The view from my work window.

I'm sitting in the computer lab at work where I am a tutor, currently however, I have no students to tutor so I am working on studying for my Elementary French II class. I can hear the fan running from the small server rack in the storage room behind me, the air conditioning from the ceiling above me, the occasional noises that the Spanish tutor and a couple students in the room make. I am at a large, oval table, comfortably spread out in the way I wish all classrooms allowed students to, and seeing something a bit amazing:

Outside the large plate-glass windows that make up most of the outside wall of this room is one of the most gorgeous Fall-time sights I can remember. To the left of the windows is a tree, I have no idea which type although I know my mother would, it is approximately 2 stories tall, with dark green, almost fern-like leaves; dark brown, almost black bark; and small clusters of brilliantly red berries at the ends of many of the branches. This tree grows up against the building and is in stark contrast to its surroundings.

I know that below me there is a paved pull-through for the bank that is situated almost directly below me, but I can't see it, the only evidence of it is a weathered light-pole, one of the ones that looks like it was built in the 1980s, with the light situated in a square box on the top, the paint of the pole and box having likely once been black is now almost a grey-brown. Growing from the grass and hillside behind and to either side of this pole are birch trees--white birch. The birch leaves are changing colors, almost no more true green ones exist anymore, most of them have turned a yellow-green, yellow, or have become splotched with yellow patches.

Individually, each tree would look ugly, it is nothing like the splendor to be seen on the East Coast during Autumn. There are a few black spruce mixed in and a few other berry or darker deciduous trees as well adding to the cacophony of the color scheme. Through these trees I can see the highway and the on- and off-ramps, the bridge over the highway and bits and pieces of the businesses and what-not on the other side of the highway. The sky is overcast, grays, whites, little bits of blues starting to seep through , hints of possible sunshine. The types of hints where you know that the clouds are much thicker wherever the sun actually is. It's not exactly what  most people would call beautiful, but for Alaska, this type of scene, with the turning of leaves is a rarity, this is only the second year in the last 25 that I can remember having this type of true Autumn weather-wise. Usually the trees don't even get to change colors much before the leaves have dropped off, dead from frost or freeze, still green for the most part.

It is beautiful outside for this very reason, because this is so odd and it makes being at work studying so much more desirable. The only thing that could make this better would be a study area a bit more comfy than this and a good-sized mug of good coffee.

Want is not Need

Ten months ago I had finally reached a plateau of comfort and confidence in my academic abilities and was furiously filling out transfer applications to other schools; I needed a break and I was bound and determined to do it by finishing my undergraduate degree elsewhere, hopefully at Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA. Since then, a few things have changed: financially I realized I couldn't afford to move and nearly start over somewhere new yet again, academically I realized that I could graduate with my preferred degree in only two semesters barring any more hideously unplanned set-backs, job-wise I had finally found a position that, while being a drop in grade and pay, allowed me greater freedom in planning my remaining classes and allowed me to still remain in the university system, and emotionally...8 months ago I was introduced to person I can only partially describe as my soul-mate. Needless to say, my life has been turned upside-down and inside-out from what it was a year ago. Overall, I realized that, in a way, my previous plan had merely been a way of running away and in order to be able to look back and not want to kick myself, I needed to just stick with it, finish this degree here, and then go from there. I also thought that there was no way I was going to be accepted at Mercyhurst, what I consider to be one of the top schools and which was my #1 choice.

Wednesday was a normal day, up until about 2:00 pm, then everything I thought I knew got thrown in a mental blender and my thought processes outside of coursework and work became useless. In my mail was an acceptance letter...from Mercyhurst College, for the Fall 2011 semester.

Here, in my hands, was something I had dreamed about and stressed about more than most anything in my life...and I didn't want it. I knew I couldn't go, financially I was bound in Alaska until I had my Bachelor's degree and at that point, transferring to another school would be moot. Some part of me was unable to let go of the belief that this was something I still wanted, and some part of me felt a sense of obligation to this school that, against what I thought were all odds, had accepted me and should go no matter what.

After stressing about it for every non-class, non-work, non-sleep moment for a day-and-a-half, I realized that as much as I may have felt that I needed this when I applied for it, it wasn't really what I needed. I had what I needed, and this was only validation that I was on the right path.

Compared to the confidence others have in my abilities, I hold very little solid confidence in my own academic abilities. People look at my work and accomplishments and seem amazed, I look at the same and only see Average results and room for improvement. I guess this is a good, and a bad thing...this letter told me it wasn't just in the minds of those who knew me, they weren't just being nice to me....I could do this, I was good enough for a really good school, and if I tough it out, graduate and work my butt off for my GRE and LSAT tests, I'm going to be just as good enough for their graduate school(s) as I am as an undergraduate transfer student.

Take that Brain...I'll show you...HAH!

They have it all wrong.

I look around me and I feel lied to by people and books.

Love isn't fireworks, it isn't the heat of passion, it isn't arguments and fights and struggles, there is no Worse to balance out the Better...it's easy.

Love, it's falling into step walking with your best friend, it's your hand fitting perfectly into someone else's, it's never getting tired of talking and laughing about trivial things, and never getting tired of being with them. It's a gentle ache of missing them when they leave for work in the morning  and the rightness you feel when you see them again. It's the shinyness that the simplest of activities acquire, and it's having someone else think of you with the small things that they do; thinking of someone and then finding out that they are thinking of you too.

It's new everyday, and yet in an instant it has been there forever.

It's realizing suddenly, through all the jaded haze acquired about the subjects of Love and Marriage, why it actually lasts for some, and what all those others are missing.

Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost--Is A Crock of Bull.

Once, a long time ago, I modified that old statement so that it was acceptable to me, but, of course, I can't for the life of me remember what I modified it too.

I admit it, I am a complete cynic. Do I believe in Love (with a capital L), sure! Have I ever been in Love? Once, how do I know? Because he's the only ex-anything I still care for, even still love (without the capital L). But as for love in the future, I guess my response depends on whose asking. Love. huh....

Having been in love, it's like life's greatest regret, the one you can never outrun, forget, or outlive. It's always there, no matter how much you want it to be gone or you tell your now-someone that it's gone, it will never be gone. That person, that time, that ...Love, first, last, somewhere in the middle one changed something that affects every following moment.

Never having been in love however, that, THAT is like the greatest gift in life is still awaiting you; the greatest pleasure, the greatest pain, the greatest moment to be alive. If you've never been in love, you are lucky, you still have it to look forward to.

If you have never had your heart broken, I truly think you may be missing out. The words Exquisite Pain come to mind, a pain so pure and thorough it rips right through you, but nothing else ever makes you Feel as much. I can remember it clear as day, I can still feel it, and you know what? I smile at it. Maybe because I know what it was born of, Love, maybe, maybe for soem other, as-of-yet unfathomable reason.

Must Love Rain

Alaska, known for its darkest of dark nights in the dead of winter, and the sun being up 24/7 in the summer....well summers other than this one at least. So far, I think I have counted 5 'summer' days up here this summer...good news for me, less so for most people I know. Personally I've been enjoying the rain and drizzle and windiness.

For some odd and strange reason, it seems that I get absolutely nothing productive done on those odd summer sunny-shiny days, and an extraordinary amount done on the not-so-summery days.I take this to mean I'm not means for Hawaii or the like.

I have to say this much in defense of the rain to those sun-lovers out there, look around you, have you EVER seen Alaska this GREEN before? Hello, Global Warming, you are very welcome! I remember growing up, Alaska was still green, but it was a brownish, spruce tree type green, not this deciduous green reminiscent of Oregon and Washington. Go figure, plans are finalized for actually Leaving Alaska, and not only do people I know move back UP to Alaska, but the weather begins to edge towards what I like more and more. Sorry my dear state, I will indeed be disappearing as planned, your hold on me is tenuous and fleeting at best, but I will give you this...Beautiful!

Self Esteem....Who needs it, Right?

I wish I didn't.

I heard wonderful news today! My little sister, four years younger than me, all of 22 years old, got into Graduate School as of today, Vet School. Yay sis......BOOO ME. I got four years on her and I'm still working on my Bachelors Degree #1.

It's not that I am unhappy with my life per sey...I'm not, I'm content enough, although I am more than ready to be moving on to a new state, city, and social crowd for the most part....I just, feel as if, in my life, I haven't done much, not on the grand scale at least. On the day-to-day I can list at least a dozen things a day that I've done that make me feel accomplished, especially when it comes to talking about my students. But if people who don't know me on a day-to-day basis were to look back on the sum of my life, I'm not sure they would have anything spectacular to say about me, or it.

I want to do something amazing, I want to make such a difference that I feel it each and everyday reverberating through my life.  It is a greedy thing to want, to make a difference in order to make myself feel good. There are those people who would say that I have already made a tremendous difference, there are people who say it now, but I don't feel it. Instead, I just feel tired, I feel as if I have given so much of me that there is hardly any me inside and I need something to fill me up again. I need new places, new faces, new sights and sounds, new responsibilities, and the chance to forget my whole life so far and act as if it never happened.

I wonder if this is what a mid-life crisis is like. The almost over-whelming urge to just up and change everything about my life, dump all the old and pick up only all new. Or maybe, this is just the winter getting to me, it's my 24th winter here, I am positively done with them. I have to keep telling myself though...one more to go, only one more....

Surprise!

It's one thing that humans seem to have an innate knack for, surprising you. Or perhaps it is the knack for being surprised, I don't know, but I find myself and others constantly being surprised, by others. It isn't necessarily in a good way, or in a bad way, but the ability to constantly end up doing something in a way that surprises, or even at all that surprises you. Sometimes it means you end up disappointed in the person, unfortunately experience with those types of surprises has jilted me against believing anything anyone says at face-value, although it proves in-valuable in school. Sometimes, however, it is a pleasant, even uplifting surprise, and it is moments like those that have the ability to renew one's faith in the human race.






I write, stories, poems, fan fiction, whatever comes to mind, to take me away from this world for a while and allow my overactive imagination to take wing and explore things and storylines no one else ever has before. I personally have always thought my writing to be rather good (until I reread it several years later and redub it as juvenile), and of course, my mother has always thought the same, but recently, I submitted a rewriting of a fan fiction story to FanFiction.net just to get it out there and hopefully use the site as encouragement to continue writing on a more regular basis. I never expected anyone to read it, and not many people have, but to my immense surprise, and delight, not only did some people read it, but it was even favorite by several people and I even got a deliberate comment of encouragement! Oh the kindness of strangers!






I think, in my universal wisdom, that this stranger's comment, constructive criticism actually, for which I was highly thankful if not prompt in responding to, meant more to me than if it had come from someone I knew. There is something to be said for communications between absolute strangers, the filters come off, or so I would like to think. If there is no predetermined relationship between two people, then there is no reason to need to put up the facade of being who you were when you first met or who they want to see in order to maintain that level of relationship or friendship. With strangers, be you brave enough to make a few annoyed, angry, or whatever, you are free to be exactly who you are at that particular moment, free to say what you wish and do what you wish, and, honestly, to care less about the consequences. I should meet more strangers, it would be nice to have a group of people, ever changing, to meet with and just speak frankly, not get to know all that well, although that might be inevitable, but people to know who expect frankness and bluntness and even constructive or non-constructive rudeness.

Engagements, Weddings, Babies, and more of the same

No offense to all those I call friends, I love you all dearly and my life is better for having had you in it.

Sometimes it seems, like now, that everyone I know, and even most of those I don't, have a new ring on that special second-from-the-very-left finger, an adult-onset siamese twin, of the opposite sex more often than not, or a new, biologically accepted, even revered, reason for shopping for clothes both bigger than their current size, and much, Much smaller than they can Ever hope to physically fit into again without some severe, life-endangering amputations (Cassandra from Doctor Who comes to mind). I trully feel that I am surrounded by either those currently in the life-altering clutches of one or more of these 'wonderous' miracles of being cursed with genetics that have so dubbed them as Homo sapiens, or those who passed seemingly unaltered (granted I didn't really know them very well or at all pre-clutches) through them in the past. Yes, their lives are changing, altering, becoming more...something, and I, well, mine isn't.

I adore their babies-to-be already and wholly plan on spoiling them as much as possible; I wish them no end of happiness and contentment in the arms of their new life-mates, and I would willingly wear anything any of them may request of me on their happiest of days...BUT...I refuse to join their ranks.

As I hear it, and as I have been known to say it, life is all about the changes. It's the little things, and the big actually, that make it all worth it. Yet, I feel that in my solitary, single-dom, soul-mateless, spouseless, childless, significant other-less-ness, that although I overall feel that my life is progressing "in it's own way", I am being left behind.

I do have to blame myself for not being the bestest correspondent ever, the only way I reliably speak with much of anyone outside of work and school is IM-ing sadly enough, the nerd that I am. However, once high school is over with, and you move on to whatever bigger and better things are, it still takes a while to sink in what you may end up losing.

Peaople get engaged, and suddenly, if you're not a direct family member or one of the bride's maids, you're one of the last to hear from them on, well, anything at all, no matter how long you've known them, people get married and suddenly you never see them again, forget that they already have been living in another state you've never been to, they have so much more to do now as a "Sadie, Sadie, Married Lady", and then, oh my, here come the screaming, wriggling, bundles of joy, and unless you are a babysitter, better kiss even IM conversations good-bye. Bitter, actually no! Just confused.

I don't get it, the appeal of it all, I wanted it all once, but now, I can't understand what the bleep I was thinking, or feeling. In the ways of not having a significant other or children, I think I may be better off, but in the ways that I have yet to get out of this state and do something others would consider 'worth while', not so much. Pffff what am I saying, since when did I start caring what others thought of my life or my decisions?

It actually wasn't the friends planning their weddings, or even the ones I recently found out are expecting, it isn't even the ones with boyfriends or husbands that brought this on, it was a plain, old, normal (Trully Scary Thought There) beginning of a mid-life crisis that came in the form of realizing that I am nearly 30, THIRTY! and I still have none of that. I live alone, one mile down the road from my parents, I am about to quit a job that wasn't really a career anyway much less going to become much more than what it already has over the last five years there, I have no form of graduate degree done yet, and my biggest wish for my life is to travel the universe, and not through a telescope either.

I am not quite to the point of truly doubting myself, nor finding a way to mentally negate every good point of my life thus far, but I can feel that moment looming on the visible mental horizon. Especially as one more birthday comes closer and ever so closer...oh textbooks and due-dates, save me from thinking!

Feeling the Need for Someone to Dance With

Contentedly single for almost two years now, I occasionally have those moods, you know the ones, when for a moment in time, you want the exact opposite of what you have. Although I am still firmly entrenched in my distrust of the majority of the male species due to several bad past experiences with them, and the fact that those I still see as the Very few remaining good ones in Alaska are either taken or uninterested, I occasionally feel I miss the companionship.

I, myself, am a terrible dancer. Give me figure skates, and teach me the steps, and apparently I can make art of it upon the ice, but off...I am a complete Queen Clutz. However, sometimes, as now in the middle of studying frantically before having to return to work, (I blame the music of the moment, "Nothing's Wrong" by Catherine Scholz & "Dance With Me Daily" by the Barra McNeils) I am overcome by a gentle longing to have someone dance me gracefully around a room.

Having a fascination, and sometimes feeling I belong in the times, of many things Victorian (the age of and following Jane Austen's time) my imagination gets away from me at times until the moment ends and here I am, back in this plodding century of nothing particularly noteable.

Silly American Language

Extraordinary......extra ordinary.

Written together it indicates something out of the ordinary, super special, extra strange; and written out in its individual components.....it means ordinary as can be, ordinary to the point where it can't be any More so ordinary....

We silly Americans.