Back on Planet Earth

I feel like I dropped off the face of the Earth for a while there. My friends may or may not agree with me, that's a matter of opinion I s'pose.

Disney at Christmas is fabulous, if you ever have the chance or the desire, definitely go at that time of year. It's so beautiful, and the decorations are lovely. The only two things I regret about being in Disney for Christmas: Not being in church for Christmas eve/morning (particularly because this is my pastor's last Christmas with our church) and also the fact that none of the guests of Disney seem to comprehend the joy of the season. Everyone is still as pushy and blood thirsty as ever down in the good old Mouse's House. They'd knock you over as soon as look at you if they thought you would get on a ride even just a person before them, or get a better vantage point for the fireworks. Christmas spirit indeed, and all good Christians I'm sure. Disney brings out the worst in people, I swear, myself included. I don't mind tripping people who look at my family wrong, and I'll get into a screaming match with you if you hit me one more time with your stroller or your wheelchair cause you're too incompetent to be pushing it. Which, by the by, DID happen. My disabled aunt and my disabled mother were walking in front of a person in a wheelchair, who didn't need the wheelchair but who was too lazy to be bothered with walking. I saw that the person pushing the wheelchair was not paying attention so I put myself in between my aunt and my mother and the wheelchair and braced myself and wham, she slammed right into me. Wheelchairs are not designed to hit people (like they design the strollers in the parks these days because they know parents are the worst when it comes to paying attention to where the hell they are going) so I had a deep cut on the back of my calf, but I didn't want her hitting either my aunt of my mother, because then they would have been out of commission for the rest of the trip and I would have been in jail awaiting trial for causing bodily harm to the chick pushing the wheelchair. So I turned around and told her to watch where she was going, as she apologized profusely, which I appreciated, but it still did not make the blood stop trickling down my leg or my limping onwards any less noticeable. Anywho, Disney has its ups and downs. You just have to put on a brave face and go with it if you really love it, as I do.

So Christmas was nice, but not normal. I'm all about normalcy so it threw me off a bit, but we had Christmas morning complete with presents, cinnebuns and being in your pajamas until 1 pm the first morning back. Hillary was with us from the day we got back until New Years Day, and then I drove her home and I stayed at her house from New Years Day until yesterday. We went to the aquarium in Mystic (Hill assured me it was much cooler than the New England Aquarium, which I've never been to, but I can't fathom anything in Connecticut being cooler than anything in Massachusetts), did the whole New Year's Eve thing (which at one point in time meant going to New York City to see the ball drop, but was quickly vetoed, and the end result was staying home with my friends and baking cookies and watching movies all night) and went out to dinner with the madre on our way back to Massachusetts. My mom really likes her, which is awesome cause I really like her. She's still convinced that this is a phase ("no one wants to date a 19 year old boy") but I think she is at least happy that I am very happy, and I'm eternally grateful to her that she let Hillary stay with us and let me go spend time with her in her neck of the woods.

When we were in MA we went to Northampton and saw Milk, which was really good, but I feel like it was lacking something maybe? It was more of a political movie than a gay rights movie, I feel. It just chronicled the political process and the trials and tribulations of being in the political spotlight. I wasn't disappointed in it, but generally I like movies with more... suspense. I'm realistic enough to know that everybody knows Harvey Milk was killed, so there could be no suspense there. Maybe this just wasn't my kind of movie, I dunno. Hillary liked it though. She cried at the end, it was cute, and I made fun of her for it for hours (I'm the best). We visited with her friends and family and played scrabble and watched movies and it was very nice and very relaxing. Her mom was talking about needing the roof to be done and stuff and I mentioned reshingling the house and she totally did not believe that I can do it, which only makes me want to do it more so reshingling the house has moved up to the number one spot on things to do this summer (well, number one behind finding a kick ass job).

So now I'm back home in CT, enjoying my break but looking forward to getting back to school. I did well in my grades last semester, though I could have done better but it was a tough semester and it's over and I'm glad. Lacrosse will start oh so very soon, so I need to seriously get to the gym every single day. I had a dream my problem with my knee caps came back and I was in excruciating pain every time we ran again and it was terrible (my problem with my knee caps will never go away, it just comes and goes sort of). I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things cause all this suspense is killing me.

Hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year!

Secret Santa

Tonight was secret santa with my friends from home! It was a lot of fun, we made way too much food (and also consumed way too much), opened presents, ate more food, and then sat around and did nothing (which is what we do best). I had my friend Jaime and I got her a Wall-E thingy that you build which she loved, and some cello music (because I know Jaime and Sarah through orchestra in high school and I played in the orchestra with Natasha in middle school and Kate and I played in the same orchestra together from basically birth until high school graduation). Kate had me and she got me a nerf crossbow (to add to my collection mwahaha) and play-dough, because she knows that when I am taking final exams I would much rather just be playing with playdough, and she loves me dearly and I love her for it.

Natasha and Rob had to point out the fact that people from Connecticut have an accent (WHICH WE TOTALLY DO NOT! you can't fool me), at which point in time I dropped a delicious cookie that Molly made right out of my mouth in shock and horror. Hilarity ensued.

My doctor is concerned that I have high blood pressure. But honestly, maybe my blood pressure is a little higher than usual because it's now been six days since I've been home and I am already ready to go back, finals were stressful as all hell this semester, and only two minutes before we pulled into the doctor's office parking lot she and I were having a rather stress inducing conversation about Hillary coming to CT to spend some time with me over the break. I wanted to be like "sir ma'am sir ma'am, I lead a stressful life. Get back to me in a week when I have seen the mouse and I am all in my happy place." So that's that, I have to go back when I get back from Sunny Florida and get my bloodpressure taken. I'm nineteen, I'm active, I'm always doing something (except when I'm home), I eat healthy, I exercise every day. And I'm nine fucking teen. Gosh maybe something is wrong with me. I don't feel like I am super stressed out all the time, but maybe I am, and I just don't want to admit it to myself. Well whatever, it is what it is. I've felt myself slowly developing a Type A personality over the years. I just need to chill.

So the madre and I talked about Hillary coming to visit when we get back from Florida. Well, basically the conversation went something like this:
Car silence
Me: "So... do you want to hear about my life, or are you happy with things the way they are?"
Madre: "What do you mean?"
Me: "I mean, do you want to hear about my 'romantic life'?"
Madre: "I figured if you wanted me to know, you'd tell me."
Me: "Oh. I figured if you wanted to know, you'd ask. So do you want me to tell you about the girl I'm seeing?"
Madre: "Well I assumed it was your friend Alycia"
At which point I would have spit anything out if I had been eating or drinking, but luckily I was not so it just came out in a series of cackles and wheezes
Me: "Oh my gosh no, I'm dating Hillary."
Madre: "Oh... so what do I call her? What's the politically correct term?"
Me: "Girlfriend is fine. She wants to come down when we get back from Disney, is that alright? And she wants me to go spend some time with her up in Massachusetts."
Madre: "Oh that's fine, she can come here and you can go there. I guess.. I don't know I'm just confused. Where will you two sleep? I had to sleep in a separate room from your father whenever he spent the night at my house or I spent the night at his parents' house."
Me: "That's up to you, but ma, honestly, I'm not planning on marrying her. I'm nineteen."
Madre: "Ohhhh... right."

It was kind of an hilarious conversation for me, but at the same time nerve wracking because she and I don't talk about things like that. And it was good for the two of us to just talk, freely. And now she knows, and I am very relieved, and I am also very happy that I'll be getting to spend some time with Hill when I get back from Disney. The madre still thinks this is a phase and that "no one would want to date a nineteen year old boy" (which I completely agree with, but that's besides the point), but she is okay with it. And she promised me that she will be there if and when I get a broken heart, no matter who breaks my heart. And I LOVE HER SO MUCH for that.

This is turning out to be a fabulous Christmas!

Looking For Suggestions

So everyone is giving me suggestions about what to do about my insane life, and I feel like they all kind of have their own motivations in what they suggest.

MY predicament is that I am signed up for five classes next semester, not including instrumental ensemble (which I decided I can't give up on instrumental because I have a vested interest in that class and I can't live without music). My classes are: Statistics, Research Methods, Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Medieval Vision (religion and English) and Changing Familes (sociology). I only need to take four courses to be a full time student and to become a junior, and I don't need to take any more psych courses this semester. I have to take statistics and research methods, but the rest are electives.

I also play lacrosse in the spring, and pre-season should start just around the same time that we get back to school. Once February rolls around it will be lacrosse, school, sleep maybe, and nothing else. I'll be lucky if I even get to see any of my friends outside of team awesome.

So I know that something has to go. That something cannot be Hillary, it cannot be lacrosse, it almost definitely cannot be instrumental, and it cannot be Research Methods or Statistics. As a double major, I should be taking Medieval Vision as my English course.

So should I drop Psychopathology, or Changing Families? I know both professors and they are both happy that I'm taking their course. I am not very fond of the professor who is teaching psychopathology, but she likes me and I do well in her classes. I have never had a course with the professor who is teaching changing families, but we've been emailing (because I didn't take the pre-req for the class and I wanted premission to skip the pre-req, which I got) and she is a very nice person, we've met once and she told one of my best friends that she's looking forward to having the two of us in class together. If I don't drop one of the classes, I'll look into taking one or both of them as pass fail.

My problem is I overextend myself, and I think I can handle more than I really can. I can handle a great deal, it's just a matter of my becoming a huge stressed out monster or being a normal human being with a normal work load.

Lacrosse will be good, it's such a stress reliever and I love my team and I love playing. But it's hard to enjoy the feel of the grass beneath your cleats or the way the ball whips into the net or the tension of your fingers around the cold metal when you know you should be studying for three test the next day, or writing ten page papers. Gosh, I love life and I love living and I love being alive, but it's so difficult to remain in love with life when you are being pulled in so many opposing directions.

Thurs a Storm A'Brewin

(That's Bryce Canyon, definitely worth the trip if you ever get the chance. I found it more impressive than the Grand Canyon.)

I feel slightly guilty about this weather... It's totally all my fault.

I left Massachusetts blanketed with snow yesterday, ice everywhere you stepped, hard snow crunching beneath your sandals (everyone wears sandals in the snow, right?). Today, Connecticut is being pelted with winter storm Austin. I know Connecticut, it's all my fault, I am eternally sorry.

Personally, I am indifferent to snow. It was fun when I was younger and I could run outside and roll around in it and build snow people, and my big black dog Candy would jump through the snow piles and chase snow flakes (she had a few loose nuts and bolts in the attic). Now it's just... work. Well, at home it's work, because although my mother assures me she can do it herself (and she does and can, as much as that pains me), I like to be useful. And so I shovel, in my sweatpants and my sneakers because I haven't owned snowpants or boots since middle school.

Good luck to everyone in their shoveling pursuits today and tomorrow! If you could, say a prayer for my friend on his way home to Ireland (his flight is this evening out of Boston and I doubt that he'll be leaving on time) that his flight isn't terribly delayed and that it is safe.

Oh, and say one for Hillary and her family and friends too and everyone out there in East Jesus Nowhere, Massachusetts. A lot of them are still without power as a result of the ice storms, and it's a terrible time to be without heat. If there is anything you wish for for Christmas, wish that everyone can be happy, safe and warm.

Commence Winter Break

Today was move out day, the official end of Fall Semester '08. Next stop, Spring '09! It's very bittersweet, because I've wanted to be home so badly for so long, to be with the animals and spend time with the madre and my friends. But I have a life at school, I have friends who I will miss dearly and who I can't call up at any given time and tell them to meet me at the starbucks in the centre of town. I have a girlfriend who I won't see for several weeks, if not a month, because she lives close to three hours away. I'm very torn in different directions.

Alls I know is, I'M GOING TO DISNEY NEXT WEEK FOR CHRISTMAS! We're taking the madre's friend from India and meeting my aunt and uncle down there and spending 5 days there around the holiday. I love Christmas in Disney. If there is any place I'd like to be to celebrate anything, it's Disney World. Except, I like celebrating the birth of Christ at Church, and I'm sad I'll be missing it this year because it's my pastor's last year here, but Disney will be nice.

This time last year the entire family was gathering itself together and meeting down in Disney (at the beginning on January, not over Christmas, that would have been chaos) for the 10 year anniversary of my father's death, and a super huge celebration of his life. His grandchildren were there, his daughters were there, his wife and former wife was there, his nieces and nephews and their children, his brothers and sisters in law. It was epic. I miss those days.

I feel like I have two lives, two lives which converge every so often, but for the most part remain in their separate spheres. It's a strange feeling, but I'm going to miss it when it's gone.

So now I'm home, in CT, pondering my naval and doing nothing but job hunting, going to Disney, and missing my absent friends, and missing Hillary even though it's only been a few hours since we said goodbye. But, I am LOVING the fact that I don't have to deal with statistics or research methods for a whole month. Absolutely loving it.

Bigger Than Me

Life is amazing to me. Seeing my little niece of nephew up on that monitor today, wiggling his or her little arms and legs, his or her little heart pounding away, definitely gave me a different perspective. We're so small, and yet so significant.

I can't wait for the little one to be here, to see the little hands and feet I saw up on that monitor, to hold those little hands.

Everything has been so overwhelming lately. School work is consuming my life, exams will be over on Thursday and then the semester ends and winter break begins. Home for a month of searching for work, hanging out with my friends, and missing Hillary. I've never experienced anything that feels like this before, and it's all so overwhelming. She looks in my eyes and I know she is sincere, and I can see that she can see that I probably definitely love her. I feel so vulnerable, but I like it.

It scares me that she is a senior, and that we live in different states, and that she will be graduating and going to graduate school and forgetting about the girl she is leaving behind. I don't think she will forget about me, though, because I know I won't forget about her. She makes me smile so big, and laugh so much. She holds my hand in front of her friends, she listens to what I have to say about my life, she can hear the joy and the pain, and she holds me and suddenly everything melts away and it's just life, and it's just love.

This love thing is so much bigger than me.

Calling All Angels

This was quite possibly the laziest weekend of my life, or at least my incredibly chaotic life as of late. Hillary (my girlfriend) and I played house all weekend (she made me cinnebuns in bed), went to the macaroni grill on Friday where we proceeded to eat none of our food (even though we hadn't eaten all day and we had both had exams) and near fall asleep at the table to the point where our waiter (Marc was a cool dude) was concerned about us, and tonight we went to Fridays and ate the first meal since Thursday. It was a good weekend, Hillary and I get along very well and we have a lot of fun. I've never been able to laugh and be silly with someone I was dating before, maybe it's the mark of an adult relationship, or maybe Hillary and I just have something special.

I told her I have never been in love, and I don't know what love feels like. The deepest love I've ever felt is the love I have for my niece and nephew. When I held my niece for the first time in the hours after she was born, I looked God in the face, and He smiled back. That's the realest love I've ever felt in my life. I'm very clueless about romantic love. All I know is that when I look in Hillary's eyes, the rest of the world melts away and it's just us, and complete happiness. I don't know if love is complete happiness, I don't know if love is aching when you know you won't see her for an extended period of time, I don't know if love is taking her hand and running through freezing parking lots laughing, singing David Bowie and Cher until 4 am, watching stupid movies, but not caring, because we're together. I don't know if it's love, but I like it.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Brigham with my sister and my nephew for her ultrasound. I'm so excited that words can't even express my sheer joy. I've never been to an ultrasound before, and I'm probably going to weep. I love these kids so much that it hurts.

Wish me luck, that I don't weep too much and make a fool of myself.