So Behind!

Boy do I need to start being a better blogger! In the meantime, let's play catch up.

*I cancelled lunch with "M." It's just not healthy for someone to be in a relationship that they dread even thinking about, hands down. I used the time to pack up for school.

*I finished the gorgeous turquoise and brown prayer shawl I was knitting. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures before I left and Mom already gave it to her friend :( But it was awesome and my cables flippin' rocked!

*I have moved back to school and am just starting my second week of class. The professor who was supposed to be teaching the course was changed the week before class started, so I got a much easier professor who handed us a study guide with answers that he swears will be the word for word final. I still can't wait for this class to be over.

*Work study at the library is as awesome as ever! I was also asked to apply to be a tutor this year and had my interview today. I was given an appointment to come back and sign papers tomorrow! I guess it's not a guarantee, but the director said she couldn't see any reason why her supervisor would say no to hiring me.

*My roommates are all awesome. This has probably been the best situation I've been in so far.

I'm also holding on to something really exciting that I should be sharing soon!

Fine Line

Does anyone else feel like there is a fine line between being nice to everyone and being mean to yourself? Just me? Great.

I've always been the person that tries to be nice to everyone, regardless of my first impressions. I want to be friends with everyone I meet and I emphasize to all of my friends that I'm here for them. This usually just ends up with me feeling emotionally exhausted and used. When I have a problem, I never know who to turn to. I know all of their problems and I feel like mine can't compare or I will be burdening them by sharing. So I burden myself instead. The worst case of this is the story below.

I have this acquaintance from high school whom we will call "M." M was always very quiet, even compared to me. She sat in the back corner of the classroom and never really spoke. She didn't act like she had a lot of friends and it seemed like she was going through some sort of inner struggle. I was nice to her, but never really went out of my way to do so. I was equally shy and we just didn't have that many classes together.

Fast forward to college, when M leaves me a seemingly innocent Facebook post asking me how I am. In my experience on Facebook, no one in my generation actually wants to keep in touch with old friends, they just want them to see how much fun they are having with their new friends. Everyone posts the obligatory "how are you" comment, but no one seems to really mean it. So I posted back that I was fine and asked how she was. AND SHE REPLIED! It just kept going and going, and somehow I found myself in the middle of all of her not-so-inner struggles. She spent this past year whining about her father who passed away years ago when I had just lost both of my grandmothers. She talks about how afraid she is of her brother who lives in town, but never once asked me about mine, who recently had a very scary panic attack that I think may have been brought on by undiagnosed paranoia. She talks about having friends that only ever use her and don't really care about her, but I'm starting to feel the same way. She sends me text messages gossiping about people from high school, she tells me all sorts of personal information about herself that I really don't care to know, and she sends message upon message to both my phone and my Facebook until I agree to hang out with her.

End story. How in the world do I end up in these situations? What am I supposed to do? I hate the thought of hanging out with her. I intentionally schedule hair appointments or family dinners a couple hours after our start time so that I have an excuse to get away. I don't even like messaging her anymore because I never know what she is going to send me. I would feel like a terrible person for defriending or blocking her and I'm too non-confrontational to talk to her, but at the same time I feel like a terrible person for feeling this way. I feel like I'm pretending to be her friend simply because I know she's going through some hard times. Will there ever be good times, though? It seems to me that if you can't move on from past traumas, you're just setting yourself up to be miserable. Friends are there for each other through the good times and the bad, and I'm fine with that, but M and I have never really had a good time together, so I'm just there for the bad. That's what therapists are for.

I shouldn't be stressed out about being friends with someone or loathe the thought of going out to lunch with them, so it's clear I don't feel like I'm friends with this girl. Obviously it's not for a lack of trying. If I can set aside my fear of driving to haul her around and send back sweet and encouraging Facebook messages about the results of her medical tests while trying not to puke, I've given it my best effort. I just don't click with her, so I can't figure out why she clicks with me. Is it because I listen to her pity-parties and never ask the same from her? Is it because I respond to all of her sad or angry Facebook posts even when she never responds to mine? I'm starting to wonder if maybe those "bad friends" of hers were simply people that expected her to be a friend in return. Maybe I should be nice to myself for once and act like one of those bad friends. If she can't be there for me, she's not my friend. And I've about had it with wasting time on people who aren't really my friends.

END RANT.

Craft[s] of the [Past Two] Week[s]

So, my last post stated that my next craft would most likely be another charm patch. To make up for that, I decided to knit two patches, then I didn't even get them posted. I know, I'm so bad. In my defense, my phone completely died and all of my craft pictures were on the phone. I got it to work again, though, so here it goes. These are the two patches I knit the week before. The tan one is for the one trip I've made to the beach. Sad, right? I love the beach, so it's a great memory. This is the only picture I have right now, however, because I can't get the charm on the jump ring. I have no fingernails, so it will have to wait until I can enlist someone's help.

The reddish patch is in memory of my grandfather who died a little over four years ago. The red reminds me of the work shirts I remember him always wearing when I was little. I'm pretty sure he held on to them until they got so bad that my grandmother threw them out. It looks almost brown here, but I promise it is a dark red.
The charm actually belonged to my grandfather. He drove delivery trucks, recycling/garbage trucks, and eighteen wheelers. This charm is for Eastern Express, which is out of business now, if I'm not mistaken. My grandmother gave it to me to remember him by, since it is probably the girliest thing he owned.
These are the craft for this past week. Ok, it's not exactly crafty, but it's the most impressive. The other option was my first experiment with the clear stamps that you attach to acrylic blocks. It turned out great, but it was a mini tree embellishing a thank you note. I felt like this took more time and creativity and here's why. These are mini cheesecakes. Why mini cheesecakes? Because my family just moved and I'm trying to use up random old stuff so that we don't have to try to find a place for it in the cabinets. It's also because we just moved and I couldn't find a nine inch pie pan. That would be the creativity part. The time part involves a long search for the electric mixer, finding it, then realizing that I can't run it because my dad sleeps days and had already gone to bed. I mixed by hand "on medium" for three straight minutes and it turned out freaking awesome, so take that. But in all honesty, that was the hardest part about the whole thing. After I measured out all of the mini cakes and smoothed them down, all I had to do was set them in the fridge to chill for an hour.
Here's the final product. I'm sure that they could be eaten without a bowl provided that they had a little less topping, but we have fruit we are trying to get rid of, so why not dump as much as possible on, right?

As far as crafts for this week, I'm going to try to finish some of my grandmother's incomplete cross stitches. I also fixed the mistake I made on the shawl, so it's going great. I even went out and bought a set of size 10 1/2 double pointed needles, which has made cabling so much easier! I also want to print off all of the pictures cluttering up my hard drive and get back to scrapbooking, especially since I have cute, new stamps to try out! We will see how much of this actually gets done, because I also have to pick back up studying for the GRE. Oh, the life of a college student.