Fall down, pick yourself up

i've only missed two days of my gratitude journal, all the other ones i've kept on paper in my real journal.

these past few days have been a little tough. it's hard to move in the middle of a semester. it's hard to have people move away. it's hard to have money be the biggest issue on the planet. i probably have just as many downers as i do good things, so the point of this journal is needed. so in honor of a tough weekend, i'll be doing a gratitude journal from thanksgiving until right now.


1. I made something yummy for Thanksgiving dinner all by myself. Everyone liked it AND I get to mark it off my list!
-----35. Cook a main dish for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. I made some oven roasted potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner. I got the recipe from Garrett, who is a better cook than I am.
2. Austin was there for his first Thanksgiving!!! I was the only one able to put him to sleep for the nap he needed to take for us to be able to eat haha!
3. We all brought home a bunch of leftovers to munch on. Poor college kids will eat for a week thanks to Mama Hall and Mrs. Jones.
4. More people showed up to help us move than I thought would. The weather was PERFECT. Just a little warm, but there was a steady, cool breeze.
5. The new place is lovely. It has a fireplace, which I want to break in as soon as possible.
6. The rent is cheaper than what she said on the phone! Maybe there's a special. We almost pitched a fit because the contract said $1100 a month for a TWO BEDROOM APARTMENT. This ain't Mockingbird! We pointed that shit out quick and of course it was a typo.
7. The people below us seem cool. We didn't introduce ourselves but they seemed to be going to a party or something when we crossed paths. They're around 40-ish.
8. Lester seems to like the new place. I swear he's more like a dog than most people think. He knew there were weird people in the house all moving day and he didn't like it. He didn't sleep the first night. I kept hearing him run in his wheel like he was very stressed out.
9. I sold some DVD's I didn't want anymore. The price was beyond shitty, but I was just glad to get them out of my way finally!
10. Finally showed Garrett the Office Wedding Dance. He thought it was ridiculous and cheesy, but I saw a smile.

Shmatitude

Today is one of those days where I might be reaching a little. Not because today sucked, but it was just boring. I left the house once and it was to get fast food (gross) because I was doing homework aaalllll day.

1. My costume project was not as hard as I thought it would be. I need to stop letting myself getting intimidated.
2. Got to sleep in suuuuper late.
3. Said fast food was the Teriyaki Bowl from Jack in the Box. Surprisingly good. (Not the best chinese food, but better than burgers.)
4. A neighbor put up the prettiest Christmas decorations around.
5. Turning the heater on for the first time didn't set off the smoke alarms. Yay!

Gratitude November 21

1. Someone on the street I drive down every day of my life put up Christmas decorations and lights that always make me smile.
2. Watched Jon and Kate Plus 8 with Jordan. Trying to hang out more before she moves.
3. Accomplished a good amount on packing today.
4. Had a good wake-up with Garrett.
5. Found some cheap tights. (I have runs in my old pair.)
6. It feels like cold/fall finally.
7. I'm not taking medicine anymore for my cold!!! I don't feel bad anymore, but my nose is still runny.
8. Got my hair trimmed, and the lady did it right!!
9. Garrett listened (or pretended to) to me explain something about the Twilight series that I discovered last night. *I want the last two books!!*

Gratitude Journal

For my 18th birthday I got Oprah's 20th anniversary DVD collection. Today when I found out her show is ending in September of 2011, I felt like watching them.

Some people make fun of me because I sound like a sad, female cliche when I squeal "I love Oprah!" any time she is mentioned. I feel a more personal connection to her than maybe the average viewer. To make a long (long) story short, she helped my mom find the courage to leave my not-so-nice father, therefore changing, and maybe even saving lives.

Today I decided to watch her DVDs and they're split up into sections. My favorite is Aha! Moments. I think it's sort of self explanatory, and one stuck out to me tonight. An author somewhere around her 10th season inspired her to keep a Gratitude Journal.

In a Gratitude Journal, you are to list at least five good things about your day or that you noticed today. They're not supposed to be made up of "I have a nice car, I have a nice house." They are to be very specific, "Today I noticed the flowers outside were a pretty purple; Today a stranger told me she liked my shoes." She said that when you start your day looking for your five things, you see the world differently.

I think I am going to try to do that. I've noticed in myself lately that I let things get to me more, or let the first small bad thing ruin the rest of my day. It's something that a person very important to me pointed out after I noticed it in myself, and it bothers me that it was noticeable enough that he brought it up. Generally, I'm a glass half full person, maybe it's stress from school, maybe it's my old age, but I don't like this recent development. I might not post all my entries here, but I'll try. So now, I will attempt to start.

NOVEMBER 20, 2009
1. I got a great parking spot at school.
2. My professor in my first class gave us some free answers on our quiz, and told us that class is cancelled next week.
3. Garrett said the lunch I cooked for us today was yummy.
4. Lester didn't run away from me (like he usually does) when I tried to pick him up and play with him.
5. I sold back some books that I didn't want to move, and got back $23.
6. I jumped in the short line at the grocery store.

Sick in bed? Rediscover your blog...

There are a few things I'd like to add to my list, and a couple things I'd like to share with you that I accomplished.

54. Donate to charity as much as I possibly can.
55. Share some of my favorite childhood things with Jordyn.
56. Keep Austin overnight by myself.
57. Go see one (preferably more) of Ryan's games.
58. Help Seth and Aly plan their wedding!!
59. Bake like a Mommy around Christmas.
60. Be there for at least one of Austin's firsts (steps, words, crawl)
61. Get an A in my Costume 3 class.
62. Never let Barbara make me cry.


Some that I've accomplished:
31. Own more Beatles albums. My mommy bought a couple of the Beatles remasters and let me burn them from her. I'm still counting it.

11. Turn my phone off and disconnect for 24 hours!!! Ugh, it was grand. It was mine and Garrett's two year anniversary weekend and he got me the loveliest present. His work caters to a lot of high-end clients and the managers get freebie offers all the time. This weekend, they gave him a free night in a nice hotel in Downtown Dallas. It had a stocked kitchen, 300 channel cable and dvd player, hot tubs, free breakfast, whatever's bigger than King Sized bed, oh it was lovely. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to accomplish this goal. I often feel like we get distracted by video games and tv shows that I wanted to have a weekend just for us. We checked into the hotel and went across the street to Northpark and Buca diBeppo's for dinner. (Who wants to cook on vacation?!) We did stop at a gas station and buy ice cream to snack on all night and during the movies (another goal accomplishment.) And all this time, I didn't have my phone on!!! I tried to convince him to turn his off, but he felt more like it was being removed rather than freed. I checked before bed and when I woke up. (You see, I had a very pregnant sister-in-law.) I felt very calm the whole time.

8. Watch the last three episodes of Star Wars (the ones from the 80's). I took Episodes 4 and 5 to the hotel with us. I promised Garrett if he ever took a weekend off I'd watch them with him. He ONLY works weekends, 9 hour shifts an hour and a half away. So needless to say, my only free-time I'm pretty much Garrett-less. It makes me sad sometimes, other times I like the lack of distraction to catch up on projects and housey things. Either way, I promised him if he ever took off time I'd watch them with him. Then, when we got home we watched Episode 6. I really loved them, especially Harrison Ford. My only qualm was how distracting the "improvements" were. There were moments when it was obvious that those effects weren't there in the 80's haha.

48. Got new glasses!!!!! I love them and I've been wearing them since I got them.

51. Finish my portfolio. I don't know if you can ever "finish" your portfolio. I guess that means you're done with your career. But I brought it up to date finally.

Eight Years

I woke up this morning with the desire to write about where I was eight years ago today. It was a historic day and as much as we all want to forget, I think it's necessary that we remember.

I was in eighth grade at ACT Academy. They sort of let us run wild in that school (I miss it so much!)... so my best friend Rachel and I were down in the Art Lab all by ourselves (lol) on the lowest level of the school, for a good hour probably. When we decide that maybe we should return to wherever we were supposed to be, we walk up the stairs to nobody in the hallways. Everyone was in their rooms and quiet, and nobody but those who attended ACT Academy knows what that means. There was always somebody studying, laying down on the hallway floor, there was always someone sitting on top of the lockers sketching. I vividly remember us getting to the top of the stairs and stopping cold. We probably made a joke about how it felt like a horror movie, but we ran to one of our favorite teachers Ms. Holman's room. Hers was the biggest room in the middle school section of the K-12 school. We ran to the doorway and was met with everyone we knew sitting in the floor looking shocked, listening to something on the radio. Being the loud teenagers we were, one of us yelled "What happened?!" and were immediately shushed. We walked up to the teacher closest to the door, I forget who it was, and he said "The World Trade Center was bombed or something." What does that mean to a 12 year old? And honestly, I didn't know which one the WTC was, I thought it was "the big one in Chicago." I was gently corrected by Ms. Holman who explained, "No, sweetie, there are two of them and they're in New York City," and I immediately knew, as I had a poster of the New York skyline in my room. I didn't understand how big the building was or how many people occupied them. I didn't get worried until I heard about the Pentagon and how the White House was being evacuated.

We sat there for a good 20 minutes before we were forced to switch classes. But of course, the day didn't go on as normal. We were told with MUCH force that if we spoke a single word about it in the hallway we would be suspended for the rest of the day and then the next. The teachers were afraid of the little children hearing and immediately thinking they were coming for us too. I remember a teacher turning on the radio in our room and going into the elementary school section so some of those teachers could come and hear at least a bit of what was happening. The high school kids had TV's in their room, but the windows were closed (which also never happened) and no one was allowed in there without permission from the principal. At ACT we were each issued laptops, a couple of us ran to our computers and I was the only one able to log into cnn.com since there was obviously a lot of traffic. Everyone crowded around me, as we read that it was a plane and that it was almost positively intentional. They described how the plane was in no way in a nose dive or anything and how clear the sky was.

Another teacher gave us each his phone to call our mommies, lol. I felt like a baby, but I knew it would bring me comfort, and most of all, I wanted to go home. She didn't answer her phone. She would later explain that she stole my little TV from home and took it to work to broadcast in the conference room. She explained how on her way home she had to pull over and vomit while the radio newscasters described the people jumping from the skyscraper's top floors.

For our last class of the day, Mr. Tustin gathered the middle school kids to explain what had just happened to our country. He gently explained what a terrorist was, and how they just hate for no reason that we could understand. He explained how the plane nosedove into the Pentagon and how and why the buildings collapsed in the streets of New York City. My mom picked me up soon after and I said, "So we're going to war..." She said, "No honey, that won't happen." (.....)

My grandma wanted me to come to her house so she could feed me cookies and shelter me from EVERY TV station except the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. I watched MTV of course, like any good teenager, but even they broadcast the news. I saw the planes slice the buildings like butter and watched as they collapsed like something out of Armageddon. I remember falling asleep with the TV on, and waking up the next morning to "One Love" by Bob Marley, then "One" by U2.

In my time away...

I've accomplished more than I thought :)
And now, on this Saturday night alone in my apartment, I will tell the internet about it.

First of all, I never told you about my tattoo experience. Number 45! I got the lyrics from Strawberry Fields Forever, "Living is easy with eyes closed" tattooed on my right side on my ribs. All of my tattoos have meaning and importance. Even if they're ugly when I'm old, I'll remember what they meant when I was impulsive and 21. I got this because I always want to appreciate the little things and I never want to have something lovely happen to me and not appreciate or acknowledge it. As for the experience itself? I would NEVER do it again. It hurt so badly, and that's a lot coming from me. With all of my other tattoos, I've found that zen place and meditated until it was over. My 30 year old brother called me after he got a tattoo on his wrist and beraded me saying how strong and brave I was for having both of my wrists done. He never went back to get it finished. I literally almost passed out with this one. There was no fat, no part that didn't hurt. And the closer it got to my stomach, the more it felt like I was being stabbed. I spent the weekend on my left side in a bikini top (in cold weather) because even clothing hurt my swollen and pink side. I'm proud of myself and I don't regret it at all. But I will not be doing it again.

40. I went to church with my roommates Jordan and Aaron. They discussed between them how they want to go to church more, so I invited myself. It was a huge church in Highland Village, definitely aimed to a younger crowd. It opened with a full band and a singer that sounded like Bon Jovi. The sermon was nice. I still determined it was not for me. But oddly, I love that side of Garrett. Maybe it's because it's something that I don't possess. He was raised Episcopalian (Diet Catholic, as he so lightly puts it.) He doesn't go now, but he knows all the stories, plans for big events in his life to be church based (weddings, babies' baptisms) and can answer all of my questions.

53. I planned out my college semesters and as of now, barring no unforeseen circumstances, I will graduate the summer of 2011!! That's still farther behind than I'd like, but it's a goal to achieve. I'm mostly upset with myself for not applying myself my first two years, because I would be graduating next summer. Ugh, I don't even want to think about it.

15. Romantic bubble bath. No details for that. Moving on.

16. Clean bill of health!!! This is something else I won't do too many details... but basically I had something that could have turned into something much worse. There was no medicine I could take to make it better, I had to let my body fight it off all by itself. I had to go back to my doctor every six months for a checkup. And after two years, it was undetectable, and I'll never have it again!

2. A real life apartment. Our apartment now is like a mini-house. It's not just a room with two bedrooms on each side! It has a mini-hallway and even a mini-dining room. We even have a pet! Colonel Lester von Frisbee, a gerbil. You may call him Lester, just not von. And he provides me with infinite entertainment. If I ever fix my digital camera, I'll post pictures.

I hope to update soon, as I will accomplish some more next weekend!