in lesser words.

Sometimes, when sailors are sailing
They think twice, about where they’re anchoring
And I think, I could make better use of my time on land

this is my toe testing the academic waters.

it would be difficult to drown, only placing a toe in.

it is simply a toe, and if the toe takes to the water, damnit, i will cannonball in.

no one can tell me what will happen.
they are not my toe. how they react and how i shall are not the same
this water is not their water
they have not seen this water before.
nor have they felt it.

this is my own toe in this specific water.

i will never fucking win

why am i trying.

how will i ever finish this degree i haven't even started, when i can only take classes from 6pm onward?

is proving to be more than what jimmy eat world hoped for.

november is when things happen for me, or at least, have twice before

i'm ready, november.

please surprise me.

for the last four years, my birthday began at 5am, in the brockport pool by 5:45am

for the four years prior to that, my birthday ended with a swim meet against orchard park, losing horribly.

what will happen now?

its not that i ever felt held back, or disallowed,
but i now notice the things, experiences, feelings, places, people, opportunities
that i have now
because i am unattached.




m'oconnell made me an incredible mix, that i downloaded off the internet.
it is so heartwarming to know someone who knows me so well to know what i like, and predict what i will.


i went to brockport last weekend, for homecoming.
met up with noah on friday night, watched part of Up on the projector on alumni walk, met up with chris, derek, and grabbed jules and went to the bars and of course jimmy z's
noah spent a half hour trying to get the knots out of my shoulders,
went to the green and gold meet on saturday, bruegers with dylan, went to the parade too
its so much shorter when you're not in it, went to benedict to say hi to megan my buddy and mike
then to the game, met up with best bud nate, other teammates, and amanda and adam
nate successfully fought knot out of my back and i felt like i got beat up
dropped dylan off in the college suites and met up again with noah, his friend phil, and deuce and went to dennys haha, classy yes.
met up with chris again, went to the team party felt old, left, went home and watched jurassic park
ran the 5k on sunday, ugh 33 min. it rained the whole way. cailey and maria ran with me. that was nice
stole a lot of free clif bars.
made brownies and pumpkin cake with noah for a program, played a little rock band and went back.
home.

i miss brockport's people.

my application to UB is offically in and out of my hands, hopefully all my references found their way and they like me enough to let me give them all my money and go crazy trying to learn everything they tell me to learn

i think it would be cool to have a Phd someday.
Dr.Laura?
no just call me Laura.


work is still very boring, but i like my co-workers for the most part,
they're starting to figure me out, finding all the layers.
im starting to be more myself and less of just another girl at the office

i should call the rectory and help out at CCD, but i keep making excuses.

my as i called them "man pants" jeans, that are speckled with paint from candyland painting, and drawing on them in class, the ones i used to be swimming in, couldn't find my ass in, size 6, so huge jeans.
now fit me pretty well.

should i be depressed that i fit my fat girl jeans, or happy that these jeans i put so much love and art into are now fitting enough to wear in public?

i used to be able to take them off without unbuttoning them. 

i read a lot of good books,
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Year of Wonders.Geraldine Brooks

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver,

and i'm on Freakonomics ,Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt

i try to keep my mind  and my feet moving.

and try to remind myself that when i least expect it
when im not looking

it will happen again.


god's will will never take you where god's love will not protect you.

ugh
work is so borrinngg.
im applying to UB for art history
fingers crossed

went to bills- a coworker's place for dinner yesterday. another coworker cooked mexican. it was interesting to finally gossip about this place and these people i work with.


with colder weather coming, i think of  things i miss about having a boyfriend.
someone to keep me warm on cold nights and lazy mornings (i dont have lazy mornings anymore)
to help me clean piles of snow off my car
christmas presents,
misletoe
new years eve

someone to talk to
someone to miss

i miss these elements.

on my drive home i noticed trees already turning
im not ready for fall.

everything keeps reminding me the summer is over, im done with brockport, swimming, everything
and starting upon something new.

new things are supposed to be exciting, right?

i stop by my cousin's office on friday, to look for an order she might have for my invoicing. we start to chat about my capris im wearing , that goes to that i had mono, and then that i had mono when i have just gotten dumped and she goes, i was wondering if you had a boyfriend... i say no and she goes, i can;t believe that! youre so pretty!

ugh
thanks. im so pretty.
thats what i want to sell me to the opposite sex.

maybe im ready to date again.
im still not sure..


going along with that, marisa calls me up and says her and aaron are going out to a bar, she wants me to come. and although my friends know how much i dont like bars, and DO NOT want to meet someone in bar, they still feel the need to try to get me to join them.   oh and all my friends are in relatioships, have i mentioned that?

bars are not my thing, why would i want to meet someone in one?

my mom overhears the phone conversation and brings up taking some classes at UB (this was strange, it was totally an undercover way of saying, maybe you can find someone at school, go to school Laura.

so i looked at this,
http://visualstudies.buffalo.edu/graduate/maAHI.html

and wrote a statement
and sent it to my sisters for editing

and now to contact people for reference letters.

i hope i can figure this out.

i hope im not going back to school to just to meet people.

i text jess on friday, asking how week #1 went.   she made lots of friends, and has a potential boyfriend.

Dear God, I want that.
so badly.

at the start of my junior year, i was sure God wasn't listening.
i prayed for something, anything, to revive my life, i was bored.

but then God sent me a person to share a year of my life with

He made it easy

it came by a phone call

He made it easy
everything was easy between us. same age, job, school, living arrangements, time available, religion, economic standpoint, similar dating history, favorite tv show, sense of humor,
the only thing that i can think of that really could have kept us apart was the different cell phone providers.


He made it easy to fall in love.


there were differences in our personalities but i think that's what made us grow, enjoy each other. etc
his spontaneous lifestyle, paired with my plan first enjoy later attitude.


so whats it going to be like next time?
i have a feeling God wont make it that easy again

i feel like im going to have a challange

maybe the start wont be so obvious
not a phone call
someone i dont know at all?
will i have to go FIND them?
will it be my place to chase someone, for the first time in my life?

will our lives be so different that a reliationship is a challenge, instead of so easy and effortless?
will i have to make time? wil i have to compromise?
should i compromise?



...
will it ever stop rraining?
its the coldest july in 100 years in buffalo.
eric put a bid on the house in west seneca, it was accepted, the house was inspected, and he offered for me to move into the finished basement, for 400$ a month.

who knows.
i think i'd be lonely.

i few random things i do not like:
the smell of: Nair, any type of self tanner or lotion that slowly makes you tan, orange liquid soap-especially when people replace the original soap from a container with the orange crap. it's a let down.

i saw the Darjeeling Limited tonight. Good movie. I reccommend. much better than Slumdog millionaire as far as i was concerned.

jazz fest in rochester last night with Jenn and her friend Abby.  good times.

second interview for the clerical job at united precious metals. i am overqualified.

I went to a bonfire with matt (he made a much demanded visit home before NYC) and some long lost high school friends a few days ago. The first question the group asked when i walked in was "you know anybody pregnant?" i didn't. My friends and I tend to chat about the people in our graduating class that couldn't seem to keep their legs crossed.
But the topic of new life turned into the loss of life.
We recounted the three kids from West (my highschool)  this year that died. One in a basement, carbon monoxide poisoning, another in an ATV accident and the last hit by a car.  all three were dedicated in the school's yearbook, distributed earlier that day to matt's siblings.
We brought up the lost lives at our colleges.  One at mine, Daniel who fell down a stairwell shaft in the spring, and a near fatal accident of Brian , who fell out of window and is currently paralyzed.  Not ot mention the one last year who shot himself.
And then Lauren, a girl who graduated with us from West, how hanged herself early this year. 
and the other forgotten named that have passed through the news, at Geneseo, Ithaca, etc.

and the cop who got shot in Rochester this year, he was an RA in my building when I was a freshman.

and we all agreed it was very tragic and sad, and went on sipping our beer and making smores.

and now days later, it hit me. how lucky I am to be alive, to walk,. To not have known any of these kids personally. to not have to experience that loss.

so maybe i shouldn't complain that all my friends have boyfriends and jobs and i have neither, making me have way more time than i know what to do with. or complain about how i have no vacations planned, because at least i have the chance to, someday.

someday i'll finally find a job
someday i'll find someone worth my time, that i want to spend time with.

someday.

oh sigh
i'm still applying like wildfire, mostly clerical jobs.
got a call from lifetouch studios, to do church directory photos.
as far as rochester, erie PA
all comission
probably not my cup of tea


im at new visions twice a week, tues and thurs.


cate's wedding was cute, short, small, but overall perfect for her.
im very happy for her and doug,
and it was good to see my teammates.

GM is filling for bankruptcy tomorrow, which means my father's insurance will lessen even more than it is now
and his pension will most likely .. be gone.

my parents are on the brink of financial crisis
and my mother keeps finding new issues, a rash near her lip, a sore leg, blood pressure.
and my father just keeps distancing himself.

i wish i was going on vacation this summer.
i wish i had a job, and could confidently move in with kristyn downtown and have a sweet bohemian style place to live, my photos and her paintings covering the walls, country music and bob marley blasting out the windows.
i wish i felt like i had something to offer the world.
i wish i knew i wanted to be  .. a doctor, a teacher, .. a landscape designer, .. a speech pathologist (which my mother keeps telling me would be a great job)
a something. so i had a goal.

even if my goal ends up really sucking, it will lead me somewhere., in some sort of direction.
its a start. which is what im looking for.

but my biggest wish is to be in love again.
i miss that feeling like nothing else.
i keep replaying the past in my head.
and it's the first drug addiction i've ever had
its feels so good to watch in my head,
but the withdrawl is a bitch.

i just finished watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on dvd.  The story is so beautifully written, bittersweet, and damn Brad Pitt is uncontrollably delicious at times during the film.  But it left me thinking about life, and carpe diem, etc, and how unfair life can be as well.

Followed by reading a post on facebook by a college friend, explaining her recent experience with a grandparent dying and then being so brave to be the one to call her out of state mother to explain that her father was dead. 

quotes from the film:

It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You'll realize what's changed is you.

Your life is defined by its opportunities... even the ones you miss.

You never know what’s coming for you.

For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

Along the way you bump into people who make a dent on your life. Some people get struck by lightning. Some are born to sit by a river. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim the English Channel. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people can dance.

so now all my home friends are in relationships.
and i'm not and
it's at that point where they all feel its necessary to try to set me up with people.
or start up conversations about their relationships..
how long, when they started dating, etc etc
and then ask me about MY PAST relationship


can we leave it the fuck alone people?



being jobless and single blows
i feel like i'm just being too picky in both venues, afraid of rejection and failure.

i'm gunna go live in a box.

there are two things i want more than anything right now:
a job
love.




i feel so unproductive and so bored and pointless and without value and i know if i have either one of those two things, i'd feel like i was worth something.

i thought when i got home, i'd be free from relics of my past, i was wrong.
the friggin wii still has a Neal avatar.

while cleaning up the documents on my laptop, i found more than one saved letter to him from when i was overseas last summer.

my God, what a difference a year made. Last year this time, i was frantically getting ready for France, going to the doctor for my shoulder,  my laptop was broken, my neighbor fixed it and i was sure i'd be working at the pool when i got home. Neal came to visit before i left, we went to the zoo, made my family dinner, and i missed him like no other when i was away. and then there were the awesome reunions we had in brockport and his home.

this summer i got home and unpacked my life into my room, my desktop won't turn on, i can't find a job, i'm going nowhere, considering joining the Y since running on cement has already bothered my joints, feeling totally worthless.

awh fuck.

i know im just making it worse on myself.
how am i supposed to heal and move on if i keep working backwards?
when im surrounded by people who still know me as his, or have no clue at all,... when the stairwell of two buildings, president's dock i pass on my runs along the canal,  random food at the dining hall, sitting alone at church, my own bed,.everything here... reminds me of the times before.


ra banquet today, last one ever for me,
third eye blind concert, my legs and feet hurt from standing for over 4 hours.
presentation tomorrow?
presentation tuesday?
test tuesday.

being a pleaser is a curse.

   a really random thought crossed my mind earlier today.

 

My mother is the most beautiful person I know.

I really hope I can age as well as she has.

that i'm effing single again.

"Later the focus shifted to the courting aspect of the ritual, and young unmarried girls were the only acceptable targets. A boy would sneak into the bedroom of the girl he fancied and awaken her by drenching her with multiple buckets of water. Politics played an important role in proceedings, and often the boy would get access to the house only by arrangement with the girl's mother.

Throughout the day, girls would find themselves the victims of drenchings and leg-whippings, and a daughter who was not targeted for such activities was generally considered to be unatractive in this very coupling-oriented environment."

-wiki

last year i got pelted with a supersoaker

this year, i went to work, class, class, gym, bed.
the pussywillow branch i cut from home lays on my windowsill.

awesome

friggin' polish traditions.