I like Christmas, but I've noticed lately that each year it's crept up on me more sneakily. I barely have time to buy a small present for everyone, then it's there, and it's gone. This kind of bums me out, because I've always liked the build-up to Christmas Day during the month of December a bit more than Christmas Day itself. All the songs, and little rituals and decorations.
I told my dad once that sometimes it felt like time went faster than when I was a little kid, even when I didn't have much to do. Like, the actual divisions of time seemed shorter. An hour when I was a kid felt like maybe a half hour when I was in high school, barely enough time to complete anything. My dad said it was probably because everything seems longer and larger when the fraction of time you've spent alive is smaller. When you're three years old, one year is a third of your life. So one year feels like an ETERNITY, and winter seems impossible when you're starting summer. But when you're twenty, your fraction is bigger and you've got a lot more to stuff into it.
It was an interesting moment, because I had never thought of life in mathematical terms like that. I am not a naturally mathematically minded person, but I think it would kind of be cool to be. I work on it, every now and then.
I tried to start an entry on the history of my glasses, but it got away from me so I'm trying to get it right a little later. I'm only saying this, because I just wanted to confirm that I'm still here, at this blog. The couple of weeks left of Fall 2009 semester after Thanksgiving Break did not leave much time for anything not absolutely required for classes, so I haven't written anything it seems.
This break will be different, hopefully. I want to use it to become more confident in my abilities as a writer, since English classes seem to be about all I'm good for. So far, I've been slowly and carefully unwinding from this past, hellish semester. I've watched like, four or five movies since last Wednesday, it's been glorious.
The latest movie I watched was that art film about Bob Dylan called "I'm Not There," that Lindsay made me watch. She is in love with that guy, as well as Christian Bale, who was in the movie for a while as one representation of Dylan. I know relatively little about Bob Dylan, but Lindsay filled me in on the details and it was a lovely, if strange, type of movie. Here are my favorite songs from it. The second one made me fall out of my chair, it was such a gloriously covered song.
Anyway, I had better finish cleaning the guest room for my grandparents, who are coming for Christmas either tomorrow or Wednesday, I can't remember.
I know this is the stress of the end of a semester, but I could do with it being a little less stressful. This whole semester has just been ridiculous. I need to come up with a new word because I've used that one so often, but I don't even think I can without resorting to just flat out cursing. I looked forward to Thanksgiving Break, but it was hellish too, because as I heard once on TV somewhere, life is a horrible bitch goddess.
My great-grandmother died about a week beforehand, which wasn't entirely unexpected but still sad. She was 98. I wasn't able to go to the funeral because of school, so I stayed up here until Wednesday, when my Dad drove me down for Thanksgiving. At the funeral, my Mom was told by a well-meaning cousin that my grandmother's breast cancer spread to her lungs a year ago. And when I got home, my friend who had promised to come feed and change the litter box for my cats hadn't come over once in three days. I called and snapped at her, and my Mom left a cold, teary voice message on her cell phone (my friend wouldn't pick up after I called her).
I haven't talked to this friend in months, but for some reason this left me more stricken than even my great-grandmother's death. I've known the friend since middle school, and I know this was probably just a mistake, but my cats could have died. When she texted me an apology and I told her about my holiday, she apologized, and then immediately started telling me about how she, her brother and her boyfriend went all over town on Friday to find a video game. I did not text her back.
And I caught a cold just in time to come back and work super hard for school.
But my Mom found this poem that my great-grandmother remembered and wrote down from her school days. It made me happy.
The Toadstool
Under a toadstool crept a wee elf out of the rain
To shelter himself under the toadstool sound asleep
One morning when I was about 13 or 14 years old, my dad was driving me to school and I was terrified. It was my first day in a new school and I had just been told that I was supposed to get a shot at the pediatrician's that afternoon. So already it was pretty much guaranteed not to be that fun of a day. And as I sat rigidly in my desk at school and tried to keep my nervous stomach under control, I thought "Man, life will be so much better and funner and easier when I am like, 20 something, and I'm not afraid of trivial things like shots and I have the boldness gained from ~*life experience*~ to be friends with tons of people."
I have become less afraid of shots. Well, I can avoid bursting into tears against my will at the sight of a needle like I used to, anyway. But I have grown more afraid of life, I think. My future has never seemed more uncertain, and if there is one thing I cannot stand it is uncertainty. I do not even enjoy vacations if I don't know what to expect. How am I supposed to prepare for uncertainty?
I think this is one of those times in my life where I'm slowly, slowly, slowly building steam, and will eventually gather up enough speed to feel like I'm doing something. I'm in some sort of unpleasant valley right now, but I hope things will get better, even if I do achieve my worst fear: failure. Because failing doesn't mean my lifewill end!
I am 20 years old and in college. I am an non-teaching English major with a very small number of friends I feel comfortable hanging out with for reasonable periods of time. I never have any adventures or do anything unexpected.
