Why I Haven't Been Posting

Hey guys!

As you may have noticed, I’ve been awfully absent lately. There are a few reasons for this, and I thought I’d share them with you.

Family Medical Drama

The Saturday night before finals, I was watching Criminal Minds and trying not to freak out. I should have been working on my finals, but I had done a bunch of that already, and I needed a break. Finals are big and scary, and I needed some down time. Partway through an episode, something funny happened between my two favorite characters, so I called my mom, who also loves Criminal Minds, to tell her about it.

I happened to call right as my mom was sick. She’s had recurring medical problems, and they have, at times, been quite scary and serious. This was the final straw for me; I could deal with finals, I could deal with being homesick, I could deal with school drama, but having my mom get sick in the middle of finals weekend was just too much.

I talked to my dad for a long time that night, and by the time I went to bed around two, it was still unclear whether or not she would need to be hospitalized.  What was clear was that I needed to come home. I like to think of myself as a strong, capable person, but it was too much. I needed to be with my family, to be around while all of this was being figured out.

My dad woke me up Sunday morning and we arranged a flight to get me home. I had been planning on driving home with my mom, who was going to fly out that Tuesday, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen anymore. I packed, my dad booked my flight, and I went back to sleep.

Then he called again and told me my flight had been canceled. This most likely would have resulted in a full-scale breakdown, but I was too tired to have that level of emotions. Instead, I told him to fix it, and got off the phone.

My dad is a wonderful, magical person, and he did fix it. I was booked for a different flight, the only downside being a three and a half hour layover in a rather boring midwest city. But at least I could still come home that day.

I got to the airport about two hours early and settled in with the seventh Harry Potter book. It was extremely absorbing, and I didn’t notice anything was wrong until fairly late in the game. It seemed to me that I had been sitting in my chair for an awfully long time, and someone Official probably should be at the gate by then. I checked my phone and indeed, it was a minute before my flight was supposed to take off and no one was there.

I called my dad in a state of minor panic, and he told me to find someone and ask them. The first person I talked to had no idea what was going on, and insisted she had no way of finding it out. I was about to call my dad again when someone finally did show up. The Official told me there was a slight delay, but the plane should be touching down in ten or fifteen minutes, and we would be on our way shortly. He asked about the timing of my connection, and assured me there was no way I could miss it.

He was, of course, right. I got to the second airport with three whole hours to spare and, thankfully, my trusty HP book. I did a lot of reading, and a lot of waiting, but I did eventually arrive home safely. My mom was already doing better, and continued to improve bunches over the next few days. No hospitals were needed, and everyone is alive and healthy.

My professors were absolutely incredible, and allowed me to do my finals online. There was some drama surrounding that as well; look for it in an upcoming post.

Christmas Gifts

This bit is significantly more lighthearted., and also more currently relevant, since medical drama has settled down. I’ve been doing Super Secret things I can’t share in public in preparation for the upcoming holiday, and when most of my life revolves around knitting and making cards I can’t post online lest the wrong person see them, it’s hard to figure out what to write about.

Being At Home

I’ve been doing lots of hanging out with old friends and parents and cats. These things are wonderful for me, because I’ve missed them all, but they’re not super interesting to others, unless you want to hear in detail about the five hours I spent at the mall with Robin, or seeing the new HP for the second time with Leah, or sitting around watching all the old HP movies with my parents.

Not Being At College

One of the wonderful things about having a blog at college was that it was time, just for me, when I could write, just for me. Amidst all the craziness of college and bajillion essays I needed to write, it was wonderful, and necessary, to have some time to do something fun that wasn’t assigned. Now that I have lots of time to myself and don’t have anything I have to do, writing posts seems more like something I have to do, and thusly less enticing.

All those reasons aside, I promise I won’t abandon you forever. Posts might be fewer and farther between, but they will happen, and, hopefully, they will still be entertaining. There aren’t any pictures along with this one, but I promise that’s temporary. Love you all, friends.

Stair Ball

I live in a split level house. It’s a bit of a weird house, but I love it. One of its unique features is that it has two staircases going from the first to the second floor, and they’re both only six steps tall. They are also carpeted.

We aren’t a huge gaming family, but we enjoy to play every now and again. Perhaps the most popular, and certainly the longest lived, is a game called Stair Ball. It consists of four small, rubber balls that you throw at the stairs, and try to get them to stay on a step. The higher the step, the more points. And you have to have your back against the facing wall, so you don’t get too close.

Action shot!

My dad and I have been playing this game for as long as I can remember. There have always been cats in my house, but when I was younger, the cats we had, Molly and Emma, weren’t quite as energetic as our current cats. Molly has since passed on, and Emma has gotten old enough that she doesn’t really play with anything.

However.

There are three new cats; my two, Susie and Walnut Daphne, and my parents’, Jenny. They like to play. With everything. All the time. If it moves, they have caught it. Sometimes, even if it hasn’t moved, they have caught it.

Walnut Daphne looking innocent, and not at all like she was trying to steal our ball.

It turns out, they really like Stair Ball. Especially Susie, followed by Walnut Daphne, and then Jenny. The balls, flying through the air, hitting the stairs with a resounding thud and dribbling down to the floor before rolling off is just too much for them. Susie will be sitting on the sidelines, watching, and suddenly she’ll crouch down, tail waiving ominously, before sprinting over and pouncing. A chase will inevitably ensue, and my dad and I will watch, paralyzed with laughter, before retrieving the ball and continuing with our game.

Susie getting ready to pounce.

"I have you, Stair!!"

Taking a break to be dignified.

"ROAR!!!!!!!!!"

"Who, me? Why no, I wasn't attacking this stair. Why on earth would you think that?"

"See? Not me at all."

"I can't...hold off...any longer...must...attack...stairs...DIE!!!"

Things I've Learned From Twin Peaks, pt. 2

Today and tomorrow will be shorter/sillier posts due to needing desperately to catch up on finals. Normalcy is projected to resume Wednesday.

Hollowed out coconuts are the perfect place to hide things.

Pie is perfection. Plus also really annoying to draw.

Silent drape runners are the next big thing.

Starting at the beginning is for losers.

The letter J is everywhere all the time.

Things I've Learned From Twin Peaks

I'm having a family medical emergency, so today you're going to get these instead of a real post.

Tape recorders are sentient beings with real names capable of running errands.

The only way to figure out which suspect is the one to investigate is to throw rocks at a glass bottle.

Everything you need to know will come to you in a dream. Everything.

Logs are also sentient, and are capable of seeing and hearing people committing crimes.

Being weird is okay!!!!!!

Crying Is Good For You

There are things that people say are good for you, even when they really don’t seem like it. This advice is particularly hard to take, because it seems stupid, and sometimes it’s painful to do.

One of these things is crying. Crying can be really, really good.

Tears are your friends!!

There isn’t actually anything wrong with my life; my life is awesome. It’s just that I haven’t been sleeping enough, I’ve been in constant pain, I have finals, Harry Potter was super upsetting, I miss my family, and I don’t have food. This sort of upset is even worse than upset over something real, because it feels stupid and there’s no outlet for it.

Roughly speaking, this is my work load.

I’ve been tearing up on and off since HP last night, and I’ve actually cried a few times, but not, like, all-out bawling. I was trying not to, in fact, because I hate crying and I don’t like to think it helps.

I stick my tongue out at advice.

Then I decided to catch up on Grey’s Anatomy. Within maybe ten minutes, two brothers came in who had just been in a car accident, and the younger one dies. The second I realized he was going to die, I flashed to Fred and George at the end of the last HP book and I just lost it. I sobbed. Loudly. Enough that my roommate came over, climbed up onto my bed (it’s lofted), and sat with me. It was one of the best cries I’ve ever had, and I felt so much better after.

Lots of tears.

The moral of the story: when people tell you crying makes you feel better, it really does. I promise.

Plus, chocolate ice cream helps a lot. So do little stuffed snowy owls that may or may not already have chocolate stains, even though you got her yesterday.

This is Hedwig.

p.s. Picture quality is low today because I’m in Somerset rather than my room and thusly photographs are taken with my cell phone and any drawings need to be photographed with said cell phone and emailed to myself.

The Harry Potter Post

Okay, folks. This is it. The Harry Potter post. There will be no spoilers, because I’m sure some of you haven’t seen it yet and I don’t want to ruin anything. But oh dear god.

<= That was all I got written last night because I was too upset to make words on a keyboard. I also had every intention of doing the drawings for this post, but this was all I came up with:

Keep in mind it was about three-thirty in the morning and I was emotionally devastated.

I had been having conniptions about how to write this post because last night was one of the most emotional nights of my life, and I have no idea how to convey how it felt on paper, in words. This is how it looks on paper not in words:

Kapow!

But, after using the power of Logic, I’ve decided to tell the story in order, from the beginning.

I drove to the theater with Emily and Maire, and all three of us were dressed up. I was Tonks, Emily was Cho Chang and Maire was Fleur Delacour. Here are some pictures of what we looked like:

Nymphadora Tonks.

Cho Chang.

Fleur Delacour.

We got there at quarter of eight and, after a wait of about five minutes until someone noticed us coloring on the floor, were told we could go straight into the theater.

Maire coloring on the floor.

There were two other people there, and they were super nice. We sat two rows behind them and talked for, like, the first hour.

Pictured: emptiness.

Settling in for the night.

Friends!!!

We made nametags for ourselves.

Slowly but surely, Emily and I started reading our copies of the seventh book, which we brought with us. Maire was on the phone with a friend, I believe, outside the theater.

Book!!!

I ended up reading about a hundred pages before the movie started. At some point, our friends Sophie and Madeline arrived, but they were in the other theater, so we didn’t see them until after the movie ended. Maire hung out with them until she got kicked out and told she had to be in her own theater, at which point she joined us and we played MASH. A lot of MASH. I was going to upload pictures of MASH, but after looking at them, I realized they have Incriminating Names of Potential Husbands on them, so you’re just going to have to use your imagination.

I had brought my pencil case and blank paper so I could entertain myself by drawing. This didn’t happen because I was freaking out too much, but Emily and Maire did some drawings/calming down exercises.

Every character we could think of.

Doodles, tic-tac-toe and time count.

All Gryffindors.

Me and Shannon, as drawn by Maire.

Keep in mind, we were in the theater for over five hours before the movie started. These are our ten-minutes-before-the-movie-started faces:

I was too excited to hold the camera still, plus this is how my insides felt.

This is Emily’s face when the lights turned off:

That is the last photograph I took. I spent the first twenty minutes of the movie in tears, and had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom and calm down, otherwise there was no way I would’ve gotten myself under control. Control being used pretty loosely in this case; I was in on and off hysterics during the whole movie, as was Emily. These are the drawings I wanted to do last night but wasn’t coherent enough of how I looked while watching the movie:

Note that I was literally clutching my seventh book the whole movie. I could not put it down.

The ride home was intense, especially getting out of the theater. People kept running out in front of my car and trying to back into me, and this was in the pitch-black of two-thirty in the morning when I was an emotional wreck and also kind of tired, though not mostly.

Once home, Emily and I dropped our stuff off, acquired our computers and stayed up all night in the basement lounge trying to make sense of ourselves. I went to bed at quarter past five, but I don’t think I fell asleep until six or so. I forced myself to wake up at noon so I wouldn’t become completely nocturnal, and also because I kept having terrifying dreams where I had to save my parents from some unknown force, only everybody kept dividing into seven of themselves and it was really upsetting, though eventually I used Magic to save the day, and also Bill Clinton came and made everything better. People who were on my side included the Weasley twins and Miranda Bailey from Grey's Anatomy and one of my professors, and bad guys included Frederick Chilton from The Silence of the Lambs. No, I have no idea, either.

At any rate, this is a picture of how I feel this morning/afternoon:

Pictured: utter exhaustion.

p.s. I know there are a lot of people out there that Harry Potter doesn’t mean this much to. That’s okay, I’m not judging anyone. But this is not the time to comment and be all, “HURR HARRY POTTER SUX”. I respect your opinion and don’t think any less of you for it, but in the same way that I wouldn’t diss your favorite thing the day after you stayed up all night going to the midnight premiere of whatever it is, please don’t diss mine. Thank you!! :)