Not So Holly Jolly Christmas...

'Tis the season to be jolly...Well to be honest, I'm not so jolly this holiday season. Ususally Christmas time is the happiest time of year for me, being with family and all. Well with the recent passing of my dad this past July, you could probably guess why I am not so happy around this time.

Christmas was one of my dad's favorite holidays and he would always come up with something for the family around this time, whether it be cooking or coming up with a prank or giving us all gifts, he was still coming up with things year after year. Well the sad thing is that it was around this time last year that was my last time I actually got to really hang out with him and see him. Everytime I go outside and see the mountainous piles of snow, and the snow falling and listen to Christmas music, I start to tear up like a big baby. Does the crying never end?

I mean seriously, I went through this whole feeling down phase in July when it happened. The holiday season is supposed to be a time when you feel happy and jolly and hyper and whatnot. I feel like curling up into a little ball in a corner of my room and crying out all of this mess. Just get it all out. I just want to stop crying.

Dad, I miss you :-(

You Want The Truth? I Can Handle The Truth

Here I sit in my bed in my apartment listening to Secondhand Serenade [“A Twist in My Story”]. I was doing a word search but the thoughts started to bounce through my head thinking about things in my life. The first song on this album is called “Like a Knife” and it is basically talking about a lover leaving basically. It just makes me think about back in February when Tevis broke up with me. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not all down and whatnot because I am not with him anymore but I was just thinking of what happened. I was only with him for a month, yet I was down in the dumps for a month afterwards. It was good that that ended because he was 17 years old and not mature enough to handle a serious relationship. That is not a bash, it is the truth because in the end he said he didn’t want something serious. But to be honest I don’t think it was because I wasn’t with him anymore.

I actually sat here thinking about it and every time I tried to get to know another guy or tried to see if a relationship would build with another guy, nothing would happen. And I think I know why. I always compare them to my best friend Randy. Back in 2004 is when the chapters in my life containing Randy began. I had Science with him my sophomore year in High School. I really do not remember how I got to start talking to him. I think it was probably because our teacher Mr. Webber sat us next to each other at some point in the first semester of the school year.

As I think about back then, I wonder why I continued talking to him. He was always sarcastic, rude, disrespectful, etc. There are plenty of other words I could use to describe what I should have seen him as. For some reason I was drawn to talking to him, I ended developing feelings for him. Bad bad bad idea. Which brings me to another thought, why do we always like the ones that are rude to us, dismiss the ones who actually like us and ignore the ones who adore us? Or something along those lines.

Ok back to my train of thought. I had developed feelings for Randy and well it was a bad idea. Anyways, When I finally got the courage to tell him how I felt, it was probably a year later and it was in a huge email that was like I swear 12 paragraphs long, It was like an entire essay basically telling him that I liked him. He was less than nice about it and it was upsetting, so I ended up not talking to him for about 3 to 6 months, I can’t remember exactly how long it was. But yeah it was at least 3 months. I did eventually end up talking to him again and through the end of Junior year and all of senior year our friendship had built up and he became my best guy friend.

He started dating this girl names Alicia beginning of senior year, and at first I was a little pissy cause well it was another girl in my best friend’s life, then I got over it and was happy that he had found someone and was happy. They lasted less than a year, for pretty much the reason that she didn’t like how close Randy and I were as friends. So she got all obsessive or something like that, I can’t remember how he described it but he broke it off with her.

[I keep forgetting what my point is to writing this, I think this is just a whole bunch of stuff trying to remember where the beginning of our friendship started and how it has developed.]

When I moved out September 2007 into an apartment with my friend Amy from Middle School, I didn’t find out it was a bad idea until after living with her for a few months. But through the rough times I talked to Randy about it. We usually talked during his lunch break at 2am on the phone. Sometimes I would drive up to Walmart at 2 in the morning to have lunch with him and bounce ideas and what was going to him, creating more building blocks of our relationship as friends. [By the way, he is the only guy I have told everything to]. This strong friendship helped in rough times. While things ended not so nicely with Amy at the end of our lease, I ended up not having a place to go and Randy was there and offered his place to stay. It was like perfect timing, because his roommate and best friend Cody was going to the UK for 9 months.

Since Randy and I did not expect Cody back until July, when his lease ended in November, we signed an 8 month lease because that was when we expected Cody back. Well about a week after signing this lease, Cody informed us that he hated the UK so much that he was coming home in about 2 weeks. Well he is here now. So now we have 3 people living in a 2-bedroom apartment. It isn’t so bad to be honest because I am living with my best friend and a good friend of mine. But all the business with Cody is not the point of this blog I now realize.

While I keep telling myself and everyone that I do not like Randy more than a friend, I still ponder the idea of what it would be like for us to be together. It doesn’t help with everyone telling me that “oh you guys will probably end up married, you guys already act like it minus the physical stuff”. That is really frustrating because I spend a year convincing myself that I was over that whole liking Randy thing. Well, it was more than a liking I guess you could say. It was like one of those movies where the girl falls in love with her best friend and it just ends that they are friends with her still loving him. [Kind of like My Best Friend’s Wedding] I think I am that girl unfortunately. Why do I say unfortunately, you ask. Well, I honestly don’t want to be in love with my best friend. It is just a big stress for me, a big weight on my shoulders.

I have discussed this with him……kind of. It was more so like “have you ever thought about us being more than friends?” his response was “it wouldn’t work” and me being as stubborn as I am, I needed it bluntly stated and I said that that didn’t answer my question and he said “yes”. That was a big relief in a way due to the fact that I knew it was not a one way thing. And I still think about it to this day about what it would be like.

Serena is the only one who really knows the whole extent of these feelings probably because she has been there through the entire saga of it. Now I am baring my soul and telling whoever reads this about it. It feels like I am standing in the middle of a crowd naked, vulnerable and exposed, expressing that I love my best friend.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this entry, I compare every guy I try to get to know with my relationship that I have with Randy, thus setting myself up for relationship failure. And making a break up seem more painful than it really should be because I think of it as if it were Randy and I.

Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow

I sit here in my living room on my couch and 5:20pm. I've been sitting here since I woke up. A full-born couch potatoe you could say. It's been snowing since about 4am probably. AND IT'S STILL SNOWING!!! I just looking on the kxly.com homepage and we're supposed to have 12 MORE HOURS of it!!

Granted I am already on Winter break, but walking the 6 blocks that I have to to work and home from work is a pain when there is a good foot of snow on the ground. They say that the Winter Storm warning for Spokane is supposed to last til 7pm TOMORROW night.

One word for all of it: LAME!

All That Hard Work Paid Off

Well fall quarter came to an end on December 11th, 2008 at about noon. :D And with being on academic probation, I had to work my butt off to make sure I got good enough grades so that my financial aid would not be taken away. Academic probation at Eastern is that if you get a GPA lower than a 2.0 then they watch your grades the next quarter to see if you are doing better and if it happens again then your financial aid is taken away until the grades are raised. So I did not want to risk that.

As the title of this says all that hard work paid off in the end.
Intro to Psychology 2.9
Math (Quantitative Reasoning) 3.2
Biological Investigations 2.6
Developmental Psychology 3.8

I am very pleased with my grades this quarter. I will end up retaking Biological Investigations though because I would like to have a 3.5 average for all of my science classes. It will give me a better chance in the premed and medical field to become a doctor. And if you think I'm crazy, well just think about this: would you want a doctor who got an average of 2.5 or 2.6 in their science classes to be operating on you? haha

My Loving, Erratic, Hair-Brained Mother

Here I sit, on my sister's bed at my mother's house with my laptop in my lap...go figure. haha. I hear my mother on a conference call to her work in the kitchen/dining room. She is a medical transcriptionist and types away constantly whenever she is on the clock. I only hear her frantic typing whenever I decide to come and stay the night with her. I know she appreciates my company considering she always checks up on me almost once if not twice or three times everyday since I moved out a year and three months ago.

She just recently got hung up with my sister on the phone and sounded frustrated, mildly shouting "I swear she is going to drive me up the wall". While I know my mother says this at least once a day about my sister, Kyla, I think sometimes my mom forgets that Kyla is still a teenager. That is still no excuse for her actions at times. My sister has been with her boyfriend for six months now and he no longer lives with my mom, her boyfriend, and my sister. So my sister tries to go spend the night at his place whenever she gets the chance. The sad part about that is, that Kyla gets more distant with my mother and more disrespectful with her each and everytime she goes and stays at his place. Yesterday while opening at work with her Kyla looks at me and says "I swear when I turn 18, I am moving out. She doesn't realize that she is driving me out of the house." It saddens me to hear her talk of our mom like that.

We all go through our phases of thinking "Why does mom worry about me so much?" or "Why is mom all 'up in my business?" or something of the sort. It is just a part of life and growing up. But the phrase "You never know what you got until it's gone" holds true. I realize how hard-working my mother is. She raised us as a single parent. My birth father left her before I was born. And while my mother was married to my sister's birth father, my acquired father, for 15 years, they sadly divorced about 7 years ago. And sadly this past July 2008 passed away making it hard on all of us even though he was not in our lives as efficiently as he was those 15 years. My mom has and does date here and there. She's been with this last boyfriend for almost a year. But even with dating, she is still in a way a single mother. No one knows her children like she does. No one has seen us blossom into the beautiful young women that we are today.

My mother has become passive with my sister since I have moved out. She doesn't really take a stand and act like a mother. I mean she has her moments. But she tends to try and be her friend rather than a mother. And when she does act like a mother, my sister gets pissy and moans about it. That last phone call was to tell my mom she has cramps and doesn't want to go to work. Well, with working at the same place, who do they call whenever she calls out? Me. Yep and I take one for the team and just do it. Not to let her "get her way" but because it is more money on my paycheck toward my bills.

I think my point to this is that I don't think my sister realizes how much mom does for us.

The Future Is In The Making

So here I sit after a short, measly 5 hour shift I worked at Old Country Buffet, pondering what I want to do with my life. The last 3 years that I have worked have been one of my motivations for staying in school. It's only been a matter of what I want to go to school for. College is the one place you get to decide what you want to be, just a matter of what classes and the kinds of grades you get in them. The commonly known question is: What do you want to be when you grow up?

The answer to that question has changed a few times here and there from when I was a little girl to my now adult age of 19 years old. I have always thought about the doctor route. Not for the $100,000+ salary but for the mere fact that I would be saving people's lives. That has always been an ambition of mine. If I can find some way to help save peoples' lives, that would be what I would do. Why not be a doctor? Well, every now and again my curiosity strikes and I start doing mini-research on how to become a doctor.

My research has shown that there is A LOT of school. And when I say A LOT, I mean like 8-10+ years of schooling. COLLEGE schooling. We all know that college definitely costs some money. Pre-med program to be taken at a University and if that University doesn't have a medical school, then you have to go to a school that does have medical schooling in it upon graduating from the pre-med program.

For the last 2 or 3 years I have been going to Eastern Washington University with the idea that I was to be a Medical Laboratory Technologist. Why not the doctor route? Well, the pre-med tech program is 4 years with a year of internship at Sacred Heart Medical Center and BAM! I have a job in that hospital. One of the biggest 'downers' on my "Dr. Severino-Radimecky" idea has been the money issue. College does cost a chunk of money but I am not going to let money stand in my way of reaching my goal.

Just this year I was awarded work study with my financial aid award and have the privilege of being an office assistant in the Biology Department. This is helpful to me because I have the resources to know what kind of classes I need to take and I find out things about certain classes and whether or not certain professors are good at teaching certain classes. And I have decided that with this extra resource and my financial aid, I am going to do the pre-med program and then go to medical school: either U of W or another Medical School on the west side. But my goal is to become a surgeon. I know it will take many years to achieve but whatever the obstacle, I will overcome it to reach my goal and help make the world a better place :)