Martini taste on a beer budget...T uncensored.

gotmyphilosophy: and if for some reason you come to disturb my slumber tomorrow
gotmyphilosophy: be warned
gotmyphilosophy: i will undoubtedly tell you to go away
treeeHEDD: :-D
treeeHEDD: goodnight gary!
gotmyphilosophy: i should sleep nekkid tonight
treeeHEDD: nudity doesn't scare me
gotmyphilosophy: well then you can climb in bed with me
gotmyphilosophy: DURHUR
treeeHEDD: ok franklin...
gotmyphilosophy: aw my secret identity
gotmyphilosophy: ooh ooh wait
gotmyphilosophy: i've had one glass of the ELMO JUICE HOLY CRAP I AM TEH CRAZY!!!1
gotmyphilosophy: SLEEP WITH ME NOW
gotmyphilosophy: YOUR ASS I WILL TOUCHY

Shannon and I decided waking John up would be the best thing to do with our morning whether or not it resulted in him going to IHOP. We get plenty of satisfaction seeing a grumpy and even less coordinated John. When we got to his room though, the door wasn't even closed all the way. Odd. Was John planning to thwart our Super Samurai Attack plans? The answer was no. I slowly opened the door only to find him fast asleep. Then I looked to see if Jeremy was there. Indeed he was...with some mystery girl. Whatever. So we don't really want to wake this chick up and jumping onto a bottom bunk is in no way safe. We surely would have hit our heads, so we just sort of climbed in bed with John and much to our surprise, he actually agreed to go IHOPping with us. The reason for a Thursday morning IHOP trip you ask? Collin told me that they aren't going to have their stuffed french toast anymore. That is not cool. I had only had it once, but it was delicious. I needed more and wanted to be sure that I got there before it was all gone. I recommend you all go out and get some while its still there! This is an EMERGENCY!

Anyway, this week is sort of too much I think. I'm trying to nail an intern(ship), study for finals, finish up all my projects, pack up all my stuff to move out, and get all my stuff ready for a scary portfolio review next week. At least I've turned in all my final projects. I got a 95 on my design project and I just left my drawing porfolio review, so hopefully Shannon will have mercy and give me decent grades. I suck in that class. For Human Sexuality today we could show up to class with a pencil, take a survey for about 30 minutes, and get 10 points on our final. 10 points = yay!

The weekend promises to be busy for many reasons. Friday afternoon will be the best time to get lots of work done for fashion design, but it will be cut short my a trip to Nusia and Jake's house. They are throwing a party 'in honor of Julia, Lorinda, and Teresa'. Yeah, I think they just wanted to have a party. So we'll be there Friday night and my parents will arrive in Denton on Saturday. Things will be loaded into the 'awesome' van and then I think my mom wants me to go with them to eat dinner with some old family friends. Sunday, she wants us to have brunch with MORE family friends. In high school she always got onto me about spending too much time and money on social, fun, non-academic things. Now though...she wants me to go out and do all this stuff, eat all these places, try all this stuff that I don't even really care to do. I always knew she was crazy, but its gotten so much worse since I left and Stewart died. Awww STEWART!! I miss him.

Today I will call internship lady and see whats going on with that so me and Matt can figure out plane ticket business for the uncle's wedding. I'm apparently a bridesmaid for this wedding and I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to have to wear, but I hear its from Chadwick's and I'm not gonna lie, that worries me a little bit. I guess the bridesmaid desses aren't THAT bad, but I was expecting better from a woman in her 30's. Oh well.

Due to my end-of-semester breakdown today, I'm skipping my drawing class... because I didn't have anything terribly impressive to show anyway. In my last class Dr. Chng lectured on rape, sexual harassment, child abuse and other such topics and I found lots of the information to be interesting and helpful in my understanding of what rape is.

CNN conducted a survey to find out what people did NOT consider rape.

A man has sex with a drunk woman. (9% F and 17% M)
A husband forcing sex upon his wife. (30% F and 38% M)
A man uses emotional pressuse as opposed to physical force. (55% F and 59% M)

Marital rape is tolerated in 28 states.

A US woman is raped every 2-3 minutes. Only 1:3 report it.

US statistics are 13 times greater than Great Britain and 20 times greater than Japan. Japan has a 95% conviction rate.

68% of rapes happen between the hours of 6 pm and 6 am.

Rapists know what they are doing is wrong and have no mental illness.

Only 1:100 convicted rapists in the US serve sentences longer than 1 year.

There are 3 types of rape.
1) Anger rape- vicious, unplanned, triggered by anger (40%)
2) Power rape- desire to dominate, sexual gratification is secondary, minimal force (55%)
3) Sadist rape- ritualized savage attack (5%)

If you try to resist a rapist, you have an 80% chance of escaping, but you are 3 times as likely to be injured.

That particular lecture hit me pretty hard. Those statistics make you think. In the time it took me to type all that, at least 2 women got raped. Look around. Every third girl or so you see has gone through that. People don't wear it on their foreheads though. I just want everybody to be careful and be aware of all this. Its hard to hide from.

I just typed a whole bunch of stuff, but it was mostly meaningless bullshit like always, so I thought I'd change it up and share this instead. About a year ago, Mrs. Norwood (my crazy english teacher jr and sr year) read this to us and I think I cried. It'll put things into perspective. Its kind of long but very much worth the time. Enjoy.

Who is the person next to you?
You might say a name, and describe how tall he or she is, and the color of eyes or hair.
But none of these things are what the person is.
A person is invisible activities.

The person nearest to you is an inexhaustible sort of existence. Nine-tenths of his possibility has not yet been touched off. All kind of good is struggling to be born from way within that person. There are also worries, fears, hates that are struggling to get themselves expressed. At the core of every person are inexhaustible energies.

Deep within this person is a great toughness for his own integrity—a great tenacity in the face of adversity. Human nature is the most indestructible thing that we know. It has almost unlimited ability to take whatever comes—to go on surviving in the midst of unbelievable difficulties and persecutions. A person is and overpowering will to survive, to arrive at destinations. To blossom and be--with all the spontaneity of a rose at seven o’clock on a June morning.

The person sitting next to you is an urge to become manifest. To become something in particular. To emerge as a dependable structure from out of the amorphous cloud of being. And then to make clear and vivid this pattern until he is significant life.

He is in pain to be authentic. To experience a moment of truth. To have a story and a song.

He has a need to be known even as he knows himself and at a level deeper than words.

The person sitting next to you is a unique world of experience. Within him is constantly going on a world premiere of experiences that no person has ever had or will ever have.

He is a cluster of memories of the past and expectations of the future.

He is a whole colony of persons, people met all during his life who have become inner inhabitants. Something of these people has entered into this person forever, so that the person sitting next to you is really a community. In that community lives still the father and the mother of this person, the boys and girls with whom he played most, the people with whom he went to school, the persons with whom he competed, the enemies he met, and all the live things of this world that came and interacted with him. They are still deep within.

Each person is this world of experiences. And when a person drops out of this experiment of a man, a whole universe in which many people have gathered is lost.

He is the kind of life that can live with you, rather than just alongside. He was designed to be permeable, rather then impervious. He is incomplete unless from time to time he is part of a co-personal world. He hopes desperately for a home. To be creative fidelity would actualize his nature as a person.

He can live not only for himself, but for you also. H can confront, encounter, and understand you— if that is what you want. In turn, he is to be understood. And unless other people take time to understand him, he is thwarted from being personal.

The person sitting next to you is a thin, darting line of awareness, playing peek-a-boo with the world, and “run-sheep-run” with eternal sleep—and ultimately losing. And knowing he will lose. So all the time he is quivering sensitivity.

The person next to you is suffering.

He is working away at problems. He has fears. He wonders how he is doing. Often he doesn’t feel too good about how he is doing; and he finds that he can’t respect or be a good friend of himself. When he feels that way about himself, he has a hard time loving others. When he doesn’t feel good about himself and finds it hard to love others, he suffers.

He also suffers when two different desires try to lead him in different directions. They clash against each other. He is indecision; he is disorganized. And in indecision and disorganization he is so close to chaos that the pain becomes intense, for it is only when energy is in motion and in pattern that we are really happy.

The person sitting next to you is suffering partly because he keeps repeating patterns of solving problems and of relating himself to other people that never worked too well. But he learned them in a situation where he was very tense and somewhat fearful. Because of that, he over-learned them; they tend to be the only ways which he can use and so he goes on trying to solve his personal problems by using ways of feeling and attacking problems that don’t work well, but were the means that he found when he was in a state of desperate need.

The person sitting next to you has a right to choose and to decide, to run himself, to show responsibility, in the situations of life. And he may greaten in the act of choice.

He has some things that he can do well. There are some things that he can do better than anybody else in this whole world.

He participates in history-making—even though feebly; trying to make a way for himself and his kind of people—in a world that often makes no sense at all. History-making is like trying to swim in a tidal wave.

Way down, the person sitting next to you is a commitment.

He is covered by layer after layer if compromise, and injured by hurts. But at some point, after admitting the shortness of fragility of his life and the evil in this world, he says, “Nevertheless…”

There is something his one life on earth means or cares for. But does he dare speak of it to you?

I have my problems and you have your problems; I have my needs and you have your needs; and in a sense they really are distinct from each other, and I have to try to decide whose need I am going to try to serve—yours or mine. But to see this is to see only part of what there is to see. To see this is only the surface of reality, the expected part.

The reality of it is more than that. As we travel around in our daily world, in this life, every man that we meet is the man in the ditch because every man that we meet, no matter how little he looks it, and no matter how surprised he might be to realize it, is half dying for need of us, of all people. So that other self who looks so distinct after all because he cannot really even be a self without us—to be really alive, not just half alive, needs our help, our healing.

There seems to be a deeper and more terrible truth still, because to be really alive, not just half alive, we need to help and heal him: his need for compassion is matched by our need to be compassionate. It is not just for his sake that we come to his rescue. It is also for our sakes.

Neither of us can be really human, really alive, without the other; and every time we pass him by and leave him to his own misery, we both suffer for it. We need each other so infinitely more than we are usually apt to see or to admit that we see.

Your life and my life flow in to reach other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality—not as we expect it to be but as it is—is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love. This is just the way things ought to be. Most of the time it is not the way we ant things to be. It is the way things are.

I read a report in a magazine entitled “How To Love the Unlovely.” The article related how one hundred people were asked two questions. After suggesting to the group that all of us have certainly been “unlovely” from time to time (which everything affirmed), they were asked, “Who loved you when you were the most unlovely?” Nearly every person responded. Each one could name a person who had been an incarnation of God’s love for him when he had been at his worst.

The second question was, “What did this person do or say that communicated God’s love to you? What primary attitude did he demonstrate?” The qualities of incarnate love were then listed on the blackboard. Lovers of the unlovely were characterized like this:

He accepted me as I was.
She didn’t feel or act superior.
He believed I could change.
She spent time with me.
He cared about how I felt.

Do you accept people as they are? Do you feel and act superior? Do you believe people can change? Do you take time with people? Do you care—really care—how people feel?

The person sitting next to you is suffering and needs what you have to give. And that much will always be true.

The weekend has treated me well. I wish I would have gotten more done, but I totally deserved some fun and some rest. Friday Julia and I played with our skip-its outside instead of working out. Its so awesome that they brought those back. I have some excellent childhood skip-it memories, don't you? The Phi Kaps were having a fundraiser for the Red Cross and the Fire Department so we were going to check that out, but it was pretty hot outside so I wanted to wear some shorts. Problem. Last time I wore shorts without an elastic waistband was probably in July or August. I was rightfully pissed off at the fact that not one of my pairs of shorts fit properly because of my steady weight gain. I was what John would call "fangry" (fat+angry). After that whole ordeal, we went to the house (or the front yard of it since the inside is still quite ruined from their big fire). There were lots of raffle ticket prizes and plenty of food, so we stuck around for a while and gave away our money. Friday night was the long awaited Hooter's and NKD party night and oh, what a night it was. I believe the theme of the evening was the double entendre/Franklin acts like a creepy moron. Among guests was Rhonda, Jeremy, Franklin, Shannon, John, me, and Dylan(?). Our waitress' name was Saphorn (suh-porn). That would have been enough to go on all by itself, but there was plenty more to fuel the fire. I caught Franklin in the act of looking down my shirt and only the people who witnessed our faces will ever understand how divinely hilarious the situation was. John and I tried to hold a wing eating contest, but due to the fact that none of us can count properly (What do you expect from art and music majors?) and that John got the breaded wings, we just said it was a draw and deciced upon a rematch for an undetermined later date. After Hooters, it was time to party Nu Kappa Delta style. I decided that it would be funnier to start taking off our clothes before we got to John's room, so the remaining troopers (Shannon, Franklin, John, and I) lost our shirts as soon as we hit his hallway. We walked in to find Jeremy playing that ninja game and I think it took him a minute or two to notice that none of us had shirts on. We continued to disrobe down to our skivvies as Jeremy asked, "What are you doing?!" He seemed to get over it pretty quickly and The Usual Suspects began. During the first 15-20 minutes of the movie, two people knocked on the door and Jeremy and John just told them to come in. The first guy didn't seem too unnerved by it, but when Dylan came in, he stammerred like like a pubescent boy with a boner. It was entertainment at its finest. After the movie, Franklin left and Shannon and I just hung around and occupied John's bed while we talked and talked and talked....and talked. He commented on our "propensity to talk for four hours at a time" and then made us leave so he could go to bed. Then we came back to my room and talked some more. Saturday was a day of laundry, errands, and more work. We had planned to have daquiri night since we sort of had a handle of rum...It was just me and J for a while since Lola was hanging out with A.J. so we just chilled and watched tv until John called and decided to come join in the fesitivities. He actually completed a drink before we even told him what was in it...I know, I'm bad. So instead of watching a movie like we planned, we kind of hopped to and fro around bad programming. Soul Train and Ronco Infomercials were among the trash we watched. Around 4, Julia banished us and since John didn't want to walk back to Bruce, he stayed here and we talked about the world's most ridiculous topics until about 6:30 am. We ranged from cocaine, to magma, to Madonna (surprising, I know) before we finally went to sleep. We slept until 12, woke up and continued our useless conversation. I thought I'd call Julia and see what she was up to and somewhere in that conversation she said to me, "That's...life...unreal!" Huh? So yeah, that was fuel for conversation with John until about 2:30 when he left. Pathetic. Of course, by pathetic, I mean excellent.

This week has been cooler than average. I turned in my design found object project Monday, and even though I don't think anyone in my class cared much for it, some lady in the bathroom who helped my put it on was totally amazed and that was cool. Tuesday and Wednesday were just kind of placeholders and workdays to get my drawing stuff done. Of course I didn't do one of my small drawings due to my abnornally horrible fixative headache, so I went to bed instead. Wednesday I made my schedule and as of now it goes as follows:

MWF- Art History Survey 12-1
MWF- Textiles 9-10
TR- Human Development 9:30-11
TR- Intro to Fashion Merchandising 11-12:30
MTWRF- Elemantary Italian 1-2

HOWEVER, if I do, infact, pass my portfolio review, the bulk of my schedule will change. Fashion Design I will coincide with Textiles and I believe Industrial Sewing will knock off Human Development. While that wouldn't be totally fatal to my graduation, I need to at least get Textiles OR Fabric Design in there somewhere. BAH!!

Thursday was the ultimate in cool. I think I did pretty well on my algebra test. Instead of just going to drawing and having a regular old critique, we went to Uncommon Ground (Its a coffee shop right off campus) to talk about what artist we're going to use for inspiration on our final project. I got Degas like I wanted, yay! After all that, I headed back to my room and had some lunch with Lorinda, but I didn't want to eat too much because I remembered that we were taking Christina out for a surprise dinner...or at least that's what I thought. Yeah, not quite. I got all dressed up and ready and Lorinda had to borrow my car to "go FedEx some scholarship stuff". LIES! She needed to go get my present and my flowers. I totally bought all their lies though, oh well. So she gets back and supposedly she's already picked up Christina...Me and Julia go out fron to meet her. Julia blindfolds me, puts me in the back seat and I start reaching around to see if Christina is actually there. No. I was SO confused. They kept throwing me off with all these other lies too, like stuff about me having to change clothes and that we were going somewhere that I couldn't eat. What?! They actually had trouble finding the place and we turned around many times, getting me even more disoriented. So we get there, they get me out of the car tell me to hold some stuff and wear this thing. Then I could open my eyes. They yelled, "Happy Birthday!" They took me to Salt Grass because they know how much I love it. I was holding flowers and a present. (It was the Chicago DVD, YAY!!) You may be saying, "But Teresa, everyone knows your birthday is on Flag Day...and that's in June." That's right folks, but we got to celebrate their birthdays here, so they wanted to have my birthday before we left too. It was so sweet! We ate SO much and still had plenty to bring home. That was great. After we were all done with that we came back here and went back to the night's original plan J, C, L, and me decorating some undies. We all bought these matching cloud ones and made them pretty. Needless to say, Thursday rocked.

Today should be interesting. More on that another day.

01. who are you, what's our relationship:
02. how and where did we meet:
03. what's my middle name:
04. how long have you known me:
05. tell me one good thing about myself:
06. when you first saw me what was your impression:
07. my age:
08. birthday:
09. my favorite band at the moment:
10. colour eyes:
11. do i have any siblings:
12. have you ever had a crush on me:
13. what's one of my favorite things to do:
14. do you remember one of the 1st things I said to you:
15. describe me in 3 words:
16. name 5 things i love:
17. do you think i'm good looking:
18. how would you describe me to someone:
19. would you ever date me:
20. tell me one thing you've always wanted to say but never did:
21: what do you like most about me:
22: if we could spend a day together what would we do:
23: have we ever gotten in a fight:
24: do you think we will be friends for at least 3 or 4 more years:
25. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
26. What do you think my weakness is?
27. Do you think I'll get married?
28. What makes me happy?
29. What makes me sad?
30. What reminds you of me?
31. If you could give me anything what would it be?
32. When's the last time you saw me?
33. Do you think our friendship is getting stronger/weaker/or staying the same?
34. Do you feel that you could talk to me about anything and I would listen?
35. Are you going to put this on your livejournal and see what I say about you?
36. If I was an ice cream flavor, which would I be and why?
37. What song (if any) reminds you of me?
38. If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?
39. Would you make a move on me?
40. Do I cross your mind at least 1 time a day:

This weekend, Christina invited Julia, Lorinda, and I to her farm for Easter weekend. We had so much fun. Friday afternoon we rode around on the golf carts and 4-wheelers for a while. That night we made tons of food for everybody. We bought some bratwurst and made some d-licious k-bobs. We marinated chicken in italian dressing and put on mushrooms and green peppers. It was SO good. I should make them for you sometime. The Matts started the fire while we were cooking so we missed the part where it was huge, but oh well. It was still good when we finally rode out there. Saturday we slept in and lounged around. Julia and I needed to finish our design projects so we did that forever until we were finally done. For dinner, we burned a pizza and ate it anyway...nice. We(all of us but C, because she was really tired) went out to see Joseph and the Matts because they made another fire. We cooked some food out there and stuff. One Matt left so we had Joseph, Jake, the other Matt, Julia, Lorinda, and me. 6 people divided by 3 4-wheelers = partners!! It was so much fun. We pretty much just rode around all night. Jake and Joseph took me on all these trails that got me all dirty and my head busted a tree branch because I'm a badass like that. Joseph drove me through the ponds, so I was all soaked and dirty but it was awesome. Jake and I bonded and he let me drive on all the fun trails. That took guts because I had never touched a 4-wheeler before Friday afternoon, but I don't think he knew that. They even took us on a hayride since Lola had never been on one. It was a good time that lasted until about 6:30am. By the time we got back to the house and started to wash all our clothes and got ready for bed, people were already getting up to get ready for church. Needless to say, we didn't QUITE make it. We sort of just slept and ate all day. All these relatives were there and I could hardly keep track of them. I don't think I even met them all, but whatever. We finally started packing up the car around 10 pm. On our way down the road though...we noticed that Christina's tire was quite flat. We waited for her dad to come do something, but we ended up just taking her moms car back so we got in around 12:30, but it could have been worse. So yeah, I had a ton of fun eating good cookin', riding around, getting dirty, and spooning with Lola, haha, that was too cute.

Why three? There are ALWAYS three options whether or not you think so. There just are. It used to be two but Julia, Christina and I upgraded the system, so now its three...all the time. My summer could potentially go many different ways and this is what I've got things narrowed down to.



Option 1: Los Angeles, California

A) The original reason for me possibly going to LA is to do an internship. I've sent my brother my resume and hopefully he's in the process of sending it to whomever can get me the aformentioned internship. One of the ones this girl can get me my brother isn't thrilled about. I think that's due to location and quality of environment though. Hopefully I'll get the 'good' one. My brother seems fairly confident that these people will take my free labor.

B) LA surely has loads of employment opportunities. If nothing else, I'd be happy to be a waitress at a strip club where I'd make plenty of money to compensate the disgusting people who would hit on me. Although, I was checking out the American Apparel site, and they need a receptionist whom they plan to start at $10/hour. That doesn't sound terribly shabby to ME, but the chances they'd hire me for a summer are slim. I suppose it couldn't hurt to try though. Actually making money to save my poor ass from working next semester would be VERY nice.

C) I could always do both. Intern on weekdays and work evenings and weekends or just weekends. I wouldn't get to do all the cool LA stuff all the time or hang out with my brother as much as I'd like, but the money, THE MONEY!! This way I could get some resume-worthy experience under my belt and not have to work while I'm trying to get school work done. This, of course, rules out American Apparel, but such is life.



Option 2: Katy, Texas

A) I've already applied for jobs at Victoria's Secret, Sephora, Coach, and Foley's. Two of these places said they were hiring. None of them have called me. I was unaware that my writing conveyed incompetence. Looking for jobs sucks. I know tons of high school morons who have decent jobs. What's my problem? I guess the whole temporary thing is a big ol' minus. I should have just put part time and left at the end of the summer. Damn me! Oh well. I guess I could try the Hooters on Gessner. Maybe they hire on tits and ass. Those I've got covered...or uncovered, whichever they prefer.

B) It would be rather nice to get some of those more annoying classes out of the way. I'd really prefer not to take my history, government, and other such university core classes at UNT because I know they'll be considerably easier at HCC. By the looks of future semesters, its not looking like I'll be spending a lot of time focusing on non-major realated classes either. In the event that I pass the fashion portfolio review, I'll be taking those classes and hopefully I can get into Italian and take Art History or Fibers later on. What this all means folks, is that I'll be taking 15 credit hours but apparently 15 = 26 because that's how long I'll be in class every week. If you don't talk me to all semester, just assume I'm stuck under patterns, designs, sewing machines, or a red, white, and green flag.

C) Again, I could chose all of the above. Schooling during the week and working nights and weekends would work for me, but as it is for LA, I'd be missing out on lots of fun stuff and last time I checked, that's what summer is all about.



Option 3: The Typical Third Option...With A Twist

Someone could give me $10...and tell me where I left my glasses.

You're not a newt.

Well I got better...

That's right kids. I got better. By Thursday all my nasty symptoms were gone and I was free to roam about the cabin. It was awesome that I felt better but Thursday really sort of sucked. I had this algebra quiz, but since I missed class on Tuesday, I had no idea that I needed a calculator. I let Shannon borrow mine the other day thinking I'd probably never need it back anyway, but oh well. That'll be the first bad quiz grade for me so I suppose its not all bad. Then I had a test in Human Sexuality that I wasn't exactly prepared for, but I always go to class and pay attention so I feel like I did fine. Nothing was going to get me down because I knew that the KBBC Spring Show and my girls were only a few days away.

I had a pretty boring drive home, but I was glad to get there and see that our walkway and backyard were on their way to being prettier. Of course all the damn trucks and their respective Mexicans took up a lot of space so I had to park across the street. Friday night and Saturday I just kind of loafed around since my mom offered to do my laundry for me. Acting lazy while my mom does stuff has always been a specialty of mine. The girls all reunited at 5 pm Saturday at my house and soon headed out the door with some Los Cucos take-out on our way to the park. You know how you wish some people would change and others you want to stay just the same? My girls have the healthiest balance of both. We've all changed at least a little. We've gone different ways, but we still have all those things that make us love eachother and I'm so happy we havn't lost it. After all that, we made our way up to Katy High School where we found someone's cell phone on the ground in the parking lot. We tried calling some of the numbers to see whose it was, but it was kind of broken. All we could really make out of the screen was "I LoVe BaBy DeReK". So, this guy is sort of walking toward us, so I asked if it was his phone and he said it may be his girlfriend's...so I made sure to ask if he was "BaBy DeReK" and the mystery was solved. It was fun to watch all my babies dance again even though I don't think Ms. Henson looked at some of those costumes before they wore them. I was expecting a little more...coverage? I mean, the woman is NOTORIOUS for trying to keep us covered.

So the senior presentations come around and I'm expecting tears galore...because that's just how its supposed to work. Its sad to be standing up there with your second family for the last time, saying goodbye to the stage and to the audience. Last year I remember the messed up order of things...Kayla went first but I couldn't see her walk out so I was okay. Then someone else went. Then it was time for Stacey to go take her last bow, right in front of me. I started to cry a little, but I knew I didn't want my last glance of an audience to be filled with tears so I calmed down and by that time it was my turn. I stepped out, met Dwight, and walked down the red carpet out to the front of the stage. I hope my smile was enough to thank everyone for supporting me, loving me, clapping for me, or just putting up with me while I danced for them. The second I turned around, the water works started. I walked back to my three directors who I'd gotten to know better than I had ever thought I could. They were like mothers, sisters, and friends to me. First I hugged Ms. Pritula, my old assistant director, then Ms. Thompson, the current assistant director (I know she could hardly stand the sound of our sobs while we tried to tell her "Thank you" and "I love you") and then Ms. Henson. When I watched the video of that night I realized that I stayed in her arms a LONG time. She means so much to me and I wish I could explain to her how much more she did for me than she thought. I tried then, but mostly all I did was get her shoulder wet and get some red lipstick on her cheek. Leaving those hugs that night was hard. Leaving that stage was hard. Leaving drill team was hard. I've never been a part of anything that was so dynamic in purpose and meaning. When I tried out for drill team, it was because I figured I needed to be involved at school and it was the closest thing to a dance company my school had. At first I was appalled at the lack of technical ability of most of the girls. It was always frustrating that people had to be shown 5 times how to do an axle or a layout before they even understood what it was. I knew I had something that team could use and I was hoping I could use it to help people, not just gloat and get power. Being an officer for two years really taught me a lot. I learned or re-learned those things that you just need to know; responsibilty, courtesy, sisterhood, time management, manners, work ethics, acceptance, patience, and anything else you can possibly learn from leading or being part of a group of 100+ girls. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that it wasn't all about dancing. You can't dance forever. Ms. Henson wanted us to learn about life and the best ways to live it. She didn't want a perfect national championship team. She wanted to give every girl a chance to become a strong woman and to shine as brightly as she possibly could. Lots of people take that for granted and don't notice the things those ladies have done for them. I don't know very many people who would even think of taking that many out of control girls to Rockets games, Joe's Crab Shack, San Antonio, New Orleans, and definitely not Disney World. They always braved the embarassment of whatever we had in store. I wish I could thank them every day. If I could I'd thank Ms. Henson for: letting me miss classes because we wanted to go to Los Cucos after we danced a convention, handing me the keys that unlock anything in the school, running to the gym when I was missing a costume piece, getting Allison some new pants when she accidentally peed in hers, letting me borrow her car to leave school and get donuts, talking me through my problems, making fun of how I looked every morning, letting me clean the office instead of working craft show when I couldn't stop crying, not staying mad at us for wandering off to talk to the guy who said he was a movie star, not getting mad when me and Stacey skipped officer tryouts to go to Fazoli's, not telling Debbie how mean we REALLY were, keeping her cool even when our performance sucked, letting me sleep on the futon, and always thinking of us first. Those seniors don't know what they'll be missing...good thing we cried for them.

This morning I woke up crying. Why? Well, last night I had this dream. I was on stage. Music was playing. I was supposed to be dancing, but my body just wouldn't do what it was supposed to do. I coulnd't balance my turns. MY leaps hardly left the ground. My splits were non-existant. I miss dancing so much. I've been pretty bummed about it all day but I don't know what to do. I know its not something I can switch my major to...what would I do with that? I just wish there was something I could be part of where I could dance, dance just to feel good. Remember that scene in Center Stage? at the fun dance studio? That's what I want. I want it to be about feeling good. I just want to glow again. I don't know where to go and I'm sad.