Chocolate.

Yesterday, Aaron and I went a little crazy.
It started out pretty normal. We went grocery shopping. We went to the school of education so I could take some photos (more about that later). We ate dinner.

Then we got bored. The idea of going to the candy store was somehow brought up. It was deemed acceptable. I had been craving a candy apple, so I went in with the intention of us getting that and then something for Aaron and then leaving. Aaron apparently had something else in mind. We ended up with $30 worth of candy... a pound and a half of jelly beans, mint chocolate sticks, truffles, gourmet hot chocolate, and a fancy apple. It was ridiculous.

I've been in kind of a photo slump ("I haven't noticed," you sarcastically remark), so Aaron offered to assign me photo homework. Which was really sweet of him, and it has forced me to go out and explore campus and look kind of sketch while taking photos, but I have a big procrastination problem. There are 15 things on the list to be completed... by the end of the month. Wow. I kinda just realized how behind I am. Anyway, the hot cocoa was shoved in my face by my caring boyfriend as a reminder that I needed to take more pictures. So I relented. We wanted it to be the prettiest picture of cocoa I've ever taken (not that I've taken any pictures of cocoa, I don't think, but whatever), so we went to the grocery store again and bought even more fattening items- whipped cream and whipping cream. So we got home, and I got all over-analytical and stressed out about making this cocoa pretty while also making it taste good... and I think I did well in the pretty department, at least. Despite the chocolate sticks falling in our drinks. Twice. And melting all over the handle.

So yeah, yesterday was very sugar-filled, as I'm sure every day until this pile of candy is gone will be. Not that I mind... I'll just have to make sure to schedule extra trips to the gym in the near future ;).

So. So. So. Excited.

Yeah, this news is a tiny bit late. But it's awesome all the same. And I'm STILL fucking excited about it. (ps try to figure out my address from THAT. Hah.)

I GOT IN!!!!! BOTH SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!!! Goodbye, VCU. Hello, uhh... either UVA or William and Mary. I still have no idea. I'm visiting both schools this weekend. But I am absolutely ecstatic. It's like a whole new exciting chapter in my life has been opened, and I haven't been this happy in a long time. This post is probably going to be really full of me praising myself, but I'm really really proud of myself. I just feel like this is a huge accomplishment... usually when it comes to things like this I just resign myself to failure, but this time I kept at it and worked my ass off and it paid off, and it's really awesome. I'm going into next year with a 4.0... not expecting to come out of it with that GPA though, haha. But I'm okay with that. I can't wait to get to school and be surrounded by intelligent people all the time who push me to try hard and who I don't feel uncomfortable talking about grades to. This year, every time someone asked me how I did on something I usually told them I did 10 whole points worse than I did. And people were usually still impressed. Next year... I may be lying in the opposite direction, but I don't think I'll mind. I can't wait for challenging classes and learning and nerdy friends and weird people... which I think will be easier to find at WM. So score 1 for WM, I guess.

But yeah. For once I find myself hoping that summer flies by so I can get to school and meet people and have fun and hopefully have more of a college experience than I did this year... because this year sucked. And granted, I will miss a few people, and if I end up going to UVA, I'll end up missing Aaron a lot. I just want my new life to start NOW. I've been longing for something that I can't really explain for so long, and I think I've found it, and I want to fill it so badly. So I hope I can make this decision soon.

Let's break the walls and find how to live, 'cause you and I have so much to give.

Suffice it to say, it's been a rough week.
What's awesome though is that all the crappy feelings and butterflies in the stomach and other things made me and Christine spend a LOT of time together. Which made me really happy, because we hadn't spent that much time together in... God knows how long. I love Christine so much, and I'm going to miss her a lot when I transfer. She's just... a really wonderful person. I'mmm gonna try to hold my tears in now. Hold on a second.

Ok. I'm good. Anyway, on Saturday she took me to this pipeline in/on the James River, and it was really cool when there were railings (such as in this photo) and really scary when there weren't (and thus I was focusing on not falling into the water and soaking all of my valuables, and not taking pictures). And I didn't really get many good ones, probably because I'm ridiculously rusty because I haven't gone on a photoshoot since... AP Photo. I take so many pictures like this one, and get so excited because for me, there's something really intriguing about lots of lines leading to one point. But I always, always forget a focal point, something for the eye to be drawn to, or else it's just... a background. And I think that says a lot about me. I think about the future in general, the fact that it's there, the fact that the things I'm doing are leading to it, but I find it hard to think of something concrete in there. Like I know I'm going to grow up and do something, but I have no idea what. I have little to no idea what I want to major in, much less what I actually want to do with my life. I know that I want to be happy and make the people around me happy, but I don't know how to accomplish this. I know a lot of the people I get close to will most likely drift away due to distance or differences, but I have a hard time imagining it or accepting it when it comes.

So yeah, that's actually one of the first thoughts that came to my mind when I looked at that picture. I didn't try to BS something thoughtful to say so I could use it in a blog post.

As for last week, I'm trying my hardest to accept what life throws at me and trying not to think too much about the past and trying to look at things with different perspectives. Trying not to be so self-centered. Trying to get these goddamn butterflies in my stomach to settle.

No picture, just talking

Sorry. I've just thought a lot today.

I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have friends.
First, there's college. And the whole horrible experience of being in classes with people, living in this huge building with hundreds of people, eating lunch surrounded by these people and not finding one single person to be friends with. Not one fucking person in this whole goddamn 20,000-plus-student campus.
Then, there's everything else. I've had so many "best friends" throughout my lifetime. Very few of them have actually been good friends. Most of them were people who I had fun times with, sure, but if I was to ever be stuck with them in a one-on-one setting, I panicked... because there was nothing to talk about. Inside jokes don't really happen unless you're with a group of silly people. So those relationships faded as soon as someone else caught their attention, or a change of location got in the way, or if we simply drifted.
The rest of the close friends I have had, with a couple of exceptions, have either left or been taken from me. There is something about me that causes people to know me for a couple of years, have good times with me, and then just leave. And I don't understand what makes me so unworthy of having someone who can stick with me for the long term. I try really hard not to be an awful person. The worst thing is, I used to pride myself on how great of a friend I was. I recently wrote an essay on how one of the worst years of high school (ironically caused by a best friend ditching me in favor of another group of people) caused me to turn it into something positive where I tried to be the best friend I could possibly be and care about everyone who came into my life and blah blah blah. I don't know if I'm that great of a friend anymore. I'm probably not. There's probably no excuse for it, either.

This isn't to say that I don't consider Aaron my friend. I do, he's my best friend and I can tell him everything, and I do tell him everything. There's just something about me that needs multiple people to lean on, though... different opinions, different perspectives. I guess I've also grown up with the idea that girls should have their best friends... blame Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or The Year of Secret Assignments or basically any young adult book for girls, which I've read a large quantity of.
I'm afraid, too, that it's coming up to that second-year mark... around the time where the people I considered myself close to leave. I'm afraid that I'll do something wrong, or I'll become too boring or too annoying or too clingy or too something, and he'll be gone.

I don't know. This actually wasn't supposed to be so depressing or whatever it is... and it's really not pointed towards anyone in particular. Yes, there was something that sort of set off this thinking in earnest, but it's been mulling around my head for a long time now. I just felt like tonight was the night to get it off my chest.

Wow, typing somewhere and having it end up somewhere other than the top of your keyboard is really weird.

My laptop screen is dead so I have it hooked up to another monitor (graciously lent to me by Aaron, my spectacular loving boyfriend =P) but since I'm lazy and feel the optimal position for laptop use is laying in bed, I have the monitor sitting on a chair a couple feet away to the left of me and I'm typing all the way over here... it looks really ghetto. And it's really weird to have to keep looking to my left to make sure I typed ok. But it's all good. As long as there aren't typos.

Oh my godddd my cat is so cute. And so freaking deranged. I came home from school (yessss!), and my family had actually waited to put the ornaments on the tree until I got home, so we did that tonight. And while we're putting up the ornaments, Tucker, my cat (who's humongous despite the fact that he's not even a year old yet), runs in the room, goes underneath the tree boughs, and starts climbing up the inside of the tree. What is it with cats climbing up trees? But yeah, he actually stays up there a good while and bats at the ornaments we put within his range and he starts eating them and stuff. He's really bizarre. But he gets down eventually and starts gnawing on the lights, which is how I got this picture... he's Rudolph! I'm extremely proud of this photo, by the way. You should feed my massive ego by telling me how precious it is, haha. ;) Just kidding.

I'm really glad it's winter break though. Finals are over and I have no work for an entire month and everyone's home and it's just happiness. Plus there's Christmas somewhere in there (can you believe it's only 10 days away? Holy freaking crap.), yayyy. I'm very much looking forward to a month of seeing people I like a lot and hopefully not storing any more fat for the winter!! Hehe. Who knows, I may even do this regularly. (Don't count on it.)

-Liz

Nom nom nom!!

Oh yeah, and in cause you were curious, here's a picture of him IN the tree:

PS: wtf, I'm spending my night writing a blog entry about my cat. I have a life, I promise.

Day 36

I'm basically doing this just to procrastinate studying for psych, because for some reason I can't bring myself to study for it.

Anyway, I hung out with my family this weekend because I'm cool like that. We went to DC to go to the Metro Zoo and the Hirshhorn Museum, which is a contemporary/modern art museum. It was a pretty fun little trip, we obviously rode the metro and walked around a bit and had good times. Mostly because it was only the girls, haha. That's the best.

So yeah, this is a picture of the huge escalator coming from... I don't even know what stop this was. But the going down escalator was actually off or broken, to the horror of the people with wheely suitcases, so it was a bit of a climb. At least the going up part was working, walking up all of those stairs would have been miserable.

The art museum was pretty cool, modern art can pretty much be shit sometimes but the basement with contemporary art was fantastically creepy. I wish I was allowed to take pictures, or I would have some really cool ones to post, but sadly I wasn't... just picture a sculpture of a gigantic, naked, bald man sitting in the corner that's amazingly realistic, up to the wrinkles and folds of skin. It was grotesque. And there was a film showing called "A Life of Errors" by Nicholas and Sheila Pye about a couple who kill each other, which I loved for some reason.

Alright, I'd better start studying. See you later.

I read somewhere that people with blog posts with nothing but "I'm sorry I haven't updated more" are really boring.

So I'm not going to apologize. Suck it, bitchezz.
But okay, here's my post, because Alex wanted me to do one.

Since starting college, I've played guitar about... three times. It's hard to find time when I live with a roommate and am self-conscious about playing in front of other people. Much less singing. But I miss playing guitar; I don't claim to be the best at it, or even moderately good. And I'm pretty sure my guitar cost like $75 and is a piece of shit. But I just feels so good to release my energy and my built-up feelings into something that I can hear and touch.
And trust me, I've had a lot of feelings since starting college. I don't like it here. I don't like living with people I'm unfamiliar with. It's not that I mind the people themselves. I was so used to having my own room, and my own bathroom, and a place to talk to myself and sing and walk around in my underwear without anyone being the wiser. I told myself that it would get better, but it hasn't. I just don't think I fit in to this school- while some people have similar interests with mine, they talk about them differently and seem to like things for different reasons from me... and I know that college is about expanding your horizons, getting a new perspective, blah blah blah, but I just haven't connected with a single person here. And it's very lonely.

But I'm sickening myself with my own public complaining, I feel kind of pathetic now- I've been too embarrassed to really talk about the whole extent of my loneliness here to anyone except a few people. I just hope I can transfer to a better fit next year. And I mean, good things have come from being here. I have so much time to study, and classes are so easy, that I have A's in all my classes- something I haven't been able to say since 5th grade. And my relationship with Christine has gotten better, and I'd say my friendship with Alex has improved tremendously. I also have a lot of time to think, though that's a blessing and a curse.

Anyway, music is incredible. I'm sitting here listening to this band called Horse Feathers, and I feel so peaceful and calm... and a mixture of happy and sad, and I have no idea why this music is making me feel this way but I love it. Violins are so expressive- I wish I knew how to play. I have a lot of things I wish I knew. But yeah, you should listen to Horse Feathers. There is so much feeling in this music. It's amazing.

Until next time-
Liz

PS- I've owned a digital SLR since July and this is the first time I've posted a photo with it. That's certainly a shame. I'll try to be better.