.

Not that it's technically late. It's actually probably rather early.

Normal has become a sort of relative thing. My new normal is keeping track of my Weight Watcher's points, doing homework in nearly all of my free time so I can go to soccer, and then getting at least seven hours of sleep at night. So far, two and a half weeks into the semester, the plan is still going strong. The more you believe you can do something, the better you feel about actually accomplishing it.

And at the end of this week, while I'm really tired, I feel pretty damn good.

Late-Night Coffee Dregs

I'm well aware of what time it is and also aware of the fact that it's probably not a good idea to be consuming coffee at this hour, but I'm not about to let a good cup go to waste. Also, most of you know I do my best ruminations at roughly this time of night, usually when I'm trying to do something else that requires more focus and attention than I particularly want to give it. (It's lab reports this time, not education seminars, for once.)

The last you heard from me was a few weeks ago. I posted this pretty cool video about a flash mob - that I was part of - and said that I'd be back to talk about life in general.

First thing you should know is that I'm not living in a closet this year. I have enough space to have my moon chair and enough sunlight that Henry actually gets to live with me this year, rather than have to relocate back to the kitchen table at home because he's slowly dying of sun deprivation. As it is, he's continually growing and making my fellow floormates with their own plants rather jealous of the fact that he's huge.

Actually, they're really rather impressed that he's still alive. Most of them apparently don't make it past first semester of first year.

Of course Practical Magic is playing in the background and the most pressing thing I have left to do is my analytical chemistry lab report which involves the use of Excel, and we all know that I'm positively Excel stupid. I'll freely and readily admit that I am absolute shit when it comes to using that program.

The long and short of it right now is that the front of my week is more loaded than the back of my week. Monday and Tuesday see me going from very early in the morning until roughly five in the afternoon, and Wednesday is much the same, only with a later start. My saving grace is that I have only one class on Thursday, and Friday just has three. I'm lucky in that regard. That's the way I planned it.

It's not easy. But it's college. It's not supposed to be. However, the homework is getting done, turned in on time, and I'm doing really well with things. I was able to explain a physical chemistry problem to one of my friends (who's also in my class) and was really proud of myself that I could do it. I'm actually looking forward to that first exam in that class, because I think it will be the first time I get a B or higher on a chemistry exam. If that happens, I'm sending it home to mom and dad to be put on the fridge because, well, I'll be that proud of it. And they'll be proud of me for getting it.

But that's later this month. There's quite a few things between then and now. Including lab reports. I'm not getting any younger, and it's not getting an earlier (technically, it is, but that's really semantics at this point) so I'm going to go sit on my bed and work on my carbon-copy sheets and hope for the best when it comes to Excel. I think I'm going to need it.

That Song, You Know...

Where have I been, right? I've been a little all over the place. Or, rather, I haven't. My beloved Oldsmobile failed to pass inspection (rust in the subframe) and he's bound more or less for the scrap heap, sadly.

Anyway, I've heard a couple of songs this summer that I really like and that like to get stuck in my head. I thought I'd share them with you.







Don't worry - There'll be an actual post from me sometime soon. Soon as I can figure it all out.

The Working Girl Returns

I've been kind of absent lately. I know. There's a reason behind it. Three, actually.

Waitressing, subbing, and refereeing. Not necessarily in that order, either.

However, due to the amount of time I spend in either my car or my mother's (depends on which is in the driveway for me to drive wherever I need to go to get someplace to do one of those three previous things) I've had the chance to sort of preview this summer's music. I'm more of a country fan (I'm a country child, so it makes sense) and these are two songs that I've heard and I've, honestly, fallen quite a bit in love with.

So, in the hopes that I can fan my blogger spark into something larger again, I share with you Dirt Road Anthem by Jason Aldean and Barefoot Blue Jean Night by Jake Owen.

Planning. Sort Of.

First of all, I have somehow managed to gather and corrupt forty followers. I consider this quite the accomplishment, considering that I'm just a college kid blogging about what it's like to go through this stage of life and occasionally getting sidetracked by other stuff along the way. Or getting lost. Those two are kind of interchangeable in my world.

To my forty bright and shiny followers - Thank. You.

This is the second full day that I have been home for the summer. The mountain of laundry I brought home with me has been done, and it was a nice way to invite in the summer because I got to hang out most of it yesterday to suck in the country air. Makes everything smell so good and when you take a big whiff the only thing that really permeates my braincells is home.

I have not, however, woken up in the morning with eighteen pounds of cat on my chest or fifty pounds of dog on my ankles. However, I have had my ears cleaned a number of times already.

Now that junior year is done (which, by default, makes me a senior and scares the hell out of me) and it's summer, it's more or less time to look ahead (or try to, at least) to what the upcoming three months will bring. Considering I picked up two work shirts while I was in town today, I think it just comes down to how busy I'll be when the full season rolls around. I go back to work on Wednesday. I'm quite alright with that, truthfully. Been waiting for it for almost two weeks now.

Which more or less means I'm going to be a sort of workaholic in the summer. All while spending as much time with the family - including the small child who's not quite so small anymore and still growing like a weed - and writing. I've got a book to try to finish (actually, if you think about, roughly three, really) and if anything else wants to come my way, well, that'll be welcome, too.

No big plans. Just tryin' to live day to day and sometimes that can be more of a task than planning something huge in the middle of the summer heat.

And, of course, I'll spend some of my summer just doing what I do best - Wandering.

If anybody's got any big summer plans and wants to share, go for it. Here's to the coming good weather and whatever it may bring.

Two Sweet, Two Fabulous Two Years

I'm currently sitting on my bed - finished watching Cutting Edge: Going for Gold - and I realized that April was the first month I started blogging in two years ago. A little detective work (because there are some dates I just can't remember) and, turns out, I almost missed it.

Today is my two year blogiversary.

It's been two years since I started blogging about life, college, and everything in between. There's been high points and low points, triumphs, fails (epic fails, in some cases) and three months that were spent on the other side of the Atlantic. Two years ago I was wetting my feet in the blogging world, not really knowing what I was doing, not really sure where I was going (which, honestly, I still don't know and frankly I'm okay with that), and just more or less wandering around randomly poking things. Proverbially, of course.

Two years later there's still plenty of wandering, some poking, a 53,000+ word novel (yeah, that's how many words Murphy and Me has), and a series of asshattery best described as Things to Know. There's also a heaping dose of reality and, always, too much coffee for one wandering Sagittarius.

Raise your glass - or your coffee cup, you know I'm not picky - and we'll just say here's to two years down, and as many more to go as we can handle. Cheers!

Thank BLEEP!

Thank [Insert Appropriate Word Here] it's the freakin' weekend.

If you couldn't tell, it's been a long week in my neck of the woods. It really didn't start...well, yes, okay, maybe it did. Maybe it started to get long on Monday afternoon when our chemistry professor had to go get his son from daycare in the middle of the afternoon - twenty minutes into our lab time - and we got to hang out with an eighteen-month-old gnawing on a graham cracker while trying to get scientific data on dye. (The situation was totally understandable as the daycare provider had an emergency in her family, and therefore, the professor's small child needed to be picked up - we understood this, he asked for flexibility [providing some, too] and we were more than happy to try and get the Little One to smile, giggle, or actually speak to us, as he suddenly turned very shy.) Or maybe it got a little longer on Tuesday when I realized I'm going to have to fight tooth and nail to align whatever I decide to do for my curriculum project with the clusterfuck that is the New York State Education Standards for Physical Science Chemistry, followed by learning that afternoon that my performance of my Shakespeare monologue was on Thursday. Could possibly have happened on Wednesday, too, when, after my usual three classes and one-third lab (because my professor is awesome and broke up the lab into three pieces to follow class time on MWF) my Mama came up and we went to my wisdom teeth consultation. We both like the surgeon, looking at X-rays is always a twisted sort of fun, and we scheduled surgery for next Friday. All four. With a combination of pain, painkillers, and general whatnot - not to mention I think I've gotten steadily paler as the week has gone by - we decided to forgo dinner, and I was in bed and passed out before 11:30. Or maybe it was Thursday with the performance of the monologues after two and a half hours of intro geoscience lab that dealt with volcanic hazards.

The capstone on the week that was steadily going downhill had to be Friday. Four classes (we're counting that one-third lab as a class because, well, it pretty much is), followed by the first group session (Sheila recommended I try group, and, well, it's actually really nice - which I'll talk a little bit more on later), followed by me generally freaking out about my chemistry problem set, the professor understanding everyone has those weeks, followed by my first mineralogy oral exam.

And now, finally, a few hours later in the very, very quiet library, things have finally settled.

In retrospect, it's been a hell of a week. And this is with all four wisdom teeth in the mouth causing general mayhem. Well, what ones like to cause mayhem, at any rate.

The point is, it's been a long week. A really long week. And next week probably is going to be a bit better, but a bit not, as it's a different set of stuff to go wrong. Well, not go wrong, but not exactly go right, either.

Anyway. Right now, however, it's the weekend. All the way until Monday morning. Best make the most of it, eh?

Care to Elaborate?

Well, at this moment, no, no really. What I will say is that I have, for this most romantic of nights, a crate full of movies to choose from and Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream in the freezer.

And here's to us, the single ladies, this fine holiday evening.

Now put ya hands up!

Pretty

I feel pretty.

Such a simple statement, but one I don't say as often as I probably should. The question of why I don't say it that often isn't something I really want to look at right now, so I'll just look at what prompted this simple, yet powerful statement.

It shouldn't be the way I'm dressed right now. Plaid pajama bottoms that sit low on the hips I'm starting to fall in love with; white tank top that might be a size too big, complete with bra straps and my tattoo hangin' out; my hair is down.

My curly, slightly tangled, getting-longer-by-the-day-if-really-slowly hair is down around my shoulders. Mostly for this reason do I feel pretty. Pretty enough to have it sort of pervade everything at the moment, make me slightly unreasonably happy (happy enough to look up music from roughly 10-15 years ago, and sing with it) and not give a damn who hears. That kind of happy.

It's been a bit of a rough week - academically and I, for the first time in my rather short journalistic career, had some backlash from an article of mine - and I'm not planning on really going out this weekend. Instead, right here right now, I feel happy. And pretty.

And I can't figure out, for me, which is the better of the two to be feeling.



Starbucks...Knitting...What more could a girl ask for?

Sundown Rundown

Hi.

I know - Where have I been? I've been a little busy, truthfully. Nothing overly complicated, just the usual four classes, three labs, one seminar, and a student newspaper to print every two weeks. A student newspaper that kicked ass this issue - 24 pages, instead of our usual 20 - and our editor had a hard time defining which article would be the one to set campus on fire, as it was that packed. There's stuff in there on the Sexual Grievances Council (which I didn't even know existed); an article on how the excess fund has gone way down; how the Republicans tried to redefine rape (can they not figure out that no means no, and it really is as simple as that), as well as staff personal ads because Monday is Valentine's Day.

Which, by the way, I'm not looking forward to. We suggest slasher films, but I'm more of an action/adventure type of movie person, not to mention I have four classes and, technically speaking, two labs and while I'll be hoping the guys that have been eying me are going to actually do something about it, I'm not holding my breath. Otherwise I'd pass out and we'd have to call campus EMS.

On that note, I probably need more coffee and, as I ate lunch in our campus center today, I'll most likely be gnawing on a bagel and leftover mac and cheese for dinner tonight in my little room under the stairs.

Which leads me to the conclusion that if I'm here tomorrow when housekeeping comes through, I'm politely going to ask them if they could take it a little easy on the stairs as I can hear the little bits of ceiling and whatnot falling on the floor when they do whatever it is that they do. Also, a general note to my second-floor housemates might not be a bad idea because, while you don't think you're making too much noise in your boots, I beg to differ.

Pardon me now while I go start the coffee pot.

And since I've returned from starting said coffee pot, this sentence is the first I've written in about twenty minutes of sitting back down. I'm good, aren't I?

I'm not sure where to go with this, so I'll start at the top and work my way down.

Quantum Mechanics - It's an interesting concept with an even more interesting professor taught and a very interesting time in the morning (9:05-10:00) and directly follows the physics side of the same topic. We're interested in the chem side. We're interested in the stuff that's cool, but kind of wacky. Like, how one moment someone can be standing on one side of my doorway, and the next moment, they're in my room, and at no time in between have they ever actually gone through the door. (Only, do this with an electron in a vacuum, but I figured if I tried to explain that, I'd lose half my followers out of sheer boredom.) I see my professor in his office hours, I do my reading on a nightly basis, and it's all under control.

Solid Earth - Let me just say my professor painted his toenail today so that we can see (roughly) how long it takes tectonic plates to shift apart a year.

Mineralogy - A whole lotta complicated. Pretty to look at, but kind of complicated.

Shakespearean Performance - Well, when you piss off the professor, that's grounds for him to temporarily treat your THTR 386 course like THTR 178 and, it's been eighteen days, therefore you should have eighteen lines of your monologue memorized. Pick a number, number one now get up there and recite your monologue. Talk about a kick in the ass. (Me? I'm sitting at sixteen lines with a clear understanding of the reasoning behind my monologue because this English stuff? Fascinating.)

Curriculum and Instruction - Is going to drive me crazy. And that's all there is to it.

And, like usual, between moments of clarity, there are moments of a downright spastic nature. These usually involve martini, boys, hair days (good or bad, take your pick), and trying to keep my Adventuring Focus more or less on track. On rare occasions (okay, maybe not so rare), I talk to Henry, the giant spider plant. It's not so much communing with nature, but more like talking to the plant that's been with me since the Academic Opening dinner first year. I'm a bit worried, though, because he's got a lot of brown tips, and I think that's because his water basin isn't big enough for the pot he's now in. Which might require a trip to Wal-Mart.

What I'm going to do over Spring Break just became a valid question.

HWS is really cool in that they offer something called Alternative Spring Break - community service both in and outside of Geneva. We send a group to Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Nicaragua, respectively, and this year, because I don't need to worry about racking up teaching hours this semester, I applied for and was accepted into the Virginia program. My Spring Break will now consist of doing community service for a week in Pocahontas State Park in Virginia. I'm really excited because I like to volunteer, and I like to travel. This gives me both. I'm now going to have to figure out something to do with Henry for the week.

Then again, in true Louise fashion, I just might figure that out when I get there.

In terms of upcoming events and such - Monday is Valentine's Day and, like I said earlier, I'm not holding my breath that something will happen. I'm shit at reading signs (if the signs are even there at all) and, honestly, I'm not overly optimistic about this (which, if you know me, I'm an optimist to my core). What happens happens, that much I know and can't change.

Also coming up? The spring blood drive in which I can actually give, since it's been over a year since my touch ups. I'm very excited.

And I think that's all the rundown you guys needed to catch up on this slightly crazy, always Wandering Sagittarius.

Planning

My train's a little late tonight, it's only now rumbling its way past the house. (Those of you who don't know, on the other side of the street I live on, down over the bank [and by bank, I mean sheer drop off] there's a set of train tracks that are active - namely, there's a train that goes by every night. Sometimes more than one a night, and it makes the house shake a little. Oh, and you can definitely hear it.)

You guys know me (or if you don't, just act like you do, and that'll be fine, too) and you know how much I avoid the word plan. And the word goal, too. I don't like them. They give me this feeling of structure, and while I'll freely admit that I like (and probably need) a healthy dose of structure in my life, I also really enjoy my flexibility in just going where my wandering feet happen to take me. I like that bit of spontaneity in my life. Not to mention I have a really difficult time planning next week in advance, never mind next month and possibly the next five years of my life.

With that being said, it's time for me to admit that, despite my ill will toward the words plan and goal, not only do I now have one, I actually have both.

This, right here, is where the universe implodes.

What's really interesting is during the first two years of my college career, I kept putting after-graduation plans to the back of my head with the idea that it wasn't time for me to think about that stuff yet. Two years later, I'm at the beginning of my junior spring, and now it's time for me to more or less think about what I've been trying to put off thinking about for two years. I won't get into the turn-around that I've gone through (though I will mention I get between seven and eight hours of sleep per night, no matter the day of the week [so if that doesn't tell you how much I've currently got my shit together, I don't know what will]) but I will say that Louise is now capable of looking at the forest and not getting lost in the trees.

That's a macro versus micro type of analogy, but basically says that there is not only a bigger picture, but Louise is actually seeing it. In technicolor, too.

One of the first things to come out of this is that I've realized I'm just as good as everyone else. And if I'm not, at the moment, then there's no reason why I shouldn't be. There's no reason that says I'm not capable of being as good as everybody else. There's nothing that says I need to stick with the system that half-assed worked for two years and let that continue to be me.

No, thank you, we'll give this a whirl, and considering that I actually sleep at night now, I'm thinkin' it's workin' pretty damn well.

The second thing to happen is that, and irony of irony for me, things don't always go according to their first plan. When you factor in the only luck I have is bad luck (Murphy loves me, and I don't care which Murphy you pick, in this case) it's no surprise that the tentative idea of going to grad school somewhere (tentatively John Jay in NYC) the fall following graduation has kind of shifted.

Grad school is still the idea, it's just been put off to the spring following graduation, or the fall a year from graduation.

Namely because I don't have an entire free semester in which to do my student teaching before I graduate. Not if I want to graduate with a degree. So what the Colleges allow you to do is take a ninth semester and use that as your student teaching semester. You graduate, then find someplace to live (though my education adviser and I are going to see what we can swing, and we'll probably get a pretty good deal in the process) and do your student teaching.

At this moment, that's the plan. How I went from having no plan to having one that's cementing itself more and more each day is beyond me. I still can't believe it, and I'm the one actually living it.

Damn terrifying, truthfully.

The bottom line is that, when you start to figure out what you want to do, you start to plan things. You start to absently set goals that become a little more concrete the closer you get to them, and while I enjoy flying by the seat of my pants just as much as the next wandering Sagittarius, the idea that there's a bigger picture? It's a really nice motivator.

When I say, right now, that life is good? I mean it. I really, honestly, mean life is good.

And if you wanna bring up the fact that it took me roughly three years to figure out, well, to that I say better late than never.

P.S. - For those of you currently living in the path of the snowstorm - whether you're beginning to get the mass amount we're supposed to get - be careful. We're not invincible. Maybe tomorrow is the day to stay in, make some hot chocolate (or coffee) and curl up with a good book. If you need one to borrow, I have everything from quantum mechanics to Terry Pratchett. But please, honestly do remember to travel safely if you absolutely need to, and if you're curled up somewhere with a good book, all nice and toasty, remember me slogging through the snow on the way to class because HWS hasn't quite heard of the concept of a "snow day" yet. Oh well. There's always next winter.

Round Two

One of the good things about writing and doing layout for the campus's alternative publication is that, well, other than controlling what goes on the front page and maybe doing the horoscopes on the back, is that you have the opportunity to inform the campus. How else can you get semi-important to important (and stuff that's by no stretch of the imagination important at all) to nearly everyone on campus, staff and faculty included? We have a lot of readership on the campus (more than The Herald) and, well, a lot of the time we come jam-packed with a sense of humor, even if it's slightly cynical.

Which is why I'm very happy I took the time and figured out how to write a semi-neutral article detailing the issues and lack of communication between the students and some of the departments on campus. My own battle at the moment? Still with Residential Education. The fire marshal makes round two to my room tomorrow, along with a person from campus security, and someone else on behalf of Student Activities.

If this wasn't important, I'd be a little worried about fitting all those people in this small but lovable room. As it is, we'll be crammed in here and, honestly, if there's a violation, I can't fix it if I don't know about it.

Namely, don't just tell me I can't live here, give me the concrete reasons why. Give me a legitimate reason that you're going to uproot my social and academic center of stability and attempt to move me - possibly into someplace smaller - because this whole we don't have to give you a reason for why we say you have to do something stopped being a valid form of communication with me past the age of eight. As a legal adult who can not only buy cigarettes (not that I smoke) and lottery tickets, as well as legally drink? You owe me a little bit more than it's unlivable.

As a full-time, living-on-campus student paying a near-ridiculous amount of money for this education, you damn well better have a legitimate reason for upsetting my apple cart.

It's a good thing I have a handle on everything else, otherwise I'd be more of a spaz than I already am on a regular basis. As it is, to get out of this place for a bit, I'm going to go sit in the living room with my knitting and just practice my Shakespeare lines. Then I'm going to go to bed and tomorrow, I'm going to do what I normally do and get up and go to class. Then come back here, be invaded by a bunch of people who don't know me, don't know my situation and background, and don't know that I've already gone through this frustration once in the past month. Heathrow, anyone? That was fighting to get home, and now I'm fighting to keep the home that I've made on campus.

There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

On the bright side, at least they respected my request to be present when the man comes back. It only took about four emails.

So. For right now, I still live where I live and do what I do. Right now, that's enough.