On Eves and Lost Memories

Every Christmas Eve seems different in my mind.  I keep thinking that the year before lasts’ was the best.  That there was more excitement, that I was better prepared.  Somehow I think I have started lying to myself to make me think I could do better.  Seems to work for most things, I got out of bed before 9 (AH! Gasp) today and got on our stationary bike and booked it for an hour.  I rode my horse, read the paper, ate breakfast and read a little bit.  Most of this would be an incredible accomplishment for a day, but on Christmas Eve I still feel like I have presents to get for mom and dad, and I KNOW there are bundles that need to be wrapped.  Right now I cannot for the life of me find the motivation to wrap.  Part of that may be because I would really prefer spending the night reading my dad’s gift, he got the best one.  Part of that may also be that I’d rather write poetry, or, as you can now read, write this blog.  There just seems to be no more magic in this gift giving business anymore.

This Christmas is the first holiday I’ve been home for, I missed Thanksgiving.  It’s been strange being home.  I got all my gifts before I got home except for one very strange present for dad that I hope he appreciates.....we’ll see.  He’ll get an Academy Award for smiling when he unwraps the brilliant wooden puzzles we found for him on our mad dash through the mall.  I’m not that “Christmas” person anymore, last year I was one.  I was singing carols from October to February.  Now I just want my summer and Fourth of July.  That’s okay to me, I can get through 4 more weeks of family.

As the year closes I’ve been falling asleep in my all too quiet and VERY lonely room reflecting on how little space I have grown accustomed to.  You can’t lose things as easily when you have the equivalent of a large bathroom stall as your side of the room.  Now, you can make a very big mess and there is no telling the things you mix up, but you can not lose things quite as easily.  Most of the time they are right there in front of you.  Jumping out of your bathroom stall box and into the larger box of college campus you don’t need much to survive, only a small amount of academic know-how and a little bit of pixie dust and you can achieve almost anything.  Out of your box, you need a little more spunk and pixie dust.

I intend to manufacture this pixie dust.  I’m happier and more content than I’ve been in a while.  Santa can come, or he could not.  It’s all fine, I’m here with my family and I will be gone back to Missoula in a couple weeks, and it’s all fine.  I saw my horse today and I miss him, but he will still be here while I’m away and everybody loves him.  My music comes with me everywhere and keeps me sane, and I can’t quite stop imagining the shenanigans that will ensue after I’ve gotten back.  And as I finish typing this I’m already imagining ways to explain Montana to dad, oh dear.....

On Finals and Slush

Every week should be finals week.  Why you ask?  Well, I get to sit in La Peak for hours and people watch as well as spend time working on photos.  In La Peak I can people watch and nobody cares.  I guess if I had spent more of my time this semester studying and less going on facebook or running around town it would feel more like this.  The problem lies in engaging material.  During finals week nobody asks me something I haven’t hear before.  I like being able to spit out an answer and if it requires and excess of Bull and a side of...umm...crap....I’m more than happy to oblige.  Oh, and the fact that nobody questions my intake of caffeine, even though it is less than normal.  I’m beginning to wonder the effects it has on me.  The double shot espresso in a can I had this morning didn’t seem to make me feel more awake than when I woke and I was ready to go.  The double shot americano I’m relying on right now to get me through my math final doesn’t seem to be doing any good.  I’m falling asleep.  The loud, easily associated with, music playing in La Peak right now is probably not helping.  If no one was watching I’d probably crash right now.

I cannot wait until I get home.  I’m excited to see everyone, but I can’t really think past what that drive home is gonna be like.  So much snow, and so cold!  You people back home are crazy.  We got that crazy weather done with a month ago.  Now it’s almost forty and precipitating.  I’m not really sure what to classify what’s falling from the sky but we’re gonna go with slush.

So, finals are pretty good right now.  No major heart attacks, no tears, no complaining.  Well, a little complaining.  I read my philosophy book again and realized how ridiculous it is.  I started laughing halfway through.  My conclusion in my essay on the final was an entire page of me explaining that whatever was just read, including the test, does not exist.  So, I’m thinking that an A is in order for remembering my Descartes.  Or not.

Tumblr.com is a new favorite of mine.  It’s a little easier to upload and update than this one.  Ooooooh. Sorry, the chocolate sauce just came up in my drink. Yummy.

The precipitation has ended outside.  What does it mean?  I have no clue.  My weekly trips to Albertsons have taught me that if your really hungry, you will get food.  No matter the weather or the condition your brain is in.

Holy Crap!!! The sun is out the sun is out the sun is out!!!

This is a fantastic new development.  I must explore.

And Honestly, nothing new has happened so you all will just have to wait until I have experience lonely airport adventures.  People watching will be at its best.

On Discoveries and Snow

There are many things I’ve discovered in the past few days.  Mostly that I will never be fully satisfied with my day.  I always want to be able to do more, and sometimes I try, but most of the time all the energy has leaked out of me.  Not to mention the daily stress of walking on ice.  I took the wonderful time today to put on my nice boots only to be rudely reminded how much they are NOT meant for Montana winters.  I wish someone had videotaped my walk from Miller Hall to the Country store.  Especially since at the time it was to Eminems’ “Not Afraid”, it was classy.  At least I looked like a crazy person; better that than looking normal and falling on my ass.

Further discovery has brought me to my old NSYNC songs.  I remembered all the lyrics and could belt them loud enough for people outside to say something, as I discovered my window wide open.  Closing the window I looked out for snow, finding none a nap was in order.  Naps are wonderful little inventions and the essence as to why college and Kindergarten are so similar.  We take snack breaks and nap breaks.  There are art projects and homework that no one really does.  New friendships are made as we enter an entirely new education system.  The kids on the playground change groups everyday.  “They’re just kids” is the all too repeated excuse.  I love it.

I walked home today from my friends dorm room and looked up at the mountain as I avoided giant melted puddles of slush that mother nature has left so nicely for me to sidestep.  In Wisconsin the sky line is dark for as far as the eye can see.  In Montana you have to look up higher above the lighter mountains that illuminate the sky.  In the winter they are a soft blue against the cobalt of the sky.  I’ll miss these mountains when I get back.  They hold me in like a giant hug, keeping me safe.  This reminds me to go hiking in the snow after break.

This has been a quick reflection.  I must go watch Glee now and try to forget I have finals in 4 days.  What if I just said no?

On Finals and Break

As I enter into finals week, and the last Friday of real classes of the semester I have time to reflect.  I found I cannot live without horses and riding.  I found I love learning when humor is involved and actively discussing issues that are morally and ethically relevant.  I miss taking photos, and plan on double majoring in wildlife biology and photojournalism.  Writing has become a necessary tool in forming my ideas and letting out my frustrations.

The week before I left for Missoula I had so many doubts about surviving and the “Northern Texas” has proven that it has challenges.  Many of them intellectual mountains more than literal.  I thought I was an open person until I came here and discovered I was just non-confrontational.  I still have issues seeing all sides of a situation, but that is true learning, and will never come easy.

Fall semester has gone by so fast and I don’t necessarily feel like it was wasted.  I learned to smile at everyone that walks by, the worst thing they can do is think you’re insane, which probably wouldn't be too far off.  Saying hello and introducing yourself isn’t weird, and we should all do it more often.  Also, writing postcards and letters is fun, not that anyone could read my handwriting but that isn’t really new.  Keyboards are wonderful little inventions and when we have to write with a stylus on the computer screen I might object loudly, but I digress.  I’ve met many new people and connected more in the last two weeks and I’m actually sad I won’t get to see them for 5 weeks.  It’s almost a step back, but knowing they will be here when I get back is weird too.  I wonder if it will feel like I missed five weeks in Missoula.  It’s “Vacation” isn’t it?  Does this mean that I’m not really going home?  I have yet to determine this. 

I keep playing that moment I’ll descend down the escalator to see my family.  It then becomes too melodramatic.  I wish I could pack today and it all be set.  I’m not even sure I’ll make it through the airports alone.  Missoula will be fine, but Minneapolis will be a scary excursion.  I’ll have to identify the alphabet with directional arrows and that can’t be a good sign.  At least it’s not Detroit and every sign is followed with descriptions in Japanese and Chinese that beg you to decipher them.

I don’t know how it’ll go.  I don’t know if I have much more energy to write more.  I have more thoughts to get down before I leave.  I’ll visit them tomorrow.  For now, I should go focus my attention on missing Bones episodes and my music.

Volume on High.

On Music and Horses

Sitting in my room, alone, for the first time in weeks.  It’s weird being by myself, and knowing that there are about 4 people on the girls side of my floor.  It makes the whole “room to myself” less fun.  I’ve grown so accustomed to constant chattering and random outbursts of squeals and giggles and drunken craziness that this silence is disturbing.  As soon as the snow began to fall and the temperature dropped below 20 people started going out less, and when they come in, they are quieter.  The halls are quieter in the day and my room has taken on a silent calm as the snow falls and glitters outside.

My need for music has risen to the height of Mt. Everest.  Pandora plays everyday and when I tire of Pandora my itunes is put on shuffle.  I find myself alone and listening to the lyrics more and more often.  Recording the ones that have a special meaning to me.  My favorite are by Rascal Flatts in the song “No Reins”.  It reminds me of my horse Ashkii and how much I miss watching those horses gallop around the fields.

I joined the equestrian team at the beginning of the year and instantly felt a part of something.  Montana becomes purposeful when I go to the barn.  I got to show this past weekend in Bozeman and while the week leading up to that show had been hell coming back I felt accomplished and relaxed.  It’s the same feeling I get listening to music, a sort of relaxed mind set where I can multitask better than I can while silence is involved.  At this point I feel I should point out that I am currently watching “Bones” on Hulu.  Typing this blog post his a product of multitasking. Ha.

There are many different types of music in my Itunes library and I find myself trying to form a playlist involving all of them.  So far we have Kid Cudi, soundtrack to Invictus, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, and Eminem.  I could not be more entertained.  Walking to class listening to Eminem rap about how his life sucks and how he’s better now makes me a rarity among students here.  I’m pretty sure that most people are rockin’ out to some cowboy singing about his tractor.  However when it switches form Eminem to Taylor Swift I have a quick moment of considering myself bipolar and I giggle to myself and draw strange looks from students walking by.  Sometimes I wonder if I should a personal Kanye West to interrupt my not-so-silent musings.

Rap has actually become a favorite of mine.  Macklemore is one of the few artists who has great lyrics and beats combined.  Eminem’s “Not Afraid” becomes my xcountry anthem and every time I listen to it I think back to cantering across fields and jumping I get excited.  As the music switches to “Some Hearts” by Carrie Underwood I listen to a specific line “Some hearts just get lucky sometimes” and her song “So Small” and the line “Sometimes that mountain you’ve been climbin’ is just a grain of sand, and what you’ve been out there searchin’ for forever, is in your hands”, I remember every time I’ve fallen off a horse, or been frustrated, and they’ve let me get back on and forgiven every thing I’ve done wrong.  I owe them so much, and as the last song reaches Daughtry’s “Life After You”, I know that “All that I’m after is a life full of laughter, as long as I’m laughing with you”.  I’ll be home soon, and can breathe in that familiar horse scent, and sit and watch a football game with my family and share what I realize was right beside me for all those years: home.

On Snow and Travel

Of all the places to freeze to death in the United States I don’t think there is a prettier place than Montana.  I’ve been wondering why I was, for the first time in a long time, looking forward to winter.  I hate cold, and with cold comes snow.  Snow is pretty, but snow means cold and thus the vicious cycle begins.  In Wisconsin we get nasty ice and “wet” cold.  It’s not fun; so why would I be excited for winter?  I discovered it a couple weeks ago.

I’ve been told that winter came to Missoula in the beginning of October last year.  So I was prepared (or so I thought) way back then.  The snow didn’t come to the valley until Cat/Griz gameday.  I did concessions that day so I didn’t even know it was snowing until I left the stand.  It was beautiful.  The trees caught all the little snowflakes and the ground had finally frozen enough to not melt the snowflakes on contact.  I couldn’t see the mountains in the distance, but Mt. Sentinel was beginning to look a little lighter than the beige and brown of the side of the mountain.

The walk back from the stadium was the coldest, windiest walk I think I’ve ever made.  Our campus isn’t big, but when you’re faced with 14 degree air, wind, and snow it feels a little bit like a battlefield at the north pole.  I half expected to see polar bears running across the oval.  I battled the wind walking back to Miller Hall and nearly fell over a couple times.  I couldn’t feel my face and was sure that my toes has frozen and fallen off, that would have been a trajedy.

Of course, because it was the first real snowfall of the year in the valley, it would also be the day I had to head out to Bozeman.  We were taking a Sonata, a two-wheel drive car with no snow tires.  I was a little freaked out.  Our driver was from Bozeman though so I put my life in her hands and four of us left on the journey.  Fishtailing all the way, we finally reached the halfway mark as we got to Butte and it’s pass.  Being from Wisconsin I only had a vague idea of what a “Pass” was.  I figured we would just be going through a slightly curvier road.  I was oh so wrong.  The Butte Pass was my first experience driving through a mountain pass and I feel this experience needs to be prefaced by the entrance into Butte.

As we rounded the turn on East 90 to Butte the roads got icier and the wind picked up.  I looked up into the clouds, knowing there were mountains up there, somewhere but because of the clouds and the snow no one could see them.  There was a glowing light up ahead.  It wasn’t round enough or high enough in the sky to be the moon.  My assumption was that we had found “the light” and were headed straight towards it.  Death by mountain pass was upon us.  Images of snow rushing up to meet us as we tumbled to our deaths over the cliff greeted me.  Our driver was talking about how the pass usually isn’t bad, but it could be, and as we got closer to the ever growing light we went past signs for chain stations and I looked up the side of the mountain as we rounded the bend to see a cut in the side and train tracks stretched precariously between two solid cliffs with air in between.  I flashed back to “Anastasia” and the train blowing up and plummeting into the abyss.  Great.  I looked towards the light.  We had gotten close enough to make out what the glowing image was.  It had become the Virgin Mary, arms outstretched towards Butte.  Fantastic, I know needed to pray to make it through the pass.

The pass itself is a blur, I don’t remember it.  We made it and our driver can now drive me anywhere in the middle of winter, she was awesome.  We drove back from Bozeman in a truck with six of us jammed inside.  The snow was cleared from the rode and we could see the mountains now.  Bozeman’s mountains make Missoula’s looks like wimpy hills.  Sharp, jagged lines of white and gray pierced the blue sky and I hope I get to see them again.

By the time we got back to Missoula there was no more snow and I began to wonder if we would ever see in the valley.  My wonderings were answered the next day.  We had a blizzard warning, a windchill warning, and a winter storm warning that day.  It was necessary.  I barely got to class that morning, it was 14 degrees that morning and we were getting dumped on.  I should have brought a parachute to drag me across campus.  Mother Nature is talented.  Two days of snow and wind and frigid temperatures and now we have some sun, and it is -2 outside.  No class for the rest of the week means I have little motivation to venture into the cold and I find myself loving the winter.  Weird.

On Boredom and Self-Analysis

Hey all!  It's been too long, I've missed you.  Really, I have.  Believe me.  There will multiple blogs in the next couple of days as I stare at the pile of work I should get done before finals, and then ignore it and turn to my computer to cure boredom.

Boredom is a disease that plagues me nearly everyday.  I get bored easily.  Many of you might not believe this as I have professed profusely ( that was just fun to type) that I am easily amused.  However, if you think about the act of boredom and amusement they go hand in hand.  The result is a rather obscure case of ADD in which the only answer is to throw down the homework and pick up the computer and go on Facebook for an infinite number of hours.  However unproductive that may be, it is extremely rewarding to log on and see those little numbers in the corner.  SOMEONE IS PAYING ATTENTION TO ME. yay.

So the only solution to this problem after the boredom is cured, is to recognize that this isn't a healthy way to cure boredom and so Facebook gets logged out and stumbleupon gets opened up.  For those of you that don't know, Stumbleupon is a website that surfs the net for you, and if you don't like it, you simply "stumble" again.

I open Facebook.

Now, I stumble enough in real life I needn't do it through the internet, and yet....I am addicted.  I put in animals and photography as my filter along with humor and it leads to some incredibly funny, beautiful, creepy, awkward moments to my day.  Stumbleupon loves to introduce me to new things and always seems to insist that I love watching crazy cat videos.  Which I didn't, until I stumbled upon a crazy cat video, and then I loved it.

I open Facebook

Boredom has set in again.  The cats can only jump in the cookie jar so many times for my easily amused brain.  I have given up on the internet all together this time as youtube has too many choice and to stumbleupon already searches youtube for me.  iPhoto is opened up next and I observe my pictures.  What can I do to make this one look prettier? 

I open Facebook. Ah crap, that person comments on EVERYTHING!

With some ideas in hand I proceed to open up picnik, a relatively new discovery of mine.  I had wondered for months how people created those photos with quotes on them in multiple fonts, nobody has that much time to figure it out on photoshop.  I couldn't imagine spending all that time.  Picnik makes it easier and faster and my love for quotes and music can be put to photos now.  I have made some of the sappiest pictures and I gotta say, I love it.

Hold on, I gotta check Facebook.

Now to check all my emails. Junk, Junk, Junk. all junk.

.....hold on, % off on shutterfly.

The urge to buy hits me like the snowstorm outside my window (more on that later).

whooooooosh.

photobook made.ordered.money spent.

It's now 2:00 am, my roommate has been asleep for 3 hours, I have to get up in 5 hours.

Check Facebook.