Do You, British Commonwealth Take William and Kate to Be Your Lawfully Wedded Royal Couple?

We do.

What a fairy tale.

BRB, not sleeping tonight.

Torrential Rain

I got trapped in an act of God today. We ate our fair-trade, local lunches in the pavilion of Waterloo Park when the rain came out of no where. The rain didn't last long, but the wind came down hard enough that the rain soaked us anyway. I also decided to dance in it. I felt more alive than I have in at least two 4 month terms. School tried to spiritually feed me, but all I needed was the rain. It was the most adventure-filled afternoon. The world is beautiful.

Revenge is a Bitch

Today, I woke up, and my body said to me: "Hey, remember how terrible you were to me over the course of exam period? Well, this is payback." And now I feel really sick, and can't get enough sleep no matter how much I try. I hate to think about how many years I've shortened my life by stressing myself out with school....

Going to Mom's for the Weekend Gives Me the Best Material

So I'm watching TV with my mom, and a commercial comes on TV for the latest Barbie. Mom says something like "They need an archaeologist Barbie, who digs up dinosaur bones." My reply was "The need a lesbian Barbie." So mom and I started discussing Lesbian and Bi Barbie.
And then, with the power of Google, I found this:
http://www.dykedolls.com/site/index.htm
If I make an order, does anyone want in?! ;)

Quotes from C-Dot (My Mother)

So my mom and I were out driving yesterday. Here's our exchange:

Mom: "Look! Its the first shirtless man of the season! Life is good!"
Me: "He's not even that attractive!"
Mom: "That's okay, it's April! They don't have to be attractive yet."

We were then talking about this today and she explained further:

Mom: "It's like seeing your first robin. A sign of hope."

I love her.

Good Friday: Spring Cleaning for the Soul

My mother called me yesterday (Thursday... I'm writing this as if its not after midnight), to make holiday plans for the weekend. She told me she'd pick me up after the Good Friday church service. My reaction: Umm. No! I want to come! She made a joke about of course its my favourite holiday, because that's when Jesus died. While this was kind of funny, its also completely not true.
Good Friday has been my favourite holiday for years. While I enjoy the Easter season in general quite a lot (my grandma makes the best Easter meals, and Maundy Thursday has always felt super traditional and whatnot), but just about as long as I have hated Christmas, I have loved good Friday (even before the whole atheist thing).
When I was considering myself Christian, I think it was because it was a good opportunity to think of the sacrifice done by Jesus on that day and reflect on my responses to that. It was a good time to think about the strengths and weaknesses in my own life, and the places I need improvement on. This was never a self-depreciating way, but in a reflective, positive way. I gave self-reflection its space, moving on following the sombre day of introspection. I've appreciated the space, the day-off, the sombre day for this reflection for many years.

So, is it necessary to change this upon changing my religious views? Well I've gotten some shit together since my days of Christianity, I've got a long way to go. I still need my reflection time, and feel like I get less and less of that as I get higher and higher in education. While Good Friday is no longer about Jesus sacrifice and how it applies to my life, it is still about a pretty sweet story of a man who wanted to create change. It gives me the chance to reflect on the lessons I can learn from Jesus as a non-Christian, and also sets a sombre attitude for my own, somewhat unrelated, reflections about other areas of my life.
Spring is the time when I pack, and move, and clean, and break. Its classically a time of cleaning one's physical space, but what about someone's mental, emotional, spiritual space? Good Friday, for me, marks spring, reflection, and spring cleaning. Good Friday gives me a sense of spring cleaning for my soul, whether or not God comes into play for me. Screw New Years, but its Good Friday when I come up with goals, for the summer and the year, commit to change, and think about the possibilities to come. It is Good Friday that for me, provides much-needed change. I go home. I sleep. I get my marks and make goals for the next year. I think about the stupid ways I've related to people, and I learn from these things. I make promises like "more writing" or "less alcohol" and am more likely to stick to them then other times of year."
And this is the reason behind Good Friday being my favourite holiday.
Spring cleaning for the soul.

Quote 1

"I wish people cared as much about the Earth as they do about who they believe created it."
-found on facebook.

My Love-Hate Relationship with Change and Thinking Forward.

Exams are awful. I feel terrible for starting a blog and abandoning it in the name of things I hate so soon into the process. It's summer now though, so hopefully I'll be less of a horrible person for the next few months. It's also Easter weekend, and I have been saving things up for you, so hopefully I will make up for it in the next couple days.

It's the end of another term of school. People are heading off to do cool things and be places that aren't down the street any more. This has me thinking about my love-hate relationship with change.

I grew up (mostly) in one house. Nothing changed. I went to school by bus every single day, had class with the same people, and came home to a fairly easy life. 'Stability' would actually describe my childhood well. It was then that I got used to the idea of comfort and security. Change was pretty much non-existent. I grew up, learned new math and grammar, but nothing really changed in a real sense of the word.

That, of course, as anyone who knows me well would tell you, had to change. It changed when a few of my best friends were kicked onto the streets. I became interested in things like music, and friends grew apart. Not overly surprizing for the age. Not overly traumatic. But not necessarily what I was used to either.

More traumatic (though, I hesitate to use such a dramatic term) was my dad's departure to Bosnia with a peace-keeping, mine-removal group there, and, worse, his return. Not to get too far into the depressing story, I'll summarize, saying he found a very dark world there, which changed our family. As a result was the separation of my family, multiple moves from apartment to apartment, dad moving in and out. Stability became about as far the truth as I could get, and I hated this.

I took in stability from the group of people I spent time with at school. Each morning, afternoon, lunch hour, was spent with the same people in the same room of the school, to make up for the instability I found at home.

High school ended, and I moved into university residence. I had been excited for university, thinking it would offer a more stable place, but soon realized that it was not necessarily this way. Just when I got comfortable, I would be changing again--from switching classes, to switching roommates, things changed every four months for the first two years. You'd think this would be easy for me to deal with given the changes of high school, but that wasn't the case.

And now, I've lived in the same apartment (given, not the same room) for a year. I'm going back to the same job this summer as last. I sit at the same caf table every single day and get confused if it is taken. And I can't stand it.

I've noticed recently that I'm super restless. In January, I got myself a piercing in an old guy's basement. Weeks later, I chopped off my hair. Later, more piercings, and more recently changed my hair colour. None of these things have helped. I feel like I'm going stir crazy, and don't think there are many places I really want pierced left.

I don't know what's better-- when things aren't stable, I'm depressed and uneasy; when things are stable, I begin to feel restless.

Many of my closest friends are off doing amazing and wonderful things this summer. I am here, disliking the change that they have left, and disliking my own stability in job and habitat. I wonder, is this normal? I wonder, is this important to make sure I'm always pushing for the best I can squeeze out of life?

The end of term is stressing me out. I will be missing staying up late with long discussions about God or love or grammar or politics. I will miss the 15 minute walks to be with any of my friends, and the late night BBM messages. It takes time and energy to build the friendships that I have in Waterloo, and the trust I have with them. I know everyone will be back come fall, or even sooner, but I have been incredibly thankful for the friendships this year, and the rock that they have been through my time trying to make it in the real world. Trying to learn to interact from afar will be a new adjustment, one I'm not sure I want to be ready for. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could all sit around in residence without the school work? It makes me scared, yet excited for the prospect of graduation, the next part of life. With the exciting things that are happening this summer, and the stories we will share through the summer and when we all return, I wonder what we will end up doing after graduation. That said, I dread the goodbyes enough now. Hopefully this summer is good practise for me.

I can't believe I was scheduled to graduate now. I can't believe how glad I am that I'm not graduating now. I want to remember this in the coming year. I want to remember that I can, and do, see the beauty in my university experience. Its a shame it took til third year.

This was a ramble and a half, I think.
Maybe I'll be less all over the place next time.
Also, I'm thinking a few more posts in the next few days: stay tuned.