The Brevity of What is Lived

I'm not sure I've said it on here but I'm an English and Spanish minor! That means that, since my major (International Studies) is finished, I spend most of this semester reading novels, poetry and trying to extract meaning from them. It's hard enough in English most of the time but change it into Spanish and the work takes me ten times longer but it is rewarding when I finally get something :) In one of my readings for my tomorrow, I came across this gem:

Ayer se fue; ma ñ ana no ha llegado;
hoy se está yendo sin parar un punto:
soy un fue, y un será, y un es cansado.

Because of the way the Spanish language is constructed, translations, especially of poetry, lose that bit of "something" but I will attempt to translate it anyway. If you see anything horrendously wrong, feel free to correct me! After all, I'm still a student :)

Yesterday is gone; tomorrow has not come;
Today is leaving without a single stop:
I am a 'was', a 'will be' and a tired 'is'.

I'm not sure why it struck me except for the fact that it is beautifully crafted. Maybe it's because it reminds me of the brevity of the time we live and the importance of enjoying that time. On that note, J and I will not be home for the next three weekends! That's right, almost the entire month of March!

This coming weekend, I'm judging a high school debate tournament in San Antonio. Next weekend, we're going out to a friend's lakehouse and the weekend after that, we will be in CALIFORNIA! It's going to be a busy month, but I'm excited :) After all, there's a kind of excitement in running all over the place! Does anyone else have these crazy months that come and go?

And a snippet from last weekend: (I apologize for my appearance but I HAD just finished pillaging!)

Crazy Times

I know I've been gone a long tie but my absence was prompted by the fact that I lost my camera :( I had all these blog posts lined up and now, I'm just waiting for my camera to re-appear to get them all to you!

Anyway, the past two weekends, I've been performing in this show my school puts on. About 15 groups put together a 7-minute song and dance act and the top 8 are chosen to perform at homecoming! We didn't win but I had a blast dressing up like a pillager and managed to make some new friends. I got to watch the show on Saturday and there were some pretty talented people :) Winning or losing never really mattered to me, though so I wasn't devastated. Plus, J had brought home gorgeous flowers and who can be upset when a guy that sweet is around?

I also caved this week and bought Ballet Slipper pink from Essie. It was the one thing I PROMISED myself I would buy when I went to Target but of course, I ended up buying a million other things I didn't need. It reminded me of this nifty comic:

Now I'm just wrapping up this great weekend with some not-so-nice defensive driving. I guess it's my recompense for driving 60 in a 55. Or I could amuse myself with watching J attempting to kill a football-size mosquito. You know, either one :)

Sunday Mornings

I have always loved Sunday mornings. There is just something about them that makes you sleep a little later, makes the sun shine a little brighter and makes the bacon a little crispier :) This morning, I slept in (and when I tell you about the week, you'll understand why haha) and then got to making breakfast with J :) Sure it's going to be a day full of catch-up work and laundry but isn't that what Sunday afternoons are for?

Hope everyone's having a relaxing day!

Obsessions (As of Late)

I find myself constantly becoming obsessed with the most RANDOM things. And I don't mean slightly infatuated or occasionally thinking about sort of obsessed but I mean, the world's biggest fan kind. This week, it's:

This show. I know it's staged (It broke my heart when I found out) but for some reason, I just plop down and watch episode after episode when I really don't have the time. I especially like the international ones :) I guess it's a vicarious way of fulfilling my dream of living abroad.

Then there's this lipstick. I bought it on my trip to Austin last weekend (which is a future blog post! promise!) and have fallen completely in love with it. Now, I'm not the kind of girl who wears lip gloss on a regular basis, much less fire-engine red lipstick but I just can't get enough of it. Really. If it wasn't strange to wear it ALL THE TIME, I literally would.

I know iced coffee doesn't seem like a strange thing to be obsessed with but it does raise a few eyebrows when I order it in 30 degree weather. I just keep downing the stuff though (so unhealthy, I know). I should probably learn how to make it so as to save money but I have a $75 Starbucks gift card just begging to be used!

Finally, there's taupe nail polish. I don't actually own taupe polish and am currently sporting ONE painted nail from when I went to Target to try on nail polishes. I regret the day I went and decided not to buy it. It might have been a smart financial decision at the time but the emotional cost was not worth it. You can probably guess what I'm going to buy when I go shopping next week :)

So I think this wraps up my weekly obsessions (and yes, they change that often). What's everyone else loving this week?

Confession Time

Truth be told- I never learned how to braid my hair. I have no idea how I've lived my life without knowing such an important skill but I had gotten along just fine-- or so I thought. This Thursday, I'm performing in a song/dance revue and my character hair was pigtail braids. Fine, I figured. How hard could it be to learn?

I watched upwards of 10 YouTube videos:

And spent about 2 1/2 hours trying to get those two dang braids right. Eventually, I got them to look ALL RIGHT, with the sort of lose braids and wind-blown hair type of look but of course, the powers that be wanted them starting at the top of my head and ten times tighter than what I could accomplish. I ended up having to ask a friend to do my hair. But now I have a decent idea of how to braid! Has anyone else gone through life without knowing a necessary girl-skill or am I the only one?

It's Happening!

Why is it that I always have to Google 'how to take a screenshot on Macs' regardless of how many times I've done it? I guess there are some things I'll never learn. Anyway, the story here is that I did something very scary this past week. Or, in the past 2 weeks. I'm so horrible with keeping this thing up to date but I promise I'm going to get better! But yes, this scary thing:

I applied to law school! Now it's a waiting game. I just hate the fact that I obsessively check my email/status checkers now. I heard that there's an app you can download that lets you do it from your phone, but really, when I'm out and about, I kind of like that I can't check my status. It lets me worry less, if only for a second. Is there anyone else anxiously awaiting their decision? Good luck!

Too Much

Warning- This is a thesis-inspired post and for those of you who don't know, my thesis is pretty heavy stuff. So read at your own caution but you've been, well, cautioned. I promised a more uplifting, entertaining post is on its way!

I think I might have mentioned it before but for those who missed it: my thesis is some pretty heavy stuff. It's interesting and it's a subject I'm really passionate about but it's something best researched and written about in small doses. I, being a procrastinator, don't often get that luxury. To remind inquiring minds, my thesis is about the human rights abuses that occurred under the military dictatorships in Guatemala and Argentina where 200,000 people and 30,000 (approx.) were killed, respectively.

And I'll tell you, it is hard. Just a few minutes ago, I stumbled onto Illustrative Case 31. Don't Google it. If you want to sleep tonight, just refrain and take my word for it when I say, it recounts things that should never happen to anyone. I know that for some people in the US, life is no small potatoes. But for most of us, we live our day-to-day life so incredibly blessed. The thing is, I don't think we really always understand that. Lately, my Facebook news feed has been blown up by barbs against Obama, Romney, Paul, and everyone else running for President. People are scared of the government, people hate the government, people want it to be better. And that is a really great thing. It's great that we all know what we deserve and won't stop trying until we feel we get that. But despite who is President now or who wins the presidency this year, we can all rest assured that our government won't up and decide to kill 200,000. They won't approach us in languages we don't speak, holding a gun to our heads. They won't kill our children by the hundreds or burn our towns down. They won't desecrate absolutely everything important to us and I highly doubt they're out to unravel the fabric of our society.

I want to make it abundantly clear that this is in no way a political critique on the US or some sort of political statement for this country. I'm just saying that, at the end of the day, those things probably won't happen to us. And it's so alarming to me that things exactly like that happened so, so close to us. And most of us didn't even know. And it didn't end until well into our lifetimes.

I don't know how many people out there have read the Hunger Games but for those who have, I'm pretty sure I can say we were repulsed by that government. Appalled that a government could ever treat its children that way. Well, this is ten times worse. Partially because I think these people would have PREFERRED to send a child into an arena to fight to the death than what actually happened to them and partially because it's real. It's real life things happening to real life people and sometimes, it's too much.

Quick Questions

The amount of words exchanged never mattered in changing the way we treated each other. At least that's what it seemed like. Some days, we talked like we were the best friends I knew we could be and other days, we went without speaking. I don't know if he was waiting for me to speak or if I was waiting for him, but regardless, it resulted in silence. Racked with insecurities regarding the opposite gender (it starts young), I refused to be the first person to put myself out there. It hadn't escaped my notice that A was incredibly popular with the ladies. I rarely saw him when he wasn't surrounded by a group of adoring girls, all as tan and blonde as the next.

I would be lying if I said he didn't try to treat me well. I noticed he went out of his way to talk to me between classes and I knew he stayed close to my group of friends before and after school, always finding ways to hug me, tease me and ruffle my hair. To this day, I can find no explanation as to why I wasn't sure what his feelings were for me because really, it was that obvious but I was constantly afraid that my affections weren't being returned and so I kept retreating.

Then one day, my friend M wandered up to me and told me that four girls had already asked A to homecoming. My first reaction was a big 'Excuse me?' I knew that technically, he couldn't help who asked him and he had gone ahead and said no to every single one but just the fact that this was happening made me uncomfortable. Growing up in the South, high school football was a big thing and homecoming just as much so. It was THE dance of the fall semester- the one where boys went above and beyond asking girls to be their dates. At least at my school. Somewhere deep down, I had been hoping that someone would do something nice for me before I graduated but upon hearing M's news, I felt spurred to action.

I spent that entire day building up my confidence to ask him to homecoming. How unorthodox, I know but there was a piece of me that just wanted to be sure he would be mine, at least for that dance. I couldn't risk ten thousand more girls asking him. All day long, I thought about what I was going to say and planned out plans of action, accounting for all different kinds of reactions. Regardless, by the time afternoon band practice rolled around, I felt less than ready but I really felt like I had to do this. So, mustering up all my courage, I tagged along with him as we walked out to the practice lot and just as we were outside the chain-link fence, I stopped walking.

"What's going on?" He wanted to know.

I remember how hard it was to breathe in that moment and I was frustrated that my tongue was tripping over the words I had been practicing all day. "Look, there's something I have to ask you."

"You know I don't have any patience for suspense! Spit it out!" He smiled good-naturedly.

The sun glare from his trumpet blinded my eyes and literally, all I could see was how sparkling blue his were. I spoke without thinking. "Will you go to homecoming with me?"

I don't think I can accurately describe all of the emotions that ran through his face in that second it took him to answer and I can't really describe all the things I was feeling in such a short time but finally, he said yes and, linked amr in arm, we made our way to practice.

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I know it seems so odd that I'm spending so much time talking about A when this is really the story of how J and I came to be but you're going to have to take my word on this: one story wouldn't exist without the other. Literally, meeting J was 2 years in the making and I really want to get that across. Unfortunately, that means we all know that this part of the story is going to end badly for someone involved (hint: it was me) but rest assured, the end is ultimately happy :)