the rose of kiev

My days have never been packed so full, but also have I never felt so full of contentment as well. Lately it feels like all my days are nonstop and my house is merely a place for storing food and crashing for a few hours between days. Typically, as unorganized as I usually am, my schedule falls apart and there's not enough time for enough things; however, necessity has taught me a little discipline and when I'm busy now I just feel like I'm using all the time God gave me. Yesterday was one of those days. Out the door before 9 for the bus ride to school, I got to my first class early and studied. Then the hour between classes I rehearsed for a skit in theater with a guy whose partner had gone out of town, my rumbling stomach only pacified with a few pretzels. Then, during the mid-class smokers' break in my theater class (what is it about actors and cigarettes, anyways?) this girl in class starts talking to me. Really talking to me. My housewarming party a few weekends ag...

It's amazing what a month can do. Battling breezy negative-degree temperatures, I struggled my way to class this morning, frigid and tired and irritable. As I walked up the stairs to my morning class, triumphantly tugging my scarf with the air of one who has SURVIVED and done it 10 minutes earlier than usual, I head for the door but stop short at the threshold - a pink flyer on the door cordially informs me that class is cancelled for today, please be sure to read the required material. Figures. So now I'm in the library, taking a break from my desperate quarter-long game of catch-up. I'm making it sound too dramatic, but I do feel like a little kid walking hand-in-hand with dad, my strides just a little too short to keep up with his, every couple of steps forced to jog a little to catch-up. Yeah, I know, me and my legs are short so I should be used to this, but you know what I mean. I have to choose which times I want to hangout with my friends more and sacrafice the other...

Well, my thoroughly insane week has begun. Yesterday I woke up at nine and was packing boxes by ten. At the end of the day, after hours of boxing and even a few hours at work, I crashed in my bed in a different house I will soon learn to call home. The morning was a flurry of activity, more and more people coming upstairs and requesting more stuff to move because their pick-ups or cars could fit something else. All the boys helping us 3 girls move were patient and gracious and volunteered to be at our mercy as long as we requested their man muscles and man cars. Just before one'o'clock and shortly after the majority of my stuff had been carted from the house on Dayton Dave took me to work. All day I campaigned to my boss to please please let me go home early, it's not too busy up here, please please I'm trying to move today and you've already consciously overscheduled me on the first week of winter quarter please please don't add inhumanity to your long list of ...

Woosh. It's been quite a long Christmas week. I haven't worked since last Friday, meaning a full glorious 6 days away from registers and managers, and I'm sitting here yawning tonight swearing that I was just at work not even a couple days ago. I'll have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow for a 7 hour shift starting bright and early at 8am; the first hour or so is slow and allows for a lot of mental downtime and boy do I need the downtime so as to keep processing the thoughts, the memories, the goodness of the past week. For the first time since Thanksgiving I spent a night away from what I now call home; for the first time ever, I spent several nights in a row a bed shared with my sister or splitting (theoretically) a pull-out couch with my punk soon-to-be-step-brother. I was in houses I've called home with no room to call mine; for the first time in my life when my items dawdled on my dad's living room floor I had a fluttering impulse to scoop my things up and at l...

In the past, my dad always used to tease his brother about marrying a high-maintenance woman. My Aunt Susan is classy, organized, always dresses well and is never mismatched. And now, with great glee, my Aunt Susan and Uncle Scott are turning every pun back on my father because he went from a marriage five years ago to a woman more concerned with comfort than class to an engagement with a woman who has to somehow somewhere be in the same gene pool with my Aunt Susan because their similarities are uncanny, to their great delight. Robin always dresses well, especially on days she gets to see my dad, loves to shop, and never mismatches. Ever. And when she does, say, commit a taboo like wearing a white purse with a black-theme outfit she feels the need to call her 19-year-old daughter in disbelief; to which Lauren will, quite seriously, ask if Robin is running a fever. Dad has been with this lady for almost a year now and due to her generosity and fondness of me she has expanded my wardrob...

A girl I've known since I was in middle school called and woke me around 10:30 this morning (trust me, I am living up the Christmas break life for all it's worth) to update me on her life. This was the second phone conversation I've had with her since she moved to southern Ohio with her boyfriend and his family a little before I moved into the girls' house in September. The first conversation was maybe 90 seconds, a brief giddy invite to be a kimono-wearing bridesmaid for her summer wedding. That means she would be married at 20; I looked at myself and realized that I myself am not ready for such a thing and won't be for a while, and knowing my friend I couldn't say that she's honestly ready for such a commitment either, but is going along with the thought because we girls, we like weddings. The presents, the attention, the pretty dresses - we love the whole scene. We sometimes forget that marriage happens after that, and that marriage life is very different...

Just try and pronounce that, I dare ya. It sounds intimidating but it really isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. It's a thyroid condition that kicks my heart rate, rate of speech, metabolism, and energy into high gear while dropping my attention span to that of an ADD 4-year-old. Just before I was diagnosed at 12 I spent a summer doing the craziest things sleepwalking because my body just could not relax in this condition. At summer camp I would try and walk outside into the woods every night, at home I would steal the bath mat and hide it under my covers or randomly wake up on the couch some mornings, never having the slightest idea what happened. Thankfully, my condition's been well-treated by the process of slowly killing off my uncooperative thyroid and giving me a medical supplement in its place, the level of medication finally balanced to the level I need. But there's a side effect I didn't anticipate: apparently the level of supplement isn't enough to send ...