When waking up is hard to do...

As many of you readers may already know, a few years ago I had a major back/hip injury that caused me to withdraw from school at Brigham Young University and retreat home to my dear Lafayette to recover. After 4 months of physical therapy and another year on a cane, I found myself a job in a factory (of all places!) and then wound up at Purdue University, which is where I'm at right now. My hip and back are no longer spasming, and I can accomplish a lot of what I want to do. This is all fantastic news, for which I am truly grateful from the bottom of my heart. I remember how difficult it was to even get up off the couch, or up stairs, or to sit back down anywhere, and I remember the pains of watching my friends go on with their lives, move freely, graduate, marry, etc., while I literally sat on the sidelines and watched. I also remember those friends who stayed by my side the entire time and offered help and companionship throughout the entire journey. I'm grateful for that trying experience because I learned in inexplicable ways about compassion, gratitude, humility, patience, waiting on the Lord, and friendship...among other things.

• However, it has been a few years now and I still feel like an old woman when I go to bed at night and have the wind knocked out of me while I try to reposition myself, and then again as I wake up in the morning, almost always with a headache and severe back pain. When I walk or run for very long at all, my hip muscles begin to spasm and I start to feel the oncomings of sciatica and I freak out and do stretches over the course of the next several days so it doesn't set on full-blow. I'm only 25, but between the stresses of certain things going on right now and this physical struggle I feel like I'm 75. I'm tired. My whole being, inside-out, is exhausted. I have no motivation to do much of anything, least of all work out or take care of my body in any way. I'm frustrated that the more attention I give to it, the worse things seem to become. Throw into the mix my goiter that I can't afford surgery for, which makes occasional breathing and swallowing difficult (but not life-threatening, Mom!)...I don't know.

I'm not writing this to complain. My life is still beautiful and I have good friends and family and a boyfriend who all love me and make my life worth living. I have a firm belief in a God that loves me and is literally my Father in heaven, who makes these things into a beautiful experience and who gives me the strength to overcome any of my weaknesses. But I guess I just want to acknowledge the fact that my insides are tired, and waking up is hard to do sometimes, and so if sometimes I react badly to things or I seem like I get frustrated over minor setbacks too easily, maybe now you'll understand the "why" of it a little more. I've had a lot of experiences lately where small things have become crazy-large blowups, on individual scales and congregation-wide scales, and I'm tired of pretty much all of it. I'm tired of being judged by people who don't know the whole story, and of people judging others when they don't have the whole story.

• People are people--we're human, we're flawed, we make mistakes every day. That in and of itself is not a sin and it is not the end of the world. People have bad days. People have bad months. People say and do stupid things for stupid reasons. People hurt each other, intentionally and unintentionally. People lie, or mislead. People have habits that are hard to break. People are largely a product of their environment, and in spite of the fact that they have their agency sometimes they react to their surroundings instead--and by "surroundings" I mean the total accumulation of all their experiences and the trends that various individuals have displayed that have affected the moment they are in. Sometimes, frankly, people suck. And that is a very hard thing to swallow when you love them, or hate them, or are apathetic. 'Cause when you love them you want better for them so it's hard to accept those flaws, and when you hate them you start to understand them and can't hate them anymore, and when you're apathetic all of a sudden these people become interesting and you can't help yourself in becoming interested. It sucks most of all when that person is you, and you see in yourself all of those bad things and wonder if there's any good to be seen at all--especially when no one seems to bother looking deeper for it.

SO, the point, a challenge of sorts:

• To any of you who may have made it this far, who bother to read my blog at all, I challenge you to find one person that you really just can't stand, for whatever reason--whether that person be an in-law, someone who has wronged your family or you individually, someone who has abused their power, a teacher, an old but lost friend. Take that person into your mind and try to find 5 good things to say about them. What has made them the person they are? The mistakes, even if malicious, that they have committed--what about it makes them, as a human, worth forgiving? What do their friends have to say about them?

I'm not saying this will be easy. I have a person right now that I personally hate with every fiber of my being, and a small but powerful group that I have a lot of resentment for because of how they have handled various situations regarding this person and my family. I don't know if this challenge can be met. But I will try. And I hope you will all try, too. Elsewise, we will all end up like this old lady before our times and then the world will be full of the living dead. I want better for us.

Rain, rain, go away...AND NEVER COME BACK AGAIN!!!

Okay, not never. But I gotta tell all of you that are enjoying fine weather across the world, Indiana's wet. Very, very wet. I haven't done the research, I just know that every time I forget to pack along my trusty umbrella, it inevitably rains, even if there's not a cloud in the sky before hand. And I just checked weather.com, and 5 of the next 10 days will involve rain...and those 5 are spread out. :( Stupid rain. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have water. The plants will need that. And so will we.

But the corn crops haven't even been planted yet. And the Wabash is looking awfully high...after flooding in February, I'm not ready to repeat all that. And I'm tired of having the hems of my heavy denim pants be wet. And most importantly of all, when am I going to get to play sand volleyball?!?

I have a nice umbrella, but if this keeps up, it may not suffice! Who's gonna build me an ark? :)

Let's stop doing those rain dances, kids, and send some of this rain out to the areas of the country that actually need it! However...if I gotta live with it, I sure hope I turn into a girl like this one--it looks like fun! Very Poppins.

Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens...

These are a few of my favorite things:

Flowers: lilies (especially stargazer lilies), daisies (especially gerbera daisies), roses, and orchids.

Animals: horses, dogs, monkeys

Numbers: 3, 5, 12 (least favorite: 2,4,6)

Colors: pink, purple, blue

Languages: French, Japanese, ASL

Books: Peter Pan; The Joy Luck Club; The Ender Series; Stargirl and Love, Stargirl; Pride & Prejudice; and The Screwtape Letters

Foods: taco anything, gyoza, fruit juices, breads, and almost anything with chicken in it.

Desserts: chocolate chip cookies, milkshakes, brownies a la mode

Words: yakusoku (Japanese word for "promise"), alliance (French word for "covenant"), celeste (pronounced the Italian way, cha-les-tay, meaning heavenly, which people I love call me), and phenomenon (do do--dodododo). :)

Books in the Book of Mormon: Enos, Mosiah, 3 Nephi

LDS Temple: Washington D.C.

Season: autumn

Subjects: social studies, language arts, and fine arts (foreign languages somewhere in there)

Saying: "Hitori ja nai, yo." (Japanese for "you're not alone!"

Asian dramas: Nobuta wo Produce & Hana Kimi

Maymester...

So, here at Purdue University we have a lovely thing we like to call "Maymester." It's a one-month-long version of a course that is usually a semester-long affair, which basically translates into 2-3 hours every day with the same 20-some-odd people learning an intense, "reader's digest version" of material. Yesterday I started my History 151K class, American History up to 1877. This picture is the cover of one of the two textbooks for my month, and I have to say, I LOVE it! For any of you who have ever taken a U.S. history class that you hated, buy this book. :) It puts the stories and the characters back into history, and although it certainly has its own agenda the most important thing to remember is that it gets you thinking. When, as an educator, we live in an era of testing and therefore easy answers, it's refreshing to see a text that is interesting, engaging, complicated, real. Pick it up if you see it, I know it's available online and at Borders and if you aren't a history buff it's okay, this book is like a book that I would pick up on my own. But enough of this plug for Loewen.

Today we focused on the over-use of the term "hero" and the heroification of historical figures in traditional textbooks, as well as the way historians recreate the story of a people's history. I have a hard time with the word "hero," and I'll tell you why. Once upon a time I was in 6th grade, and I had a social studies teacher that I hated. It seemed like no matter what I did she had something awful to say, and the more creative and real my close friends and I became in our work the more frustration she had with us. One day she had us write about one of our favorite hero that had to do with American history, and I decided to write about Brigham Young. She was quick to inform me that Brigham Young could not be my hero, and the reason was that he didn't sacrifice anything big for anyone, and he didn't die, so he wasn't a true hero. The word "hero" has been sour to me ever since. I have, of course, developed personal heroes over the 13 years since that time and I have also learned many things to refute that argument now, both about Brigham Young's influence himself and about the meaning of the word "hero", but I gotta say, that moment sticks with me. Now, of course, I realize that she meant that I had to pick an archtypal (aka White, male, 2-dimensional, dead...snore...) figure like a President or a military dude, that I wasn't allowed to think of "greatness of soul" as a characteristic of a hero. Well, she was wrong. More importantly, teachers, when a student brings people and experiences of their own cultures and backgrounds and interests to the educational table, be careful if you want to attack them. You will lose them, you will always, always lose.

My professor had us do a wonderful little activity in which we got to act as historians and analyze one another's cultures. She had the class divided into 3 groups and each person in the group had to put 2 things of ours into this large Ziploc baggie. Then she switched the baggies up between the groups and we had to pick apart details from what we held in our hands about how the people we were studying lived. It was a great little exercise in sociology/history work and it's applicable to children of all ages. As a future elementary school teacher, it inspired me by reminding me of many similar activities I participated in as a child and now I want to keep those and other activities somewhere safe so I don't forget about them.

More thoughts on history to come...stay posted!

Graduation.

Not mine. :) All THREE of my roommates graduate this weekend. It's been a long and windy road for each of them in their own right, and they're each going to go interesting places with their respective degrees. More importantly, they get to be real adults now, earning real income at a real job. Jealous? Maybe a little. But my day will come...

To all of you who graduate this weekend, this one's for you. :)

A Retraction of Sorts

So, apparently some of the things I have said have already done damage to people who read it. Let me preface by saying that this is my blog, with my thoughts, where I get to let out my own ponderings and frustrations at will and sometimes that means typing things when I'm upset. Which means I type things I don't necessarily mean or that I type things that I DO mean but I say them in not-so-kind ways, and if that offends any of you, (a) I'm sorry, but (b) deal with it. You can go be upset about me on YOUR blog, so we're even.

But, putting that perspective aside for a minute, I ought to say that my roommates are interesting, dynamic people, and if you take away the cleanliness aspect and the loud nights when I would love a quiet night in and the teasings about my boyfriend, well, I think they are fantastic people, creative beings, who certainly enjoy themselves at life, and I have learned a lot from them. My wanting to move in with family isn't a reaction against them, individually, but collectively, combined with the year previous to this where roommate drama abounded, and I'm just too old to want to adjust to other people that I don't have much connection to anymore.

I do not hate men. I have known some awful ones and some good ones who do awful things and I struggle with my relationship probably largely because of that fact. But I also prefer men to women, and not just in my sexual orientation, and I don't actually hate being a girl, I love it, because that means I get to be with a man forever. I'd hate to try it the other way around.

Hmm...let's see, who else may I have offended lately? Sorry, I still hate Hillary, won't vote for her, don't care. If that offends you, you can just deal with it.

Oh, my instructor! She was fair. I am upset about my grade, yes, and I do wish we had a running tally of our in-class grade so I could've had more warning, yes, but she was more than generous about my grade considering you only needed an 87% in the class to get an A, so my B is deserved and I will chalk it up to my missing so much class because of being sick, occasionally lazy, and one time having to go to the ER for a perfectly justifiable reason.

I don't hate fat people, I don't think Paul is boring, I don't have anything against single people, and no animals were harmed in the making of any of my blogs.

I hope that is enough to dispell any frustration you may have with me. But if not, frankly, I don't care. I have a right to feel the way I feel and to make mistakes and learn from them and to complain when I am upset and to relish in joy and rapture when I feel like doing so. I have a right to my opinions and a choice about my friends and gosh darn it all to heck I get to be human! So while I will try to moderate myself more on this blog so that no one else feels hurt by anything I say, ever, I will probably fail at some point, and I hope that when that time arises you can remember this blog and you will find it in your heart to forgive me. And now I'm deleting the blog that spawned this drama in the first place, in the hopes that it will be a chance for a new beginning.

I FAIL at life!!!

Stupid EDST 200. Even though she grades on an 87-100 A scale, and even though I managed to get a 92 and two 97.5s on the tests, and even though as far as I know I did well enough in recitation (my impression was aroun 100%), somehow I missed enough class being sick earlier in the semester and such to miss enough in-class writings to drop my grade down to a B...by 7/10ths of a percent. I'm a bit in shock, I knew it was a possibility but I didn't think that I had actually missed that much of it. I honestly didn't consider a B a possibility. Now I am going to crawl into a hole and cry for a while, and then...I don't know what. I haven't been this shocked and sad in a long time. All that hard work, all that studying...what's the point? This is ridiculous.

I know what most of you are thinking, it's just a B. Deal. But scholarships aren't as good without a 4.0. My motivation to sustain a 4.0 during next semester when all the gates of hell at Purdue will beat upon me will not be as high. And most importantly, I didn't see it coming. So it sucks.

Today is a Black Wednesday.

I voted. :)

Yes, I did. And I feel dang good about it. Actually, sad as this is to admit, even though I've been able to vote for 7 years today is the first time I ever did it...I was always too lazy to figure out how to vote absentee while I went to school in Utah, and I never cared enough to become active in voting for anything other than the Presidential elections. Friends, no more!

http://www.vote-in.org/?gclid=CPO8i9WIkpMCFRBqIgodokSnSw

This is a website that has seriously every sort of possible issue on either party's platform and what each candidate has said about each and every one. It's a great resource for becoming a more educated voter! Vote, America! 'Cause you can.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

Gaining 10 pounds in the last 3 months, I've decided that this cannot go on. It's ridiculous how much I eat, how little I do, what kinds of things I spend my food budget on, and my stress levels (for no apparent reason). No wonder I'm blowing up like a balloon right before my eyes. And does that knowledge stop me from pigging out with the girls on pizza and milkshakes? No. Does that make me shop better? No. Does that make me want to run outside and burn off some of those extra calories? You guessed it--no.

Friends, this will not do! I need a plan. Goal: lose 30 pounds in 30 weeks.

First of all, I want to start off by not eating junk food. I mean, every once in a while is one thing, but certainly not every day, and NEVER twice in one day. That includes soda. No more pop for me.

Secondly, what I DO eat, I'm going to eat smaller portions of it. So cooking but intending to save some for leftovers, sharing with Paul, and halving my recipes are the way to go now. Also, I will be eating more often during the day (because twice a day isn't all that healthy) and I've got the time now to do that.

Thirdly, I will spend at least one hour a day three days a week in the CoRec, the gym/everything on campus. It's borderline insane that for a year I have had free, unlimited access to very nice facilities and yet I don't even really know where this building is. That, I assure you, will change.

Fourthly and finally, I am going to do things during my day that promote a more active lifestyle. Paul's with me on that, which certainly helps. Walking to parks and playing, going out on the weekends and doing date nights that get us up and moving, and then stretching morning and night should help with some of the smaller things and, hopefully, help in relieving this crazy stress that creeps up with no warning or reason. :)

Hold me to it, dear reader. Ask me how I'm doing in my plan. Support me by not tempting me with things I cannot any longer do. :) If I meet my goal, cheer a few hoorahs for me!

This is omaroma, over and out.

p.s. I love you

Not the movie. :) I just feel like making it clear that even though I rant and ramble about being a girl, I love it most of the time and my boyfriend (though human and therefore inherently flawed) is just about as perfect as I could ask for, especially for me.

Paul, you are the best! The very best. The bestest. (3 times...)

Top 10 Reasons I Hate Being a Girl

(10) Biologically, let's face it, we get the short end of the stick. I don't even need to explain that one to you. :)
(9) Fatty fat fat fatter fatty fattest fat. SO easy to gain bad weight, I look at a brownie and my hips get bigger. I wish I had a man's metabolism!
(8) Getting a job, especially a good one that pays well and fulfills your dreams, is a lot harder, and when you do, you still get the occasional comments about you being a credit to your gender. And when you do do well, you can't help but question if it's because you're a girl and there's something in some law or some old person's mind that says they have to hire you to avoid looking sexist.
(7) You can't have it all, especially as an LDS woman. You gotta make choices and sacrifices that men don't have to and even though I know it's all worth it and well and good, it still sucks.
(6) Roommate drama is 13 times as crazy. It is, oh, it is. There's a reason women are supposed to marry men.
(5) Sometimes you just really wanna be a chick, but then that plays into every guy's stereotype of all that they think you are and you get teased even when you shouldn't. Like when you break a nail--that HURTS, dangit! Or when you cry about things that upset you. That's healthy. Deal!
(4) High heels. Hair. Fashion in general. Even the classic and elegant look takes lots of product, poking, pinching, pushing, pampering, etc. Men? Put on a nice suit and something that smells good and they're ready to go out the door.
(3) Clearly we have the advantage in logic and communication. But that means that we have to communicate with those who do not have that skill (AKA men), and that can be enormously frustrating, for both parties. I am certain that the absolute worst feeling in the whole world is being misunderstood, and unfortunately it's a feeling I get a lot. Ask any girl in a relationship who's dating any man, and they'll tell you.
(2) If you get married, you end up doing the vast majority of the planning the vast majority of the time. And the men don't even understand why that's an issue for us. And then they try to be helpful but all it comes out as is criticism of everything you've planned up to that point, which just makes you sad, which brings me to my last point:
(1) You can be on top of the world one minute and at the end of your rope the next, and back, and forth, and back, and forth, and more often than not a man is at the heart of that transformation. This translates into a lack of control over your own emotions that you can't even explain away rationally and you end up hating yourself day after day.

Dating...it ain't just for the singles anymore. :)

So, last night Paul & I went out with one of our very favorite couples, Laura & Marcus, and we had a fantastic time. Dating, especially double dating as serious couples, is a TON of fun, which makes complete and total sense but, frankly, we don't do it as much as we should and I think that's a problem.

First of all, the events. Cheap dinner at Pizza King (gotta love that place!), free games of bowling, a coupon for Cold Stone, and a movie night at Marcus' & Laura's apartment. I'm telling you now, invest wisely in a few good coupons, a few pre-paid discount cards at fun places, and some good movies & music, and then save your change and turn it into cash on the big day, and you will be prepared for a rockin' good time!

But it wasn't all the doing that was the fun part, it was who we were doing it with. Laura & Marcus are a young, hilarious, fun and fun-loving couple who can make the best of any situation, who are up for anything (and not just being indecisive, I mean they really can do just about anything and have a good attitude and a fun time), and run cheap like us. :) I love it. Laura & I were roommates last year and even though we didn't know each other beforehand, we endured a year of painful roommate drama (not us, the other ones) together and have enough in common--backgrounds, temperaments, family, interests, that sort of thing--to get along splendidly. Marcus got Paul hooked into his current job (incidentally, both of them hate it and are about to quit), and both men are fairly laid-back, easy-going men who like to joke and laugh and to treat their women well. Life is good when the four of us are together, and it makes me feel like...

Well, I don't know. When Paul & I are just hanging around the apartment (if you don't know my feelings about my apartment, read the previous post about my cleaning days), we still have a good time and all, but there's so much quiet time, so much unplanned-ness that my insides get frustrated and go off on tangents and I end up less happy than I otherwise could be because I actually want to be anywhere BUT my apartment. Especially on Friday & Saturday nights, I didn't originally seek out a boyfriend so I could sit at home on the weekends and watch TV or read books (not that I don't love those things, I do...just not THEN). I guess what I am saying, men, is even if you both have no money, get creative and take your woman (or A woman, if you're single) and go out, plan something, it doesn't have to be big, just get out and do things to show her that you're still interested, and fun, and dynamic enough that you won't settle for a rut after only 5 months of dating (what does that say about your future life together?), that your relationship can be light and active as well as deep and...not. I'm a woman who like options, who wants to be able to run the whole gamut of emotion and action in a relationship, and I need a man who's the same. Paul proved to me last night that he IS that kind of man (I knew he was, but I hadn't seen that side of him in so long I was starting to forget).

*Sigh*

And now I'm even more in love with him than before. :)

One down, two to go...

Today I took my last final of the semester, which means I have successfully survived one whole year as a 25-year-old sophomore at Purdue University. As far as I can tell, I have a 4.0 here...though the fall semester should take care of that one for me. :) One down, two to go, until finally I will have a classroom of my own and be able to explore the ins and outs of education beyond the boundaries of assignments. If I could adequately express to you the joy and rapture I feel in my bosom at this very moment, I would. Believe me, I would. To celebrate I bought myself a pint of mint brownie ice cream and some chocolate milk chug and now I'm wasting a few hours watching mindless television until my roommates return from the store and we can get our own little cleaning party started.

Ah, yes, the cleaning party. That will be a fun blog to write. But I'll save that for tomorrow, 'cause tomorrow's another day. :) And since I'm still figuring out this whole blog thing, well...it's tiring. And I have earned a break.

This is omaroma, over and out.