Playing For Change | Song Around the World "Don't Worry" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

It's Been Awhile

Hope has been a recurring theme during my semester. I started out pretty full of it. But somewhere around mid-semester it just disappeared. I couldn't find it for a long time. Only recently have I found what's left of it. I realized that I had never completely lost it. It had been with me the whole time. I had just been beating it so severely that it had become unrecognizable. I think it's healing now. Slowly. But I'm starting to remember what it looks like. Just in time for my twenty-first.

Eleven

I've been reading Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros for my Multicultural Literature class. Sometimes I just have to share:

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are--underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's that part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is.

You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is.

March

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter. ~Paxton Hood

New Romantic-Laura Marling

Prone to Sinus Infections

That is what the top of my medical file should read. Since the last time I blogged, I got a cold and thought I had gotten over it. But it lingered and has become a lot more trouble than I really wanted around Mid-Term time. Only two things are getting me through: 1-next week is Spring Break, and 2-at least it's not mono like everyone else has.

Bad Day

I've had a bad day. I had a test at eight o'clock which I didn't wake up for. Well, I woke up at seven and decided I would sleep in just a little bit longer, but I wound up sleeping until 8:05. Normal people would have just jumped from bed and ran to take the test, but not me. I hate the feeling of everyone watching you as you walk in late. So I e-mailed my teacher and he arranged for me to take the test any time after 3:00 p.m. I skipped my 9:30 exercise science because I was so exhausted from my stressful morning. And I skipped chapel. I didn't end up reading anything I was supposed to for my 1:30 class, but that was probably the highlight of my day. I then went to go take my test, but it wasn't waiting for me in the office like it was supposed to (it probably slept through its alarm too). So I went to the medical clinic to get my blood drawn for some tests--that was fun. Now, I probably won't get to go to boot camp today because I have so much homework for tomorrow that I haven't started yet.

Is it Wednesday yet?