the rose of kiev

Now comes the obligatory sigh - FINALS ARE OVER. In a matter of moments a book that was so invaluable I could not have lived without became worth only what I can get at the bookstore for buybacks. I'm allowed to go outside and enjoy the warm Spring evening now and extricate my face from the pages of Greek history and the Italian Renaissance and other such old things. As of five minutes ago, my Spring Break began and it feels GOOD. Watch Ohio turn nasty on me just as soon as I can spend copious time outside - it's the way the weather here works. Oh well - if it does, it's a sign that there is other stuff I need to catch up on, even though all of it would be more enjoyable from my front porch, insane neighbor kids and all. For the first time I've been in school, the end of the quarter was rather bittersweet. Yesterday was my final for my theater class - the one we'd all been dreading, because it would be the last day we would all really be together. My life has change...

The weather on Friday made me realize I always wanted a porch. Not a house necessarily, but definetely a porch. It was the first real day of Spring, regardless of calendar timelines, and the neighbor kids were tearing across the front lawns, screaming and throwing footballs and doing stupid things involving skateboards and stairs as their mother lit a cigarette and watched. The sun was beginning to sink, but all the houses on the East side (my side) of the street are up on this hill that gives the front of our houses an extra wash of sun that's a special treat. I had a textbook open on my lap but I couldn't focus on it. I just loved the feeling of the sun on my face and watching the band boys across the street trickle out together to smoke and chill. There are at least 6 houses on my side of the street that are nearly identical in build - same hill, same height, same porches. If you sit and look on either side, the houses are so close that the porches all seem to run together i...

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...