Block 2

"I'll be there on Monday nine o'clock and we will see who walks the walk. No, no, I can't wait! I will be there at eight when they unlock the door."

Today was the first day of class and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. He acknowledged that it is a lot of work, but reassured us that the chapters we will be reading are short. The longest chapter in one of our books is apparently only eight pages, so that's really good news. I'm still waiting for my books to come in the mail, though, but he promised to make copies for me if they aren't here by the end of his office hours.

As for the paper, I feel no less prepared than anyone else in the class. There are only three of us, and one of the others hasn't written anything longer than nine pages, and that was for a class last year. She's also concerned about the essay exam, but compared to the ones my adviser gives in her classes, these exams won't be too bad. I can tell this girl is worried, though, so maybe I'll see if they want to do a study group one night. She hasn't had class with either of us before and she even referred to herself as an outsider during her introduction, so we will definitely have to fix that.

Overall, I'm way less worried than I was before. And I hate to admit that the stupid honors director may have been right. But he may have been. Maybe. There are still seventeen days left of class for him to be wrong. Even worse, though, I want him to be right because I want to graduate with honors. Failure is not an option, lol.

Whew!

That better blogger thing is apparently not working out! Time for another round of catch up :D

Good News:

*My shawls were sent to their new home and the recipients loved them. It always feels good when hard work is appreciated and I know that this is definitely the case. Mom's friend was so surprised that she got a shawl, too. She and her daughter can't wait to wear them to football games.

*I made it through my first class and got an A! I have yet to hear back about whether or not I earned my honors component, but I loved the book that I had to read for it and I enjoyed writing the report. Fingers crossed that I get it, because I am SO close to graduating with honors.

*Work study is still going great and tutoring hasn't been a strain on my schedule. I was a little worried I was taking on too much, and I still might be. Which brings us to the not so good news.

Not So Good News:

*This next class might just kill me. We have sixteen days to write a twenty page paper using twenty four academic sources. I promise you that this will be the most I have written on the block schedule. It is also more pages and sources than the minimum requirements for my honors thesis. On top of this, we have to read nine chapters of leadership textbooks every night. That whole bad blogger thing is just going to get worse.

*I'm not a fan of our new honors director. Every conversation I've had with him steers back to what he wants the students to do about reviving the program. At our first council meeting he even stated that he was going to get everything organized so that if he handed it over to someone else, they wouldn't have to do so much work. Really? I can't get over feeling like he doesn't care about the students themselves, just how many he can get to sign up. And if he's already thinking about stepping down from a position he just took over, he isn't very reliable. I'm just really disappointed that out of all of the professors here, he's the one who ended up with it.

But, I saved the best for last!

BEST News:

Remember that exciting news I was going to share soon? Here it is: I am officially a sorority girl! My dream almost ten years in the making has come true, and it is even better than I could have imagined. I am now a member of Beta Sigma Phi, a non-collegiate social sorority that allows their members to stay active for life. I have a lifetime to make up for the fact that I fell in love with a school with no Greek life. My chapter, Online Kappa, is full of such wonderful women and I couldn't be prouder to call them my sisters. I can't wait for my pledge ritual so that I can wear my tiny pin at every appropriate opportunity. I've cut out fabric to make a lettered tote bag and I have more fabric waiting to be cut for a sweatshirt. I will definitely post pictures of them as soon as I'm done. In the meantime, the promise of sewing letters and completing pledge training will be a bribe to finish my school work in a timely manner. We'll see how it works, lol, but I will definitely get my school work done!

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.

Only One More Month...

... until I move back to college! In just one more month, I will be free. Free from my brother's emotional roller coaster, free from my mother's constant guilt trips, and free from my father's narrow minded views of the world and (unknowingly) me. In just one more month, I'll actually be free to be myself. Isn't sad that the one place I can't do that is when I'm with my own family?

I'm so excited to be headed back, but it's also bittersweet. The last three years have flown by and I'm only sort of excited about being a senior. I have a couple of classes I'm not looking forward to and there's the GRE to take. And then I have to take out more loans, find a place to live, start paying taxes. There are lots of days when I feel like this growing up thing sucks. But it's either that or live a lie in my parents' basement for the rest of my life.

On a happier note, one month from today will also be the three year anniversary of Nick asking me out. I think now that we're engaged I'm supposed to stop counting those, but it's better than the couples that count weeks, right?

Craft of the Week: Memory Quilt Patch

I've decided that I'm going to start doing this post on Monday and showcasing the craft that I finished the previous week. I might end up going back to Sundays, but that hasn't worked out so far, so I don't have high hopes.

Anyway, this past week I decided to start on the knitted memory quilt I want to make using old charm bracelet charms. The first patch I made was to celebrate my engagement. I used scrap yarn that was given to me by a family friend, so I can't tell you much about it other than I chose it because it is very close to the color I was wearing when Nick proposed.

The patch has a seed stitch border and a stockinette stitch center.
The charm was a gift from Nick's mother. I wore it on a bracelet for awhile before I figured out that it's only silver plated. I stopped wearing it to preserve the color, which is actually what sparked the idea for the quilt.

It was a quick project that I could finish in twenty four hours because I didn't have time to craft until yesterday. Hopefully next week's will be a little more intricate, but you might see another one of these.