Monday is the new Sunday...

...At least it is in the summer!

I can't believe I forgot Stephens Sunday this week! I have seriously got to start remembering what day/month it is- I'm getting that Summer Sickness where time doesn't exist anymore, and night becomes day.

I have been semi-productive, though. Mom and I have decided to hold a Going-to-College Yard Sale, and I made one of my posters for it yesterday (you can totally tell I have no idea how to make stuff on the computer).

I thought it would attract the awesome people I would be comfortable selling my awesome stuff to.

Which, by the way, can I tell you how hard it's going to be to decide which of my things stay,

and which will be gone forever?

Which leads me to my first entry in "Why I Love Stephens" this week:

1) Simplifying my life. This really applies to all college freshman, as we are all responsible for cutting back on all the stuff we have and readjusting in a small dorm room, attempting to maintain as much of the 'back-home' atmosphere as possible while having space to add new life. I'm by no means a hoarder, and only slightly a pack-rat (a fact that I justify because I do, in fact, re-use many paper scraps, etc. in art pieces and thank you cards), but it's hard for me to stamp the "For Sale" sticker on many of my things. It's a tiny bit painful, but very, very liberating.

Stephens College = Freedom of Clutter

2) The Pet Dorms. Last week my family adopted some baby boys:

and I'm going to miss them sooo much.

(the one on the left is Deek Estella, and on the right is Mak Gatsby)

Luckily I'll more than likely get to know other girls who live in the Pet Dorm, and I can hopefully still get to snuggle kitties! There's nothing like having friends with cute pets- you get all the fun parts of having a kitty or pup, minus the not-so-fun parts of having said claw-monster and shoe-eater.

3) This week I've been a bit on the bored side. It's the worse kind of bored, when you have errand & chores that need to be done, but nothing fun to do and no one to hang out with. So while I glaze around my house staring at the faces that appear in the wallpaper, I also have this little knot in my stomach reminding me that I should be working on yard sale stuff, or feeding the neighbors turtles (they got fed- don't worry!), vacuuming my room, and other anti-climactic things like that.

But at Stephens! Ohhhhh at Stephens,

I have a feeling that I'll (almost) never have this type of bored blah-ness occupying my precious time. I'll have new friends to be chatting with, a new town to be exploring, a thousand new essays to write, and a billion lines to memorize (not to mention ten million pictures to snap for this lovely blog). You may think I'm being sarcastic, but I seriously LOVE being busy (the good busy, not the bored busy). I work best under stress and under a schedule, no matter how much I claim to desperately need a large helping of free-time in every day. What I really want is spontaneity- something my little town has apparently run out of!

4) I had a really good Hibachi grilled lunch in the cafeteria when I visited Stephens last. After my sorry attempt at lemon chicken and cooked onions and bean sprouts (1. Chicken should not be bouncy, 2. Bean sprouts do not go well with onions, and 3. vinegar also does not go with bean sprouts and onions), I could really use a fresh cooked and yummy meal- especially one healthier than the bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch I've become so accustomed to this summer.

5) Stephens has a really cute little post office. Once again I'm pretty sure most colleges have these as well, but I remember the lady at the counter being really smiley. I have a few friends that have agreed to be pen pals with me, and I'm looking forward to mailing off my little letters at the little post office. What can I say? I'm grossly quaint. I'm sure I'll have more to say about the little post office after school begins.

SPEAKING OF SCHOOL BEGINNING!

Do you all realize that move-in day is about a month away? Because I only just now realized that, and I'm kind of freaking out a little....

just a little....

love, rudi

What I've been doing!

Unfortunately my use of the word "immediately" when used in reference to when I would post again was a false advertising, as I'm only now posting six days later.

You'd think with no school or summer job I'd be better about posting, but my brain doesn't seem to work that way. The summer heat clicks off my "Brain On" button completely.

Since the beginning of summer I've been living with my grandmother and helping her move into her new home. I'm back home in Corbin now, but my near-month with Mamaw Jan is one that I'll miss. It was difficult to be away from home and a computer and a cell phone (she lives where phone service does not exist), but I'm so glad I got the opportunity to spend real quality time with her. I mentioned all this in one of my earlier posts, but I didn't tell you what I did after I came home.

My town every once in a while captures some Gilmore Girl-ish charm and has community events downtown, usually having to do with art in some way. I've always been a big participant/enthusiast in these festivals, for instance I played Michael Jackson's Girlfriend as fifty-odd local zombies danced to Thriller on Main Street last Halloween:

And I dressed as a Pirate selling treasures in another Main Street festival a few years ago:

Two weeks ago we had another fun event- a Hillbilly/Gypsy Prom!

Unfortunately my friends and myself were the only people who dressed up, as well as the only people who danced (although I have NO idea how those other people didn't dance- the bluegrass band was amazing!!).

But that also means we were the only people to have the time of our lives.

Here's me and my date!

This is Chris, my boyfriend who lives about 3 hours away in Tennessee. He drove up and surprised me with his cowboy costume in hand- we had a blast swing and square dancing with my friends!

By the way, the majority of my friends are grown adults.

It was so much fun! There's nothing like dressing up and dancing like a madman for a few hours. I must have burned a million calories- or at least, as many as was in the large Strawberry Cheesequake Blizzard I ate beforehand :).

Next week I'm planning a mini roadtrip with my friend Cameron:

(This is a pretty typical shot of us. I'm always teasing that poor boy!)

We're going to Louisville to see some of our good friends! We met at an arts camp called Governor's School of the Arts, and I for one haven't seen most of my other friends from it since camp ended two years ago. It'll be so nice to see everyone again- and I should have plenty of interesting pictures from our trip!

Mother has just informed me my time on the computer is up.

I'll have to agree with her.

love, rudi

The Scary Part

I know it's terribly rude of me to disappear for a long time and give no huge-long post about what I've been doing,

but that post will come immediately after this one.

Right now I'm facing a very real and raw emotion. In an hour or so my family will be piling into our car and driving across town to our favorite Mexican restaurant Mi Casa, which coincidentally is everyone else in Corbin's favorite Mexican restaurant. I'm not joking, either- wherever you go in town, at whatever event or place, at least 3 people will be wearing a Mi Casa T-shirt.

But that statistic is not the base of my very real and raw emotion.

The fact is, we are taking my German exchange student Winni there for a good-bye dinner of sorts because on Tuesday we'll be plopping her on a jet plane and there's a very probable chance I'll never see her again. And when I think about that, I think about Winni packing her bags up and leaving a barren and empty room that will more than likely never be quite as clean as it was before she settled in months ago. There will always be some sort of note or picture frame or nail polish stain on the carpet that she'll never think about but exists nonetheless.

I think about that, and then I think about myself in a month doing the same type of packing, a full blown 'living' type of packing, versus the less-vital 'visiting' packing. I was rushed with this overwhelming feeling, or rather, a messy blended up chunky fruit cocktail of every feeling I could possibly shove into my chest, that scoured away a lot of the dreamy visions and surreal expectations of my future and left me with a realistic insight.

No one will be there to tell me that I was right in making a hard decision. I won't have anyone to ask me how my day went- there won't be anyone for me to be 100% comfortable around and vent to about how difficult it is to always keep my chin up for this first two or three weeks of school. But these things aren't even the scariest part.

This isn't going to be my house anymore.

From now on, I'm a visitor when I come home. At Christmas I'll be plopping down on mom's couch. Sleeping in my old room. In a way I'll be homeless- temporarily living in a dorm room for a year, and then moving into a new temporary dorm room, all the while knowing that the dorm-room swapping is also in itself temporary.

It's logical that my feeling this suddenly and strongly is a release of all those feelings I should have felt when I graduated. You know, "Oh this is it! I'm an adult! This is the end! Everything's different!" except now I'm lacking all the other gown-clad and teary eyed teenagers around me to hug me and giggle/squeal with me about how exciting and scary the future is. All I really have is a blank computer screen to try and connect with, and my Dell moved out of his parent's house a long time ago. He's a little unsympathetic.

I hate if this post is anyone's first read on this blog, because I'm so excited and happy about what college and the future has in store that 90% of my day I have a semi-conscious slap-stick grin on my face, and the other 10% my foot is wiggling with excitement (also semi-consciously).

But I have to be honest, and honestly, Growing Up Sucks.