After Being So Sneaky and Vague How About Some Details?

Ryan brought me my favorite Oatmeal in the world this morning from Jamba Juice he’s so nice and thoughtful. I really am a huge fan of the steel cut oats and its just all sorts of delicious.

Can I just skip Summer and Winter and have the weather stay spring and fall for the rest of my life?

I know, it sounds ludicrous to me too but they are both my most inspiring and rejuvenating times of year. I feel like WRITING and CRAFTING again! After last semester I felt like dying before typing much or any other craft projects, hence my short posts and lack of pictures.

Last semester, where I faced Latin once again only to realize those 2 years off and then starting up was maybe not my brightest idea.
Last semester, where I faced Math one last time and pretended to buy a house (that came in pretty handy didn’t it?)
Last semester where I learned how to interview people for Life Stories and found something that fascinated and inspired me, that is aside from 40-60 hours of my life (outside of my full time work week) for transcribing. And by transcribing, I mean writing the conversation out verbatim, including ums and uhs and disjointed sentences. Transcribing is a BEAST!

Last semester where I realized what it is I really want to do for the rest of my life.

So this semester is winding down, and guess who missed graduation fair to preorder her cap and gown. However, there is a back up day for people like me who doddled about finishing jumping through all the hoops.

I’m looking for some thoughtful and simple announcements for Ryan and I to send out and between the puppies and my craft stash being stored elsewhere, I’m coming up empty. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

And then of course there is the age old battle between Ryan and I, he thinks graduation is good, but the ceremonies are dumb, and then I on the other hand am all gung ho. I mean this is where I’ve been for the last 5 years. I have learned an awful lot and I think walking is important.

(Not to mention if I told people in my office that I wasn’t walking it would be up there with me saying I like the “Y”) Working for the college and seeing all the careful preparation put into events and the building maintenance, I feel walking is the most respectful thing I can do.

For years I have had a lot of people ask me how school was going and support my class schedule in my building, and it would feel like I was cheapening their jobs and careers up here by not walking. Its really actually a very cool thing. I’m excited to walk, to listen to the former Governor give the U’s commencement speech. It really is exciting and despite Ryan’s crankiness on the topic of ‘walking’, I’m winning anyway because he gets to sit through my ceremony. I always thought a ‘his and hers’ graduation was cool, but I’ll settle and be content that I’m walking even if my honey isn’t.

It has been a rip roaring last year. Me three months ago was freaking out because I had no idea what the future was going to bring, but its been pretty great so far.

Ryan is completely engrossed in his capstone project the video game for Xbox Live. He is the art lead this semester and the project due to many changes in management, has completely taken off. This semester was completely opposite from last semester. Last semester Ryan, my visiting teachers, my ward, my good good friends, my Relief Society and my family got me through one of the hardest semesters of my life.

Before the semester started my parents sat me down and told me they were concerned about the load. I wasn’t very good at first at asking and receiving help. I really like feeling self reliant, but last semester a lot of things happened.

One thing I haven’t talked about, because I couldn’t really was:

· My dad had heart valve surgery the first week of school

My mom stayed with Ryan and I for some of the nights my dad was in the hospital, and I spent a good portion of my first week and a half of school up there. I skipped classes because I was finally realizing how in over my head I was and I was so uncontrollably emotional. Starting the semester off that way made everything feel more pressing and hectic.

There were nights where I couldn’t speak, I cried a lot and if I tried to say anything it was all stuttered. Those were some of the scariest nights of my life. I felt how important it was to communicate and how problematic it was for me to keep something I was working on so under wraps that I couldn’t expect a huge support group. But the book, my book, as told to me Angie Meeks, published and held in the University’s library, published with her undergrad, sits calmly as books do.

My book that tested me and showed me what my dream will cost and put me through has crisp pages a clean cover and pictures that tell other stories than the one I wrote. Reading between the lines, my book taught me that I am human and I have to ask for help. My book turned me into a social recluse for over 4 months. My book, which I organized and edited, made me a better more understanding person. My book taught me that it is ok to ask for help and receive dinners from people. My book taught me that the creative process rebels when it is forced and leaves writer’s block. My book doesn’t share the living hell I went through, but it’s a pretty good reminder for me of what I have gone through.

My book that I hope shares the narrator’s story with people near and dear to them. I don’t really get to talk to them about it, it’s the narrator’s story, their jewel and achievement, that’s how I want it to be. But holding secrets is slowly killing me. People who ask me how school is going, who I didn’t tell them about my huge project, who may never know how much of myself I invested in the project; I needed my words on the subject to go out to the void that is the internet. I needed closure, that I had shared my project with my small world. So people would hear what I did and am doing with school and stop getting the glazed over look. I needed that so much.

And so just like the alluring spring that promises for change and rejuvenation, I’m letting this go, to focus for the next two weeks on my last two papers for school and on whatever is coming afterwards.