Some Past Work.

A few snap shots from my brother's senior photos this summer.

Oh Dashing Brother Of Mine!

Boys will be boys!

                                                                                                                                                                 

 Being a mooch for the camera at the family reunion.

Peaceful.

No One Saw That Right?

Embarrassment.  It happens to the best of us.  And to the worst of us it happens all the time.  That would be me.  My face turns and alarming shade of crimson and I tend to reach for the nearest thing to hide behind.  It's been like this for most of my my life.  I have always been clumsy and haven't always had the filter of "think before you speak", leading to many a red-faced experience in my youth.  

A tradition gloriously carried on into my adulthood.

Besides the normal, tripping over my own feet, running into walls. and general lack of a hand-to-eye coordination, I am also socially embarrassing.  I run without a filter 75% of the time, making my friends' lives exceedingly amusing.  I spout off whatever I am thinking about and usually it's not a complete thought thus adding to the idiocy of it all.

Now see, to my friends, this is funny.  To my family, it is a constant source of critisism.  To everyone else, I'm just a train wreck they stare at.  I suspect that's why some people keep me around, just to see what stupid thing I will do next.  And they are in for a treat.  It's never very long between my little episodes.

Some days are worse then others, some days I can just laugh off my clumsiness and be thankful only one person bared witness to me tripping over my own feet walking down the hall.  Other days require me to hide under my covers like a five year old.  I've had a lot of those days in the past few months.  It makes me very happy that I was surrounded by people who would help me laugh it off, all though some still like to gloat.  People who don't mind when I make a complete fool of myself and have to hide behind a pillow for a few minutes

But there is something I don't understand, why is it, when I get embarrasses, I feel the need to hide?

I know I am not the only one.  It's very common, just pay a little kid a compliment and watch them hid behind their mother's leg.  Watch the reaction of a girlfriend, at a baseball game, when her boyfriend proposes. It's a natural reaction to the emotion.  But why?

You hide yourself away when you feel ashamed.  Am I ashamed when I get embarrassed?  I don't think I am.  I even have the tendency of telling people the clumsy things I do, cause it makes them laugh.  But yet the smallest compliment paid to me will make me wish I could disappear.

Oh how I wish I could disappear sometimes.  Just be invisible, wander through my life without fear of embarrassment.  But I can't do that.  I can't live like that.  That wouldn't be living.  There would be so many things that I would have missed out on if I hadn't embarrassed myself.  SO many things.

So I guess I will have to learn how to deal with my embarrassment, and come to terms with the fact that it will happen again.  I will make a fool of myself and I will feel the familiar burning in my ears and cheeks as I turn bright red.  Sometimes those embarrassments will haunt me for years to come, other times they will be some of the best things I have ever done.  I won't know right away, I'll have to sit and hide, and wait to see what happens next.

This Is Why I Am Here.

Fridays are my days off.  I don't have classes, I could go to tutoring, but I don't need any extra help.  I could go cook in lab from eight till noon, but there is nothing I want to cook.  Fridays I sleep in, and waste my life.  Cause I don't have the motivation to do anything else.

Motivation this past week has not been present in my life.  I feel worn out and bored with what I am doing.  I'm not challenged in school, so I begin to slack off in all aspects of my life.  From laundry, to working out, to contacting my friends back home.  I'm just getting lazy.

Thursday, my chef pulled me aside and asked me to help out with a banquet the school was throwing the next day.  Friday.  I, of course, agreed.  Being the good teacher's pet.  I wasn't even sure what I was going to have to do.  I just said, "yes."  I was actually excited to do something outside my class.  To be challenged, possibly.  To have a plan of something to do on the weekend.  

Friday arrived and I was up early, even though I didn't have to be at the banquet until 3:45, cleaned my room, did "chores", finished reading a book, skyped a friend, and was just plain productive.  Looking forward to something made me feel productive and got me to actually do things. 

So 3:45 arrived, and I was off to campus, heading in to K-2, standing in front of a chef and asking for a job.  He gave me a task, I did it, and I went back for another.  Simple stuff, preparing and garnishing small hors d'oeuvre, cleaning, then serving.  

It wasn't hard work, but it's what I like doing.  It was an atmosphere of work, not chaos.  Serving was my favorite thing for today.  I like people, at least most people, and being around people, and making them smile, and talking about food.  It was wonderful.  I found four people from Michigan today, attendees of the banquet, and started chatting about home.   They wanted to know about my schooling, how I was liking college, if I missed home, and a wide range of other topic.  When the conversation turned to politics, even though we agreed on everything, I decided it was time to head back to the kitchen and reload my platter.  They would call me by name for the rest of the day, stopping me before they left, thanking me and giving me words of encouragement.  

This is why I am here.  For days like this.  The days that pull me back to reality and remind me that its good that I'm here.  It was a good day.  

I Miss My Dog.

I've realized what's so odd here.  That nagging thing that has been bothering me for the last few weeks, but that I could never really identify.  I miss my dog.  And I know that's something that I knew before, but it's truly something odd for me.  Not having a dog in the room with me, not having another living, breathing mammal to talk too or just enjoy its company.  At home I am never truly alone, there is always a dog, there has been a dog there for thirteen years.

Here, the closest thing I have to a breathing companion is my air conditioner, which is constantly on.  I've debated over getting a fish, but they aren't much in the way of a companion.  They are sorta just there, swimming around, looking pretty, but not contributing much.  I could at least hold a conversation with Tess.  She'd whine or bark at me, I'd tell her what I thought, and she would give her rebuttal.  Even if she wasn't talking back, I knew she could hear me, understand me, no, but she would listen.
I talk to myself here now, just talking into the emptiness of my room like I would do at home, only at home, the room wasn't empty.  And you don't seem crazy when you talk to a dog, you seem crazy when you talk to an empty room.  Even if you are the only one who can hear yourself.

I've never gone this long without a dog before.  Ever.  Riley has been with the family for thirteen years.  I've had Tessa for almost four years.  Now, being at college for exactly a month, I feel strangely melancholy.  A different kind of sad from missing my family or friends.

Tessa has been with me through some of the toughest moments of my life, through depression and anxiety, through pain and grief, and though love and triumph.  She has always been there.  Something I didn't have to worry about.  She was never gonna leave me, she would always love me.  It was a relationship that didn't need work, like all of my other relationships did.  That's still true.  I think that's another reason I miss her so much.  We didn't fight, we didn't argue, we didn't mis-communicate, we didn't worry about our relationship changing due to any of those things.  It was just good, not perfect, but pretty darn close.

I think now that I've hit a point in my life where things are beginning to change in more ways that I can count, I need Tess more than ever.  To have that reminder that she isn't changing.  That when I come home, she'll be there ready to start again with our routine.  Until then, I wish I could talk to her, just vent to her, cause she is always willing to listen.  Tell her about my day, my classes, my classmates, my friends, my struggles.

Five more weeks....

Tessa at 10 weeks.

Tessa at 3 years