The day after tomorrow I will be back at school, back with my sisters having one heck of a year.

I think it will be a good year. I already feel better about it. There are certain people I will miss for certain (such as my dear Guy) but other wise I feel like I have a good head on my shoulders. I feel a lot more secure than I have in a while and it's a really good feeling.

~~~

I think sometimes it just helps that I look in the mirror and see a "new" me. A hair cut can do a lot really. Cutting my hair in May, something I had been planning and was really quite ready to do, was the shedding of something I can't quite put in to words. My hair isn't something that hides me anymore, isn't such a huge distraction, a weight, a pain in the ass. When I'm seen it's my face to see now. I can look at myself, as can others. I feel stronger with it gone, more free as well. It's a change that was long needed.
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Okay. Correction. I am REALLY REALLY REALLY going to miss Guy. I'm talking to her as I write and it kind of makes me want to go sniffly. I mean really...she's the other part of Sammy and I, the one that helped bring us together really. We all started becoming friends at the same time and both of them have been the core of my school experience. We support each other and they're my best friends. Yeah, I was pretty exclusive with them at times but with them I'm at my most comfortable. They're my sisters. Three semesters we've been bombing around through the ups and the downs. I mean last year Guy even slept in my bed a few times when I wasn't there. So yeah.
I've been trying not to think about it. All of us have...because it just won't be the same. Because it's hard to think of the college experience as being complete without one another.
But Guy needs her time to heal. She's been through hell. Sammy and I just wish we could be there with her.
I think it's hard for me because Guy is one of the few people I feel I have ever completely trusted when I am in the real depths of my emotions, the times when I feel the weakest. I think it's because one of the first times I encountered her I was crying over something. She was just kind of okay with it. I seldom ever cry in front of people. It's like...ever nerve of my body clings to stop it so the fact that that was one of my first experiences with her is just...yeah. It is something wordless.
I'm very glad to have her and Sammy in my life.

~~~~~~

This summer has been a good one. May and June went pretty slow. In fact June is pretty much a blob of brown shaded memory and me just being a bum in my room. It could also be called Semester Wind Down. It's booooring.
July started out with a bang emotionally, fireworks included. At least it got me off into the whirlwind of work and meeting up with friends. It flowed straight in to August until it plopped me here. It was really good though.

I really enjoyed work this past summer as bored out of my brains as I was sometimes. Other moments I couldn't have loved it more like when I got to work with the kids and Angela doing bike safety. It just felt great to be out in the community doing something good and to be teaching and learning at the same time. It's really made me want to consider being a teacher or a community educator of some kind. It is very rewarding and challenging in the good way. To adapt a term from Netta, my brain's hampsters were dancing in their wheels.

~~~~~
It was great to connect with my home friends this summer. I wish I had done more of it but it was better than last year. I had some fun movie nights and just afternoons hanging out or playing a great game of mini golf (Me at mini-golf: I'm more competitive than I say I am).

I went to a bonfire last Thursday at a friend's house and it was honestly such a lovely close to my summer. When I got there we ended up sitting in front of the house, a group of us, spread out amongst the wrap around porch, the steps, the grass, the hammock stretched between two old trees. Before us the sun was steadily sinking behind that great green tree filled valley wall. A horse grazed in her pasture tucked in to corn fields next to a red barn. The colors were radiant and the conversation good and funny as dogs wove in and out between, seeking out the best person to pet them.
The conversation stretched wildly and hilariously between body hair, bathroom stall grafitti, Johnny Bravo Pompadours, Twilight, gummy bear arms, candy bar canniablism, SAT scores, feminism, crappy cars, style and language. I got to laughing so hard mid-drink or mid-bite I almost choked a few times. It was great to just be around such a great group of people enjoying a last summer evening together. It was just so perfect and one of those nights I'll hold in my memory for a while.

A very nice time.

~~~~~

I had a great time with mom the other evening. We went out to this town and had a wonderful experience.
I found some great locally made and natural face products that I think will work on my acne (FINALLY!) and don't make my nostrils go "WHOA NELLY!". Mom and the shop keeper were having a good time bantering and the people were just really friendly and cool. It was a soap/lotion/candle/scent shop and it was divine in there.
Afterward we were going to stop in a thrift shop but suddenly mom and I really had to go pee so we went to this crepe restaurant that the candle shop keepers had recommended. Once the bladders were relieved we sat down to divine foodage. Crepes...seriously? Amazing.

The restaurant was so light filled and just lovely. Mom described it as "French country" style. I thought it was simple and beautiful. The light came in through the windows and filled the high plain rafter ceilings of the rooms, glinting off iron and crystal chandeliers hung over tables with white linens and navy blue old mismatched chairs. Some of the walls were a soft cream/ivory, others a red brick with big plain archways between the rooms. The floor was wooden with a big old middle eastern carpet wearing thin over top.

The conversation was good too. We discussed all manner of things but one of them was journalscape and how lucky I am to have been able to get to know the people I have through it, to have the support I have. It was as though in some way you were sitting with mom and I there and it made me know the importance of this place to have it be there in that space with me. Mom and I were glowing as we talked about it and I felt really content and happy. I'm really grateful.
Twenty-four days until it's six years here and I'm glad I've stuck with it.

Mom and I wandered out of the restaurant and down the street, window shopping. We ended up in a drug store getting a few things I needed for college and what not. Mom was looking through the mugs and was said "Here's a nice one. Aww but it has a duck on it." "A duck? So what?" (Completely flew over my head for a whole three minutes that Ben and I used to have a duck thing. Mom remembered, I didn't. I was proud of this association lapse.) So I look at it was a very Adirondeck styled design and nature-like. So what kind of water fowl was on it? The Common Loon. I just started busting up because I was like "YES! This is my mug! I'm a Common Loon!" and then mom was like "No, you're not a Common Loon, you're an Un-Common Looooon!" Then we kind of lost it laughing and kept going on about me being a new kind of water fowl, the Un-Common Looooooon! It is such a random mug but so perfect at the same time. I'm a Loon, but no...not just any kind of common Loon but an Un-Common Loon.
Ahahaha. No one will get it. I love it anyway.

~~~

But now that I have the important stuff down I should get some sleep. I get to finish up and load up the car tomorrow, stick the purple streak back in my hair and enjoy my last full day being able to use a single bathroom shower that I don't have to wear sandals in.
Buenos noches, chicos y chicas.
Adios.
Peace.
~Lo

Ooooh and I will try and write more once I'm at school. Just been a "everything I try and write on JS sounds like SHIT!" month. They happen. I'll get over it.