Dandelion Sunshine

I praise God for a wonderful day today.

I woke up at 7:30 and got to lay in bed and watch the sun filter through my window because as frustrating as not getting a job is, it also means I don't have to do anything for a few more days. Eventually I made it downstairs for breakfast and tea and then read some more Wuthering Heights by a window full of sunshine.

Have I mentioned that I love sunshine?


Then I got to call one of my best friends from high school, talk to my sister for a while, call my wonderful boyfriend, read some more, and eat a picnic lunch outside in the sun. My sister and I laid in the dandelion dotted grass for around an hour soaking up the vitamin D and then went back inside and painted each other's finger nails and watched some old tv show about aliens living on earth...

At three I interviewed for a night audit at one of the hotels in town, and came back nearly panicked because I could get the job and I don't want to settle for a job that puts me, the girl who sleeps nine hours a night behind a desk from 11pm to 7am five days a week.

I then frantically called my mom, who calmed all my fears in a couple seconds of conversation and gave me advice for what to do next. Then we talked about relationships and people and college for about an hour. I didn't say anything yesterday about Mother's Day, but I was reminded again today how lucky I am to have the mom I do. Seriously, my mom is amazing. I miss her so much but I love this technology that lets me hear her voice from across countries.

After a lot more reading in the sun I cooked Enchiladas for my sister and her husband while continuing to be amazed at how this technology can keep me connected to my college roommate still in Vermont, my boyfriend, other college friends, and high school friends and even a friend who's been around (though rarely ever in location) since fourth grade.

But one of my favorite moments was sitting down tonight while my sister and her husband went for a bike ride and pulling up a new Word document. I sat down thinking I would write a letter to those Whisperers from that fantasy novel I've been considering rewriting, but instead I found Equity Blue talking through my fingers pointing out yet another way I could tell the story.

So now I have three more pages of notes and a new idea of how to write down this story I've been dying to tell for more than four years now. I'm so excited to plan out ideas this summer. I'm thinking that I'll do outlining and note taking these next few months, and if my inspiration continues then by the time I go back to college I will have a story at my fingertips ready to be typed up, and maybe my fiction workshop class will be the place where Equity Blue finally finds life.

I'm so excited that I don't even have a poem to put here, and I heard my sister saying something about Full House coming on in a few minutes....

Roustabout

A Roustabout is someone who lives by chance.

I learned this from a guest speaker in my Professional Writing class, a man that told us his crazy life story with a banjo, a guitar, Polish bagpipes, a love flute, and a stick of hobo signs.

While I'm not quite at the point of applying for a grant to learn bagpipes in Poland or sitting in a sweat lodge to earn the right to learn to play the love flute, I like to think that I've kind of lived a life of chance anyway. It's not like I've done anything off the charts crazy, not exactly, I've just been incredibly blessed by incredible opportunities.

In two weeks I go back to Oaxaca, Mexico, a place I've come to think of as my 'home away from home' or 'home here on Earth'. It's a place that stole my heart and makes me dream of cacti and rain on dry dirt. It's the place where I'll get to see my family again after way too long, and the place where some of my best friends will get the chance to meet up again. I can't wait to go back, and even though I still have 12 days to wait I don't know if I'll have the chance to blog again before then because finals and projects and Christmas parties.

So here's the facts. Ten months ago (ten by the time I get back in a couple weeks) I left Oaxaca. Since then life has swept me off my feet and carried me across the world. If you had asked me a year ago, when I turned 18, to predict my 18th year, I would have painted an awesome picture, but it wouldn't have come anywhere close to how crazy and amazing this year has actually been.

I have sat through 15 plane rides since that first flight out of Mexico City. Granted, this includes those little connection flights that leave me stranded in airports because they're always delayed. By the time I get to Mexico again there will be another 3 flights thrown into the mix.

I have taken 10 train rides.

Only 5 coach rides (a coach is different than a bus, a coach is for long distance and is usually bigger; buses are short around the city and I am definitely not going to take the time to count those up).

And probably spent more than 100 hours in a car. I wasn't going to add this up either, but on at least 5 different occasions I went on a car ride that was longer than 5 hours, so that's 25 hours, plus countless 2 or 3 hour drives and then all those minutes added up... you get the point.

In 10 months I have stepped in 9 different countries, 7 of which I'd never been to before.

I've also been to 9 different USA states, 6 of them for the first time.

I started college at Champlain as a Professional Writing Major.

I wrote the first 73 pages of my latest novel. (I'm hoping to get it to 100 before I leave. That's just a much better number than 73. We'll see if projects will allow for that.)

I started writing for a magazine, got a job, opened a bank account, saw 5 concerts, practically met the Queen of England, kissed the man of my dreams, finished reading the Bible for the second time, made a ton of wonderful, wonderful friends from all over the world. You get the point. I've done a lot these past 10 months. It's been crazy and fantastic and new. 

I know at least some of this was planned out ahead of time. You can't exactly just hop a flight to London. But so much of my travels has also been spur of the moment, spontaneous decisions to skip class and fly to Dublin or hitch a ride to Pennsylvania.

I couldn't ask for better adventures, better stories I will one day get to write about. It's been a wonderful trip, and I am still in awe of how lucky my chances turned out to be.

Stuffed Inside my Suitcase

My suitcase and I have a very special relationship. After all, we have traveled the world together. We went to my first Writer's Convention in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, we've been back and forth between Colorado and Oaxaca, we've gone camping all over, we've gone to the beach, we went to Peru, we went on a cruise to Jamaica and the Bahamas and Grand Cayman, and most recently we traveled through Europe. Now we're headed to Chicago, Canada, and Vermont, where hopefully we can finally take a break from each other for a while.

I mean, no matter how close we are, no relationship should have to deal with this amount of pressure. Me: "Come on suitcase, I know you have room for me to stuff in this one more notebook!!"
Suitcase: "My zippers are going to break!" (Just to prove it the suitcase zips through a shirt making it impossible to completely close or open to start over.)
Me: "Seriously? I hate you."
Suitcase: "Fine. Don't take any of your stuff with you."

Eventually we always seem to work something out, even if I've left boxes of my old things all over the world. Belongings just seem to multiply so much during travel. Oh well, I think I managed to squeeze everything in for now. But it sure will be wonderful to live in one place for the next year.

Anyway, I could write a blog post all about my college fears and excitement and all of that, but I think I've given enough of those already. Besides, for right now college somehow still seems pretty far away. (Far being two weeks.) So Chicago is the next adventure at the forefront of my mind.

I've only ever been to the Chicago airport, so I am very excited to go explore some of the city itself. However, of course I am mostly excited for who I get to explore the city with, my amazing boyfriend and his family and some other families and friends who used to live in Oaxaca. After four months of only limited Skype calls and Facebook messages, I am so happy to finally get to see my boyfriend again without unreliable internet and spontaneous computer access.

On a different note, my writer's side decided to suddenly get inspired about Equity Blue again. So while I had an entire summer full of writing time with no inspiration to write, I suddenly have a whole ton of motivation and no time to write. See? My theory was right; I write best when I'm busy. I guess the chaos of having something else to do makes writing just seem so much more appealing. So I have a beginning six pages of Equity Blue. That means I need to come up with fourteen more in order to conquer the twenty page block. (My theory that I can't say I'm working on a new novel until I've written more than twenty pages. Once I get over twenty pages then it's a keeper, before that it's just brainstorming ideas.)

So I'm off to Chicago for the week to see what new stories life throws at me and to hopefully be inspired to get back to Equity as soon as I get settled in to college so I can write out twenty pages and get started on the next novel which has been marinating for far too long.

Caves and Camping

Imagine yourself in the depths of the earth sitting on the hold, hard, metal seats of a little boat. There are fourteen people on the boat with and most of them don't know how to shut their mouth for more than a few seconds at a time. However, we stop in front of "Gibraltar Rock" and the tour guide turns off the lights and for a few seconds we get to experience total darkness. The blackness feels tangible, it's so thick. And then the lights come back on and I just want to close my eyes because the darkness was so beautiful. And then... then the tour guide pulls out a Native American flute and starts to play, and for once everyone is silent and the music echoes of the cave walls and it sounds so amazing.

Definitely one of the highlights of my week long camping trip. There's just something about caves... I know they're supposed to at least be a little bit scary, but somehow the silence and darkness felt more relaxing than anything. It was also pretty amazing when my aunt and I detoured away from the trail and explored a little cave on our own. We couldn't make it very far inside before it was all water, but it was so neat to watch the walls sparkled and find a cave salamander and some crickets and lots of frogs.

Speaking of frogs... I also watched one of the other girls on the camping trip chase a frog straight into a snake's waiting mouth. So traumatizing to watch the snake gulp down the poor little frog that wouldn't have died if I hadn't seen it and pointed it out to the other girl...

Oh, and I cannot forget the biggest adventure of hitting a deer on the way down. I was in the passengers seat and got to sit and watch as my windshield suddenly turned brown for a second. Lots of damage to the driver's car, but neither of us were hurt which was definitely a blessing.

Beautiful hikes, indescribable devotions in the sunlight every morning, and breath taking stars. I even got to see a lunar eclipse. All in all a very good camping trip, even with the disappointment that came right before, when my brother wasn't allowed to fly alone from Mexico to come and spend the week with me. I really miss my family, and it's been so long since I've seen any of them. It was so hard to hear that my brother wasn't coming after weeks of looking forward to seeing him.

Unfortunately, while I did write several pages worth of words, nothing worth showing anyone. I still have all of these ideas for the upcoming Equity Blue, but something is still holding me back from writing it. Maybe it's all the uncertainties and changing aspects of my life. It's hard to write when I'll be in a different state every week for the next few weeks.

Which brings me to wonderful news- I'm going to Chicago!!! I get to spend a week up in Chicago with my boyfriend and his family and some other families that used to go to my school in Mexico. I cannot wait to see some familiar faces from Mexico and spend some time with friends. And, of course, I am excited beyond words to see my boyfriend again after months of rare Skype calls and some emails and lots of Facebook messages passed back and forth as I moved from country to country. Five more days until I get to see him in person!! I cannot wait!

So not much happening in the pages for me right now, but a lot of adventure outside of them.