Perks of Cleaning

Don't get me wrong, if given the opportunity, I would hire a personal maid to wash and/or clean everything for the rest of my life. I mean, who wouldn't!?
Since that opportunity hasn't arrived yet, I am stuck doing the weekly cleaning chores as are most adults in this world. To make those mundane chores a little better I have decided to note the little things that I like about cleaning, it makes the motivation to do the chores stronger and maybe even do them faster than I would if I completely loathed them!
Here it goes:
~Washing Dishes: My hands come out so soft and smell so good when I am done!
~Dusting: I like to dusk when I haven't sneezed in a while, or my nose keeps threatening to sneeze, it really gets it all out! :)
~Doing Laundry: There is very little in this world I enjoy more than a warm pile of clean laundry, the smell and feel is just so soothing to me. I am notorious for taking naps in freshly done laundry back home. I actually look forward to doing laundry purely for that reason!
~Vacuuming: I kinda like the suction power of the little extension hose when getting at the corners of the room, the couch, or the leg of my unsuspecting sister. It is also a good excuse to not have to engage in conversation with people!
~Clutter Clean up: This is fun because I get distracted by the things I'm actually putting away... "oh THATS where that went!" is a common phrase...
~Cleaning the Bathtub: ....... Nope.... I got nothing, that chore just sucks. I simply put headphones in and hope it goes quickly....

Until I win the lottery I will have to keep this list in mind! Haha, time to rotate my laundry!

My Dormitory Hall

Ok, I don't usually like to flat out complain about any situation in my life, I like to find the silver lining in the situation, and will try to focus on that. But not today... this post is purely everything I can't stand about my dorm hall. Keep in mind I am not talking about my dorm as a whole, I just have a particularly annoying hall!
First off, it smells weird all the time. It has a different smell to it everyday, sometimes identifiable and other times not. My nose is on overload as I come through the door and work my way to my room which is an agonizingly distant walk from the entrance of the hall. Secondly, the bathroom is a dingy pepto-bismol pink tile from ceiling to floor. The grout honestly hasn't been cleaned in decades, almost all the drains are caked in hair (to be expected with 20-something girls using it), the trash is always over flowing, and the showers are small and don't drain well. Our windows do not have screens on them, so bugs continuously raid into our room and disturb me.
My hall mates are 90% sorority members, who spend their week nights out on greek row, and be sure I am aware of their presents when they return at 2:30 am. They are obnoxiously loud in the most random hours of the night. I believe they set a new record this past weekend, when they arrived back around 6:30 am! There is a girl who lives on the other end of the hall who constantly shouts things, and today she went screaming the F-word up and down the hall early in the morning.... Really!? That's all I had to say about that... We also have a laundry schedule for the one washer and dryer we have on our floor, and nobody seems to adhere to it. Each week I sign up for a time, and am promptly there to find someone else already put their clothes in. Like this evening, I was signed up for 9 o'clock, and I got there at 9:10 to find someones clothes in the middle of a wash cycle... Is there no regard for a schedule and structure anymore!? UGH!

Urge to Travel

What is it about college that makes so many people get the urge to travel? 

I've noticed a lot of people of all backgrounds here and at other schools have this incling to travel abroad. Myself included. 

Is it the fact that we are supposedly in the "prime of our lives", have no dependents, and are in a learning environment that offers the ability to travel? That may be so... Those factors are probably a major influencer in that department. I also think it's such an epidemic among my peers and I because we are, for most of us, stepping out into our own life, and in order to find that life, discover who you are, what you wish to embody, and how you want to go about living your own indivisible life, we see the need to travel abroad and experience other things. 

I think a trip to another country would change anyone's life. There is something special afforded to the fortunate few who have the financial means and allotted time to travel abroad. Their lives are forever changed. You can see it. Can't say I'm not jealous of those people! I want to experience the change in my life view they do!

There are probably a lot of reasons college students get a strong urge to travel the world. Enough reasons to fill this entire blog ten times over.

I have this strong unexplainable desire to travel... I have an open heart and mind, just happen to have an empty wallet! HaHa! The urge to travel is strong none-the-less!

Welcome to the Big Leagues

A pitcher never walks on to the mound without preparation. He always has a ball in his hand, a mitt on his other, and always walks out to the mound with a game plan in his head. Every game for that pitcher from that rookie year first pitch on matters. He is affected by the choices he has made to get him there and he controls the type of pitcher he wants to be, on and off the field.
It has been impressed upon me in more way than one that dating in college is vastly different and vastly superior to dating in high school. I am just now beginning to understand that sentiment. Welcome to the big leagues of the dating world, I tell myself..... Because the possibility that you will marry the person you pursue and date is much more likely. Some people only date with the intention of getting married while others date just for the sake of dating. I'm finding that it is really important to decide what you are looking for in a college relationship before you go on pursueing one. It is important to decide what is of value to you, that is essential to a happy relationship for you, and what isn't.

For me personally, I am not interested in dating just for the sake of dating. I did a small bit of that in high school, got it out of my system and learned lots about myself along the way. I have simply decided that in this college environment I need to only focus on the relationships that have a chance of going somewhere. I also have set a few parameters for guys that I had not previously embodied as strongly as I should have. A better way of putting it is, with the help of some of my amazing new friends, I have set higher standards and am holding to them. The first one being he has to be of my faith. Before college I had the motto of "to each his own" when it came to religion, but seeing all the brokeness around campus and bad relationships, I want no part of it, and having a relationship grounded in faith will ensure a lot of that will go away. Plus I have great faith role models here on campus who are showing me what joy a true faith based relationship can bring. The other is he has to be genuine and kind, meaning no putting on an act to impress me. I know guys desire to do this to make them seem better than they are, but no deep connection can happen when someone is wearing a mask. Being kind basically entails he is aware of and cares for the people around him. Finally, he has to know about or play, or have played baseball. Some of you reading this might think that's to narrow of a standard to put up, but baseball and fastpitch is a part of my life. It is a hobby and somewhat of an obsession of mine. If he can't relate to it at all that would just be not fun!

Many of you may think I am being prudish in these demands in a guy. I get that. But setting these parameters gaurd me from making past mistakes and from entering into a relationship that isn't as meaningful and God-loving as I've seen relationships can be. I know these demands can be met through trust, prayer, and by a little bit of work on my part. I'm actually excited to see where this all goes!

Welcome to the big leagues of the dating world... Play Ball!

Last day being age 18...

As my birthday fast approaches, I am forced to reflect on the past year, and the one that is still yet to come, the only difference being my age changes from 18 to 19. Now, I've written my opinion on birthdays in a previous post. Feel free to read that! But this is more about reflection and movie forward with age and life. 

It feels like an entire lifetime ago that I turned 18, I was surrounded by completely different people and in a completely different place, I hadn't even applied to college yet! Things in my life were about to take a huge roller coaster ride after my 18th birthday. Seriously, right after I turned 18 Things began to move quickly, life got more real, choices became harder and more significant, people changed all around me, and I was learning to take on a whole new level of independence. 

Sitting here in my dorm room now, I am confident in saying I made it out ok, at least by my standards. Lord know I had an immense amount of help and support along the way, but the end result of my 18th year is simply me, sitting in my dorm room, surrounded by all new people, in an all new place, all by my own choosing. Pretty remarkable huh? 

Had I know the amount of crazy and awesome change that was about to occur on my 18th birthday I don't know if I would have chosen to blow those candles out or run as fast as possible in the other direction! I'm glad we humans lack the ability to know the future in that respect, but I am aware that my major life changes are still happening and I am still adapting to my new life, leaving me to wonder, what this 19th year of life will bring. Wondering how it could possibly be more random and life altering than my 18th year. 

Going to spend my final day reflecting upon that all (and study for a sociology test) and when I wake up the next day, I will be 19! Weird! 

Remembering

Remembering loved ones is difficult. It is painful, it is hurtful, it is confusing, it is draining, sad, happy, and everything in between. 

The memory of that person will never go away. That's what annoys me the most. Nothing but memories with them repeat in your head, with no hope of creating new memories ever. The idea of said loved one never fades. Not that you want to forget about them by any means, but sometimes it might feel better if we didn't remember them so well! You know?

 In your head you continuously play your favorite shared life events of that person, remembering big things like their personality, their style, their voice, as well as trivial things, like how they smelled, what it felt like to hold their hands, or how their hug is comparable to no one else's on earth!

I guess we should thank God for the time we got with our loved ones, and look to him for support in the sad waves of grief that inevitably crash over us all at random points.

Don't get me wrong, I do just that. But there is no shame in admitting to God and to yourself that remembering them is hard sometimes... No silver lining about it...

Freshman College Observations (Part 2)

Having been at this whole college thing all of one month now, I have a whole slew of new observations, ones that I may have noticed in the beginning, but wanted to solidify that they were actual things and not just happenstance that day. So here they are!

~Getting packages and letters is one of the most exciting things to happen to you all week!

~Sunday is a day usually reserved for sleeping in, doing homework, and being lazy. So the dorm hallway is unually busy! My room is at the end of the hall, so I have to pass everyone in order to get to the bathroom and back, this is quite the adventure because it seems as if everyone is blasting their own music, and watching tv. My walk this morning started out with bruno mars, moved to some depressing indy music, then to hard rap, and around to Jason Durulo, then turns into some country remix, and I finally arrive at my room! The hall is also full of purfume smells, air freshoners, and food smells cause everyone is just hanging around. Sunday is a good people watching sorta day.

~College kids are simpletons at heart, all it takes to make us happy is a slice of pizza and a mini basketball hoop in the middle of the room! Seriously, it does not take much to put us in a happy place, where normal income earning adults would be disatisfied with the minimal things it takes to make us excited.

~Pizza is the staple of college life.

~For some reason beyond my comprehension anytime past 1 am. is an exceptable time to shout and talk really loudly anywhere on campus so that those kids sleeping wake-up and hear what you have to say.... -_-

~Making plans is a very unstructured type of thing. Everybody is innately "go-with-the-flow." On any given moment people just get up to go do something, play something, or eat something. Nothing is really planned in advance, which was a learning curve for me.

~There is a sort of college lingo to each individual college. You learn the general nick names to everything, and learn the language of the campus, and then when you go talk to your friends and family back home you sound super crazy cause they have no idea what "taking the mall over to flicks to meet my village mates from thrive" means! (It means I walked across campus to the diner to meet with friends from church) hahaha. Not only have I been guilty of this, many of my friends off at different colleges have done it to me.

~You'll find you have a favorite shower out of your options in the bathroom, and if you are like me, will wait until its free even if the others are open.

Food For Thought

Today, I met this guy in my communications class, and we were told to discuss with one another the effect choices we make have on our lives, and the effect chance has on our life's course. How much of it is us, and how much of it is the world around us.
He disclosed to me that he believes things you chose dictate the type of things that happen to you by chance. He told me when he was in high school he came out to his parents as gay, and they pretty much disowned him. He went through the last two years of high school living alone and got into college on his own. Every day he wishes his parents would accept him for who he is, but he has to live with the choice he made to tell them. It deeply saddens me that there are people like his parents out there, that would completely shun someone for being different than they are. It's especially sad when it is a parent and child dynamic. I simply can't fathom having my parent's shun me for any reason, especially not a reason I had no choice in choosing, being disowned for being who I am.
I'm so glad I have parent's that unconditionally love me, a heavenly father that unconditionally loves me, and wish nothing less for everyone else in the world.

He did stress later in the conversation, that if he could change anything about the choice he made he would not. He said he loves who HE is whether other people do or not, and being out on his own for so long and so much earlier than his peers has given him the opportunity to do amazing things like go skydiving, travel Europe, and make new friends he might have not otherwise gotten the chance to! In his words "life sucks sometimes, but we go on"....

Chewing Gum

I'm going to be real with you guys. Not many people may be able to relate to this post, but it needs to be relased from my brain, and I finally have the time to sit down and articulate it.

I have a love/hate relationship with the act of chewing gum. I define a love/hate relationship as something that you do on multiple occations that you don't think you hate until you are in the process of whatever that thing is and you suddenly remember all the things you hate about it.

Chewing gum starts out great. I often put it in my mouth to relieve a bad taste (a.k.a. coffee breath) or relieve anxiety I feel about a situation I am in. The flavor bursts in my mouth, tingling up and down my tounge, leaving my cheeks to absorb the flavor and reverberate it back to my mouth over and over again as the chewy substance pulls at my teeth as if it was it's life mission to make my jaw stick together, yet the incredible power of my jaw yanks the gum up and down on an unmistakable rythm only I create. It's an experience to say the least. This process continues for a solid half hour, making the consistancy of the gum stiffer with each clasp of the jaw, and the flavor increasingly present in my mouth. But this experience only lasts a half hour, at best. My jaw begins to get tired of the chewing, and the bursts of flavor deaden into an almost unpleasantly plastic-like taste. I do not enjoy this taste, and try to distract myself from it by mutilationg my gum in all sorts of ways with my toung and teeth, as if I am going to re-create the same enjoyment I experienced when I first put the gum in my mouth. I weave it in and out of my teeth, make tiny bubbles, etc.... Usually I am unsuccessful and get genuinly annoyed the gum is in my mouth at that point! I find the quickest route to a trash can and as if with every step I take, the gum gets unexplainably worse! By the time I spit it out, the tastes has become seemingly toxic and the gum itself has hardened to an un-pleasurable chewing point.

That is genuinely what I go through every time I chew gum. It starts out as love and tragically ends as hate.