goodbye 2008!

Well, tomorrow it will be 2009. 2008 has not been bad. 

And I just realized I'm now at sophomore status at UWEC. It was nice being a freshman for a whole semester. Ha. Exciting.

I also got my official acceptance email to the study abroad to Costa Rica and Nicaragua email. I'm really excited. And nervous. But really more excited than everything and anything.

I'm really just excited for the world right now. 

Tonight I'm going to Ian's with Ryn and Becca which will automatically make this New Year's Eve 100x better than last year. Last year's was just plain awful. 

But hooray 2009! I'm a sophomore in college, I'm turning nineteen in March, I'm going to Costa Rica and Nicaragua in August!

And I have boots so my feet won't get too wet. They're coming in the mail though.

And stuff~ I can't make my happiness coherent right now. Ok. 

Looks like it's just you and me at this party, electrical outlet.

I just dug my car out of a snowbank. Mostly with my bare hands, some with the wooden part of a shovel. I am so fucking bad ass. That is all.

so.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/25/santa.shooting/index.html

My god. 

I feel horrible. I feel really bad for the guy too- who does that? What drives a person to that? What was his life like, his thoughts, was his head really that bad and dark and awful? Was his world like monsters, did he think he was protecting himself, making it better for him?

How does it get that bad for some people? How can you go so low? It's gut wrenching to think about, to think someone is capable of doing something like that. I never really believe it even though it is on the news, in the papers, on the tips of tongues- 

Oh, I'd give just about anything to go back, just, talk to this man. He must have been in so much pain inside, it must have been so dark, the world must have been such big monsters. I wish I could have gone back and said that the world really isn't like that at all, even though sometimes it feels like it for some people some days. No one's alone even though alienation seems to be a common part of today's society. No one should have to feel so much dark and bad. 

I really, really truly think that everyone is good, some more deep down then others, even if for some people it is painful and scary and the world is monsters to them more than others. 

Everyone must remember when they were five, right? 

I don't understand the world. But everyone must be good even if it doesn't make sense. 

I'm really torn up. 

there is a light and it never goes out.

I don't know what to write but every once in a while I just get in a mood where I really just want to type. I'm worn out and my mind isn't wandering anywhere besides the now. Which is pretty exciting in how mundane it can be. I want to talk to someone, stay up all night sitting and just talking right now. I'm in the mood for conversation and interaction and human. Weird.

I don't want to be sentences but I can be bullet points. Bullet-points. I don't know where that originates from.

• I have my little star lamp on and I'm listening to This Time, This Year, it's almost over and for some reason I really like this song. 
• The way I lie down on my bed always causes where my shoulder and collarbone on the left side to ache slightly. Not enough to the point where it is unbearable but eventually I have to shift and if I don't I lose some feeling in my arm. 
• I'm a little bit groggy and a little bit grumpy and I probably don't have any food in my tummy- - 
• Booop. I just figured out in the process of making these lines that I can do the bullet points thing. It's not like I didn't notice all the buttons and options for the screen post before but I just never used them or cared to experiment really, just out of them being pretty unnecessary for this sort of thing the way I do?
• I can imagine being an old lady because of the way my hands feel sometimes- like they're not even attached to my body. Cold and calloused and not mine. That's how I imagine growing old. I don't want to be old, really, I'm horrified of the idea of being trapped in my body. This is now just reminding me of a philosopher, and although this has been one of my fears for a while, I haven't really touched on it in a while and with the new things I've learned about. . oh. Wow. Self-revelation that no one else will understand.
• I feel really lifted. Annie. I think I have this image of a really amazing person in my head, that's her name. I was thinking about her on the ride home and how she's completely fictional. I had a good grasp of her, falling asleep watching the headlights flick by. But now she's gone, deeper I guess. 
• Sometimes I wish my eyes were brown because of the song Brown Brown Brown by Paul Baribeau. I wish my hair was brown sometimes too because of his other songs. I really, really adore him. 
• I wish I had somewhere to go right now, I feel cooped up inside myself- I just want to see people and places and lights right now. Strangers. Big snowflakes. Streetlights. And frozen water. 
• I can't remember her name, the girl in my story from last year. Did she even have one? I can't remember. I can't remember. I want to continue it on- expand it, more views, more depth, reviserepeat. I put part of myself in that story, a part that I can never get back. I want to see it again. 
• I can't find my retainer and that fact is irritating me. 
• I think it's a miracle just to be breathing. 
• I'm so inspired right now and I know this feeling and I don't like it because I'm getting too worked up with no real outlet right now. I need to calm down. I need to calm myself down. 
• Breathe. Out- in. Out- in.
• Directions for living? Just a reminder, fyi, sketch in a datebook. you know. the usual, with hashbrowns and orange juice- no pulp. 

if god is an astronaut, if this world is beyond shapes and lines.  

Every time I eat a pomegranate it is like a tiny little genocide. My white computer is covered in blood spatters, the only remnants of what was once alive and good in the world. Well, I guess that the raggedy shell remains but no one is going to look at that and see what was once the small little paradise of ruby gems. That is, paradise until the killings happened. All because they were different. Not even that different, but just different enough to inspire such hatred.

I should clean my computer, wipe away the only evidence of what has transpired so no one will ever have to be faced with the ugly truth of what we're capable of doing out of ignorance. But I won't. Until it becomes too much and I break down and admit to it like the rest of them. I'm the same, we're all the same. It's ugly and disgusting. We're ugly and disgusting.

Today is the twenty-third of December, my grandpa's birthday. And the day my grandma died. And the day my grandma's sister died. It feels like so much more than just a day to me. How beautiful, in a sad way. My grandma wasn't even that old- she had a form of disease that was similar to mad cow disease or ALS. Something in her brain. The doctors never quite figured out what it was, but she just. wasted. away. It killed her. She was just in pain, constantly, for years. I can remember hearing her crying when I was little, her small bony frame in the brown recliner chair she couldn't move from. She always looked out the window and she always cried. It was that uncomfortable inhuman feeling where can hear it but you don't know what to do. I was young, I don't even know, and I didn't know if I should look or not. It seemed like I shouldn't, like I should pretend everything was fine. I don't even remember my grandma healthy. 

We wouldn't visit too often because of the whole living in a different country thing, but I remember the last time we did. Saying goodbye to my grandma, by now bedridden, knowing in that strange childlike realization sort of way that this would be the last time I'd probably ever see her alive-- I just want to remember her happy and healthy. I don't want to think of the dark sitting room, the recliner, the window. I don't want to hear it, to see it, to smell it (medciney and uriney, like a doctor but in my grandpa's home), to feel that uncomfortable unease. But I do. 

She finally died, then. This day, years ago. The day before Christmas, my grandpa's birthday. I remember that day. I remember my mom's tears. I hate my mom's tears, they hurt almost like my grandma's. I was young, but when we went to her funeral (that christmas wasn't really like it) I knew grandma wasn't crying anymore.

I wasn't sad when I put the small scoop of dirt over her casket in the ground. Because I know my grandma wasn't in there, she wasn't. She didn't have to look out that window anymore. She was out of her body that had failed her before her mind did. She didn't have to hurt anymore.

One night when I was back home, lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep I heard my bedroom door open. I looked over, and it was cracked open. I wasn't sure if I'd just left it open or if it had just opened but I convinced myself I'd left it that way, squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in the pillow, not wanting to think about what could be out and about in the nighttime. I felt someone sit on the edge of my bed, the small displacement of weight and creak of protest. I was afraid, then I felt a hand in my hair, stroking slowly. In a sudden burst of idon'tknowwhat I opened my eyes and looked-- nothing. The weight was gone, and so was the hand.

I'm going to stop now. 

almost, maine~

I just saw a really nice play on campus called Almost, Maine. It was just a bunch of little snippits into people's lives, sweet ones, nice ones, sad ones. . . just bits here and there. The scenes were arranged in ways that you could never be too sure exactly what they were getting at until the end of the scene. It usually consisted of two people, and I can't make words right now to make this make sense to anyone else. 

There was only one that followed up, and it started at the very beginning of the play and was wrapped up at the very end. Just.. awh. It was fantastic.

It was a great play. All the theater I've seen at Eau Claire has been great, I really want to get into the program here because I miss it so much, but I'm not exactly sure how I go about that.

I'm going to find out though. I miss everything about theatre right now.

It's been snowin' for a while now. . .

I need to suck up my hatred of shopping and go out and buy some shoes when I'm on winter break. My worn out, holey shoes are just not cutting it anymore. My mom saw them and was like, "Yeah, you need shoes, and then we can throw those away." But that's where she's wrong. I love my shoes. Too much, perhaps. I didn't even leave them outside my hall on St. Nick's Eve yesterday for our floor because I was too afraid someone would mess with them. Then not only would I be out one shoe but I'd have nothing but skin for my feet.

Well, I guess I could always go about in my heels until I get back home, but let's be serious, that's a horrible idea. Well, I'd look absolutely fantastic fashion-wise (heels are NEVER a bad idea) but I quite fancy having all of my toes and not losing limbs to frostbite.

Winter is a cruel mistress, especially in the seas of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And I'm assuming that to be double especially if heels were to be factored into the equation.

Oh, and the hill. The hillllllllll. For those of you who have never been to my neck of Wisconsin, you have no idea w

hat I'm talking about when I refer to the hill. What's so bad about a hill, you may ask? But no, you must have misunderstood me, because I clearly referred to this as THE hill. This isn't just "a" hill. No. THE. Not with a capital "t" but that's because I'm kind of afraid of what that might connote. 

Some people in my hall are like "OH PRETTY THE SNOW THE SNOW OMG THE SNOW PRETTYPRETTYSNOWFLAKESLOLOMGMYBFFJILL!!!1"

But they are wrong. Yes, it is pretty sometimes, especially when it falls in huge flakes and it's night and I'm happy. But that happiness is merely superficial and the only thing you have left is the angst that snow brings. 

I'm watching this wife swap show right now. And it is wonderfully entertaining, more so then should be necessary. One family is very liberal and anti-war and from Minnesota and all that stuff and the other is incredibly Bush-supporting and Christian and from Kentucky. Quote from one of the sons of the Minnesotan family "Jesus was a carpenter who liked to talk a lot!" 

Pro-Bush mom: "You

 are so a teenager"

Son: "I am so a teenager. And you are so an ignorant American."

Bahaha. Wow. Um. 

Yeah. Monday's tomorrow, which means start of secret snowflake gifts along our hall. I'M WAY EXCITED, LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE. I get way into this sort of thing. I made my girl a CD for the first gift. 

It goes like this:

1. Grape Picker - Juniper Tar

2. P.S. You Rock My World - Eels

3. Arms - Seabear

4. 5 Years Time (Sun Sun Sun) - Noah and the Whale

5. Ten Things - Paul Baribeau

6. For Emma - Bon Iver

7. Happyships - Watercolor Paintings

8. The Ghost Inside Our House - Cloud Cult

9. How a Helicopter Sounds - The City on Film

10. Fell Down the Stairs - Tilly and the Wall

11. You're the Good Things - Modest Mouse

12. Lay Down Your Arms - Flowers from the Man Who Shot Your Cousin

13. Raindrops - Regina Spektor

14. Strawberry - Paul Baribeau

15. Cut Your Hair - Pavement

16. Ooh La - The Kooks

17. Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother! - Sufjan Stevens

18. We Will Become Silhouettes - The Shins

19. Red Right Ankle - The Decemberists

20. I Am John - Loney, Dear

21. Transistor Radio - Cloud Cult

22. At Last - Neko Case

23. Silent Night - Jingle Cats (Hahahaha.)

I worked like, crazy mad hard on this, like looking on her facebook to see what she liked and forming stuff around what she liked. Augh! I'm so excited. 

this time, this year

I've been just having a terrible night for so many reasons that I plan on forgetting.

Walking back up the hill in the snow and freezing, I heard someone walking behind me and I was like, "Ok, I'm not going to turn or acknowledge this person or even be human in the slightest at all because right now no one else cares so I don't either and I'm going to stop trying all this stuff, even if he talks to me I'm going to ignore him and not even think about it."

If you've heard me rave at all this week you probably know what I'm talking about in terms of being human and all.

But anyways, I heard him walking behind me, and as I began my ascent he said to me, "Quite slippery, huh?" And started up conversation with me.

So I talked with him as I climbed the hill. And that was it. That simple bit.

I'd rave about why this means just so much to me, but I don't feel like it. But it really, really did.

Then I was starting to think that maybe the night wasn't that bad after all, but then I was like, oh yeah, that was such a coincidence, like of course that would just happen on the night I'm discouraged and not caring.

Then I saw two bunnies outside my residence hall. Just chilling, in the snow. 

I stood and watched them, and they watched me. And didn't leave or run or anything. I finally turned and went inside because the cold caught up again. 

A sign, yes. Yes. Ugh. But I'd just much rather be in a bad mood, but I can't.

Doesn't change the fact that I got all prettied up and went out for absolutely nothing.

I'm just glad my roommate's out of town this weekend so at least I can just be alone the whole weekend. I'm sick of people. Hrmph. 

The Good Things About Christmas

So I really dislike Christmas. But I must concede there are some good things. 

This is all I can think of. For right now.

1. No school for a month.

2. Candy canes.

3. Ripping up wrapping paper. 

4. Christmas smells good.

5. Jingle Cats & Sufjan Stevens Christmas music. (This one is not confirmed, but Casey says it's good.)

6. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (That one clay movie that's ballin.)

7. Casey always gets a CD for Christmas. 

8. Holidazzle parade.

9. Snow days! 

This is everything I can think of. Oops.