Can I just be the first to say I'm SO glad 2007 is coming to an end. So much happened this year and I honestly am so excited to move on from it. My relationship with Travis is over - finally. It has been so challenging to move on from him because he meant a lot to me. Letting go of him was the hardest part of loving him (as Kids in the Way says it). Not everything about that relationship was bad. I have amazing memories and I made quite a few friends through Travis. Namely Kevin and Drew. They were so great to me when it came to getting over Travis - I couldn't have asked for anything more. And I cannot forget the fact that me and Kami re-established our friendship. She is amazing, I love that girl and I cannot wait for her to move back to Illinois!

As far as Northern goes, well it is a chunk of my life I wish never happened. I'm going to be paying for that mistake for a long time. It just keeps coming back and biting me in the butt. But I grew up a lot while there - I was off on my own and its probably exactly what I needed to become ME, not crystals little sister and not Kami's shadow. I have my own personality now and I hate to say it but you can love it or hate it but I will not change easily. I am blunt and I am brutally honest - I tell it like I see it even if it will hurt - I do this I guess because so many people have been pansy-dancing around telling me stuff and I hate it. I would prefer people just TELL ME when something is wrong or if they have a problem with me. Dont expect me to just know. That's definitely a lesson I learned this year.

As far as 2008 goes, I have a lot of goals. I NEED to get a job and pay off NIU this year. I NEED to get my license and get a car. I NEED to enroll in school. I WANT to lose 30 lbs by my birthday. Starting the year at 158 and I should be to at least 130 by May 10th. Keep me accountable! :P I also WANT to be an amazing friend to Kami, Kevin, Drew, Chrissie, and Theo. They have each been amazing to me at some point. BUT I refuse to hurt myself again to please anyone. The fact is, at the end of this year I have built a wall and anyone is welcome in my life but if they have hurt me before they will have to climb that wall. Forgive the analogy but its the best way I can describe whats going on without naming names or giving details.

Wish me luck in 2008! I will DEFINITELY need it.

Painting I did for Crystals new apt.

Get a Job -- Offspring!

Well thanksgiving break is over and I am back at school. I am not happy to be here - my roommate seems to always be in the room and she is loud. Shes always on the phone - until at least 3 AM... I barely sleep but for whatever reason I don't ask her not to. I guess because I'll be gone after this term and starting something now seems pointless. Its just so disrespectful to be talking loudly on the phone until mostly 4 or even 5 AM when your roommate has to get up at 8... Gr. Otherwise, school inst too bad. I dont like my classes and I've given up on French. I have to be failing real bad right now and putting extra effort into it wouldn't pay off - so I'm focusing on maintaining my Phil, ARTH, and ENGL grades and maybe trying to raise my STATS grade a bit. Apparently the majority of the people in my Stats class are juniors and seniors. It's no wonder I am struggling. :/ So if I can pull off an impressive grade on my Stats final it will be fine - but each test score has gone down 20%. My first test I got 90%, second I got 65% and third I got 50%. At this rate I will get a 30% on the final. Yikes.

Over the break I applied to a lot of places. Blockbuster, AMC Theater, Target, KFC, Dunkin Donuts, Walgreens, Lord & Taylors, Home Depot, Kohls, Nordstrom, CVS, Petland, Jewel, Dominicks, Babies R Us, Toys R Us, FedEx, Romanos Macaroni Grill, Michaels, T Mobile... I need a job ASAP. Unfortunately I dont have a good feeling that I'll get one.. Im willing to work anywhere - I still have to apply at McDonalds and Wal Mart. Wish me luck?

So I'm not gonna lie guys. I dyed my hair blonde - twice. And thats all I am going to say about that right now. Let me know what you think. :P

What's Going On.

I talked to my mom and I convinced her to let me move back in. She doesn't want me to - I know that. She wants to live alone, but I have nowhere else to go. I don't want to either, but what else can I do. So that's all figured out - at least for the short term. For those who don't know, I AM NOT DROPPING OUT OF SCHOOL. My mom was convinced I was dropping out and not going back so I guess that was partly why she was so mad. I am simply leaving NIU when winter break starts and Im not coming back. I'm going to get a job and earn some money so I can get a car (also I gotta get my license). Then in January I am going to reapply for FAFSA as independent and starting either in Summer or Fall I am going to hopefully attend the Roosevelt is Schaumburg. I have NO intention of not going to school; Northern just isnt the place for me. This has little to nothing to do with Travis. I am not dropping out of school to be with him. -_-

Anyway, I can only say that I am very relieved knowing I have a roof over my head come December. Right now my only focus is to pass my classes with at least B's so the credits will transfer. I am REALLY only worried about French because I dont do good on the tests/quizzes and my attendance is less than perfect. I'm also slightly worried bout Statistics but I'm confident that I can pull out with at least a B if I study hard for the next test and the final. On the first test I got 90% and on the second I got 65%. Lol, so my next scores will kinda determine my grade (that and my homework scores). English is good - I think I can pull an A. And Phil I'm sure I'll end with a B because thats what I get on all the work in there. ARTH, well I have no idea what my grade is looking like in there but I'm sure its no worse than a high C or B. :]

I don't know what to do.

Just a quick update: My so-called mother told me yesterday she doesn't want me to move back in with her. She asked for the keys back. I didn't give them to her because my stuff is still there but the fact is.. I have nowhere to go come December. I cant move in with Crystal or my mom and I cant stay at NIU because my loans are coming through the way I planned - I need to take more out to cover the fall term tuition but I cant because my mother wont cosign. Travis says I can move in with him but I know were not that serious yet and that would just be kinda a huge thing to do just because I have a lack of other options. I could also move to Iowa and live with Kami and her family but me and her sister do not get along. Also, I don't think I want to live in Iowa. Lastly, my friend Chrissie said me and her could get a one bedroom apartment together... but I still need to get a job and a car and a license - so I don't know how that could realistically work out. Right now I just don't know what to do at all.

MOVING BACK HOME

So the update on my life: I still don't have my laptop. It was finished at 2:30 on Sunday but my Mom insisted on taking me back at 12:30 so even though my laptop is finished, I wont have it until next week. Also, when my laptop was mysteriously dropped by Anonymous and the screen was cracked, apparently the hard drive was messed up so they had to replace the hard drive - all my documents are gone. I wanted my laptop back so I could work on my English essay but that didn't happen so this essay is going to be real... simple. Haha. Whatever - I don't really care anymore. I only care about PASSING the classes I'm already in and then leaving NIU. I was going to transfer to the Roosevelt in Chicago but now I'm thinking of just moving back in with my ma' (no matter how hard that is going to be), getting my license and a job and enrolling in the Roosevelt in Schaumburg. I need my license - seriously. And I need a car. basically I realize now that these next few years are going to be hell and all I want to do is scrape through them. I don't care about coming out on top anymore. Is that bad? I don't think so. I'm sure whoever is reading this knows what its like - to be kicked while you're down... I mean, people can only take so much and I've reached my limit. All that to say I have a lot to do for the next few months.

Dropping out of School?
Oh my goodness - so I guess I still owe the school about $5500.00 before my first term is covered... I cant register for classes and I cant get my transcripts until thats paid in full. I guess I have to apply for ANOTHER loan but I know my ma wont go for that - so what do I do? I mean, I'm literally considering dropping out of school for a few years until my life is more stable... like I have a job and a car and stuff. I obviously don't want to put my education on hold but I don't seem to have many more options... Soo thats the update on that. :/

Transferring
Well I have not written anything in a while... Things at Northern are going okay. Most of my classes are fine... I'm struggling with French but that was to be expected. Statistics is one of those classes that I'm just going to have to pull through. Art History is boring but pretty dang simply to manage. Philosophy takes some work but I think I'm doing good. And English... well we rarely meet but when we do its easy-peasy. As for friends... umm, there are none. Kami moved to Iowa so even when I go back to Schaumburg (EVERY WEEKEND!) its not like I have anyone to hang out with.. Well, I hang out with Travis but even thats getting to be less and less. At school I don't have any friends. I don't get along with many people here - or, more so, I don't have much in common with people here. I don't want to party and I don't listen to their music so we clash. I called Roosevelt and they said I could transfer there for Spring term without having to reapply... So I think I am going to do that. Another thing is I CANT find a job on campus...so living here is just proving to be more difficult that its worth. Im thinking that Roosevelt is the best alternative because it shouldn't be too hard to find a job, they specialize in CREATIVE writing as opposed to just being an English major, AND it would be soo easy to commute home for the weekends (or even on some week nights if I so wanted to) because I could just hop onto the Metra.

Our Tango Dance -
Tango dancing on a wire with you is exhausting
I try to balance as our hips thrust at one another –
And as we spin around each other in fantastic form
This wire likes to wobble
& I wonder if the telephone poles will continue to support our weight
The bird wires for gossip wobble
But we continue to dance
We continue to move passionately
You shout words at me
Words that graze and cut my ears
I foolishly throw myself at you
I am a fool
You thwart me away by twisting away from me
I will continue to dance
Though the wires threaten to snap
And though the heat seems to rise
I will go on dancing
Either the wires are sparking
Or there is something between us
There’s no way to tell
No way to know how you feel
No way to avoid hurt
To avoid the fire
We keep tango dancing along the wire in the sky
Clouds drifting beside us
& I fear the wires will snap
I hope they snap.

--> I wrote this poem about tango dancing when I was thinking about me and this guy. I was in the car with my sister thinking about my relationship with him and I was trying to pinpoint how it made me feel; its a feeling I'm not used to. Its not like I'm standing in the middle of an ocean with waves crashing around me and it's not like a delicate ballet dance in the middle of the winter in a forest... It's passionate (I have these feelings for him that go unreturned - an unrequited romance). Yet every move I make with him I feel like I have to carefully plan it out and find loops holes so as not to be "thrown off the island" in a sense. The tango dance is passionate and emotional. The telephone wire means a lot. First of all the part with the sparks is supposed to get across the ambiguity of everything - how something that may sometimes seem so clear (like him liking me in return) turns out to be something totally different. (the wires sparking). Then the wires also represent gossip - like dancing along a stream of words that have no real meaning. The reason it represent gossip also is because when I think of telephone wires I think of a line of birds sitting on it and it always looks like they are talking or in other words, gossiping. I really like this poem because I feel like SO many people can relate to it... Anyone whose gone after a person who didnt have feelings for them in return would understand.

BYE KAMI - BFF

A Friendship -

In winter Chicago smells of exhaust and cold; the first day of school has this smell of freshly sharpened pencils and stale classrooms; the bathroom has a smell of ‘Brute’ cologne and stale cigarettes. Everything in my life leaves a small impression in my memory – a small impression that will linger in my mind for years to follow. This summer left a new impression on me: As I recall its events I will always feel a warmth and closeness inside that follows with a scent of ‘Sensual Amber’ body spray and the sound of loud music blaring in my head. Our friendship was reunited in spring after about a six-month separation and every month we clung to each other more and more, knowing another separation rested on the horizon.

AFI’s “Prelude 12/21” rang as a text message was delivered to my cell phone. It’s Kami – she wants to know if I want to hang out when she gets out of work at 6 p.m. She came to my house around 7 p.m. and we just barely drove to Subway to get some dinner. I say ‘just barely’ because her car doesn’t like going where we want it to; the RPM’s would drop significantly low and the engine would just rev rather than speed up so that we would just barely make it to where we had to go before it conked out for a few hours.

We enjoyed our sandwiches which were over-stuffed with vegetables that we both knew would add those extra few calories that we were trying to hard to avoid. Before hanging out with her, I never added anything to my subs but she made me want to try new things and as small as adding olives to my usually BLT sub is, it was a big deal for me. Soon enough she had me adding tomato and olives and oils to all my sandwiches. Kami and I had the uncanny ability to influence one another without the slightest intention of doing so. I, to her displeasure I am sure, somehow managed to sway her to be just a bit more high-maintenance than her usual self. Now, just as I often do, she orders her food with a few things ‘on the side’ as opposed to on the sandwich and she finds herself criticizing restaurant services now more than ever.

As the day came closer and closer we seemed to spend more time together. To the extreme annoyance of many around us, Kami and I were inseparable. In our most extreme exhaustion we would call one another up to get together. Everyday it seemed we would lay-out yet another creative endeavor for us to accomplish before I was to leave for school. Our last, and most memorable, endeavor was to make a photo-album of our pictures telling the story of our friendship. We already had over 300 photos of her from the days when I fancied myself a photographer and her, a model. We had probably two of me and about fifteen of us together. We had a long way to go to get to our goal of 150 but we did it. Almost everyday when we got together we would snap pictures.

For a few days we aimed to get pictures of us in front of the most significant places we went to in the summer (Denny’s, Dominick’s, Panda Express, Xactek, etc) but our time was, to say in the least, limited. We also wanted to get pictures of us with every person we spent time with in the summer but that proved to be an even more impossible thing as people would only see us when it was convenient for them.

The photos were all taken and I was set to leave the following day. She came to my house that morning and we ran errands the entire day in the 90 degree heat. We went to Panda Express to get some food and each ate one egg roll too much which pushed us both past full and into our “going-to-keel-over-and-die-of-fullness” phase. From there we headed to the mall to find a photo booth where we could take pictures. To our annoyance Woodfield Mall did not have one so we drove over to Stratford where we walked around the mall for almost an hour before giving up and then realizing as we were leaving that it was under the door we entered from.

After taking our pictures we headed to Wal-Mart to get our 150 pictures developed but the photo lines were long and the machines were running slow so with only 2 hours left of the store being open we began to panic. Both of us were getting to our breaking point. It was a mixture of emotions in knowing that it was our last night together and not being able to get what to needed to do done that we sort-of fell into an emo mood.

Thankfully Walgreens came to our rescue and was able to develop all of the images within 2 hours – so as we were waiting for them to finish we walked across the street to McDonald’s. Neither of us was very hungry but with no other ideas of what to do and both of us in sad moods, we settled on eating. While there we spoke of our friends who refused to hang out with us before I left. We were hurt – simple as that.

Finally, our pictures were done from Walgreens. We headed back to my house where we finished bringing my belongings down to my sisters car in the rain before sitting in the living room and laying our all the pictures into the photo albums together. It was hard and we both wanted to cry many times as we looked at the images that told the story of our friendship – a friendship we knew would again be challenged as we both went our own ways.

With us both feeling down trodden and emotional and with the photo albums finished we went over to Denny’s where we sat enjoyed a huge sundae as we wrote captions and watching the rain come down harder and harder. The clock reading 2 a.m. we decided to split; each of us go home and face the coming day separately. She drove me home and we both stood in the rain with tears on our face, only a hug to signify everything. Kami drove away.

A bit on my Classes

So Im in the second week of classes here at NIU and I am managing alright so far. I am currently enrolled in Statistics, French 101, English, Art History, and Philosophy. I am not worried about my English or Statistics class much because this is a basic English class that I technically tested out of and I took a Statistics course in high school so I should be able to manage that fine.

Philosophy so far is an interesting class - my teacher is English and often likes to poke fun at us Americans. Right now we are learning how to present deductive arguments; our current course material being how to prove that God exists and our next topic is how to prove he does not. As expected many students are very, very passionate about the subject (though nobody speaks up much in class). You've for your typical teenage atheist who thinks religion is for morons and you've got your standard Christian girl who was raised perfectly and is offended that other wont respect her beliefs - then you've got me... a Christian with a lot of room for questions and a mindset more like an agnostic.

French 101 - I've actually only been to the class once so far but I do have a lot to say on the subject. The first day my teacher was telling story after story about france and french movies and cuisine - I didn't learn anything but I assumed it was because it was the first day. Later in the week my RA was talking to me about her french class (which actually is the same as mine except it meets one hour before mine does) and she actually decided to transfer into another class because of how our teacher bounces for topic to topic. My RA - a girl who took french for 4 years in high school - decided to transfer out... Sad to say I didn't have the luxury so I am stuck in that class and will be heading there is a few minutes.

Lastly, Art History. It's art and its history... its boring. We wont be having a final in there and basically I only took it for the credit. The class is actually the perfect icon of how you picture a college lecture going; teacher babbling on and on about random facts using extremely long words that would take you a few minutes at least to understand with the entire audience staring into space with a dazed look on their face - often times struggling to stay awake. Yup, a typical lecture situation..

SOO right now I gotta head to my French class and see if I can talk to my teacher and figure out if I will be able to pass this course - then I have to go on a mad hunt for ice. My roommate popped her knee cap out of place yesterday. I went to my two morning classes and when I came back to switch books she was still laying in bed with a pill bottle in her hand... I freaked out a little because I couldn't tell if she was okay and I knew she was supposed to be at class so I woke her up and all she requested was ice. Everyone I asked told me the only place to get ice is off campus... but tonight I am going to go to the cafeteria (Right after I get out of my french class) and I am going to fill up a cup of ice and I am going to leave with that cup of ice to bring to my room mate! After that, I dont know what I can do. :[

DO NOT READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T READ HP7 & DON'T WANT TO SPOIL THE ENDING!


Oh, and before I go.. a little on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I thought the book was good except for a few things that irk me real bad. Throughout the entire book we are sitting with Ron, Harry, and Hermione wondering WHY Dumbledore didn't tell Harry more about what to do. We are wondering if what Rita Skeeter said is true - and we continue to have this unedning faithing in Dumbledore because for 6 books we have been given no reason to doubt him. It turns out that he really wasnt the greatest guy and when confronted by Harry all he could say is 'Sorry, my bad... guess I should have told you more but I thought you'd be dumb and mess up like I did!' ......... Kay .......... Then that little conclusion was awfully cheesy... What was Rowling thinking? Yeah, it was cute but come on! Every addition to the series grew a little more darker and then all the sudden these last 6 pages or so is the classic happily ever after ending. AND WHY DIDN'T HARRY DIE? Whatever, Snape is good - I knew it! :D

Proud Snape-Suppoter
Well I FINALLY finished the new HP and let me be the first (or maybe last) to say SNAPE IS GOOD! haha. More on that later - also more on my classes and what not.