Hi life, its me, can you slow down please?

I feel like I've been in a total fog for the last few weeks. My class has an insane amount of homework and I've been doing a lot for my internship as well. I have read three good sized plays/poems/books in the last three weeks, written two papers, gone on a mini-vacation, done interviews for my internship and I feel like the other parts of life are falling apart around me. We are going out of town again this weekend for a picnic my Pennsylvania family is having and we'll be back on Sunday. Its also our nieces first birthday this week so there will probably be a party for her this weekend. I just keep praying that after this week things will calm down a little (and I'm glad I get Monday the 5th off from school, I need to catch up!)

My house is a disaster area - I cleaned my office space yesterday and the kitchen today but I still feel like its a lost cause.

I feel like I can't to anything with my friends and I haven't seen most of them since Memorial Day weekend.

I'm having sleep issues - I either can't fall asleep (like last night when it stormed) or I can't wake up in the morning.

I still haven't been to the water park or the zoo like I've been wanting to, but I have managed to make time to work out which is good.

I've found myself snapping and people and being crabby because my head is swimming.

I decided today that I'm not going to try and cram so much into everyday now. I'm going to take at least one day a week, even if its just an hour to do something for myself. Does anyone have suggestions?

Sunburns, boating, camp stoves and rain storms

The title of this blog about sums up my very first (and certainly not my last) camping trip! We arrived on Wednesday to find that we could check in about 5 hours early since the people who had our spot left early! We popped up the tent, unhooked the boat and headed down to the beach for some swimming. The campground had its own beach and boat launch as well as docks! The water was the perfect temperature and was surprisingly calm as we would come to find out over the course of our stay. After our swim we had two really bad rain storms so we drove around the park to check things out, we saw the Lodge and Cabins, the two marinas and studied the map to see what we wanted to do the next day. By the early evening the rain was gone and we took the boat out for some fishing and sunset watching!

That night we headed back and cooked some Jiffy Pop on the camp stove and a few hot dogs and went to bed. We decided that we really need a bigger tent.....and that maybe we didn't inflate the air mattress all the way!

Thursday we decided to check out some of the sites around the park and headed out in search of the Kennedy Stone House and Hosak's Cave.

This is the Kennedy Stone house which was at the other side of the park from where we camped. It was built in 1890 I believe and over the years was in bad disrepair so the park started a fund to fix the place up and I have to say they did an amazing job. We didn't get to go inside because it was only open for 3 hours in the afternoon and we didn't feel like going back.

Next we went to Hosak's Cave.....see those two "orbs" in the picture? We found out that two people had fallen and died at the top where that little waterfall is; one girl was 14 and the other 20. Someone told me that those orbs are ghosts and I didn't see them in any other picture from the trip. We couldn't go much further into the cave because they wanted people to keep out since its so dangerous but it was neat to see.

We took the boat out that afternoon, I got burnt and we didn't catch any fish but saw some interesting things like this island of pine trees, most of them were living in the water with their roots exposed, it was much prettier in person.

This morning there was a thick fog on the lake, it reminded me of that Stephen King movie, "The Mist" - we didn't catch any fish but the water was so calm and pretty and it was a great way to end our mini-vacation.

Busy Busy

Please excuse my absence this week as the following things are going on:

Tuesday: Internship event at 10am; taking the dog to Andrews parents house as well as digging up some flowers, then grocery shopping for our camping trip!!

Wednesday: Leaving for Salt Fork around 9am, fishing, getting to our campsite around 3pm at check in and staying until Friday at 1pm. This lake is HUGE and there is tons to do! Fishing, hiking and bike trails, one of the largest "beaches" in Ohio, miniature golf, a lodge with a restaurant and its close to some neat historical areas as well. I'm sure there will be a nice long blog about my first camping trip!

via

Saturday: Internship stuff at 1pm then who knows what!

I hope that everyone has a great rest of the week!!!!

A long journey to this

Its taken me a long time to get to the place in my life that I am right now. After 7 years of struggling with school and all of the bad decisions that I have made I finally feel like everything has finally fallen into place. I don't want feel miserable in my job and struggling to make ends meet anymore - I know what I am good at and I want to be happy doing those things.

I think that my relationship with Andrew has had a big impact on the decisions that I have made recently. No, I don't mean that he has forced me into making these decisions, he is honestly the most supportive boyfriend I have ever had. He has sacrificed a lot for me in order for me to not work and go to school. We have an adorable home, he's given me a great and reliable car to drive and he wants what is best for me above all else. His family is great and we all get along. My family loves him and they could not be happier that we are together. I hate that there are some people who cannot see past the mistakes and problems that we had early on, I don't think there is a single person out there who can say there relationship is perfect.

I'm happy because.....

I actually love the class I am taking at the moment
I totally love my internship and everyone involved
My stress level has decreased dramatically
Everyone around me is proud of me and supporting me

I'm glad to have all of these fantastic bloggers to share my stories with!

"Like oh my god" - annoying popular girls

I was the person in high school, and junior high oh and probably middle school (my very dorky years) who liked to make fun of the popular girls. I think part of the reason I did this was because deep down I kinda wanted to be like them, but at the same time I LOVED the group of people that I hung out with all those years and would not have changed my social circle for the world.

In the 7th grade, I met my making-fun-of-the-popular-girls-soul-mate Caitlyn. She had just moved to my school and we had science together. She was the quiet girl that I always liked to befriend because I was the person who never shut up; I loved to break people out of their shell. We spent a good deal of the next six years of school making fun of the popular girls. We had several "targets" that were in a majority of our classes, Peroxide Boy/Mark (yeah I know not a girl, but he was popular) and Gina a girl who "always wanted to touch his big muscles." Since Caitlyn was a very talented artist she would draw pictures of them, which I still have after all these years. There were even times that some of our teachers made fun of these kids, which to us was the ultimate! They all stayed in our school till we graduated and our little jokes about them went on that whole time.

I wouldn't say that I was totally unpopular during school - I had lots of friends and was super outgoing (I still am today, ya know just in case you wanted to know that). I had friends that were in band, friends that were goth, jocks and theater people. The town I grew up in was pretty upper-middle class and in order to even be popular you needed to meet the following requirements:

1. Buy all of your clothes at Abercrombie
2. Have peroxide dyed blonde hair
3. Play some kind of sport, be a cheerleader or date someone who plays a sport (although I dated a wrestler, it did not help my popularity)
4. Get your parents to buy you a Mustang or other "cool car" for your 16th birthday
5. Go to parties with college kids and drink
6. Go tanning
7. Attend all school sporting events
8. Be on the Student Council (also tried this, and it didn't help my popularity but it was fun)
9. Sit at the cool table during lunch
10. Skip school and not get in trouble

I guess for me, popularity was not that important although deep down I think all of us pine to be that popular girl for at least one day of our lives.

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