Lazy Friday Morning

Right now I am sitting out side on a beautiful Friday morning listening to the birds sing and all the neighborhood dogs bark at each other. I like to think their barking is a bit like neighborhood gossip. You can almost hear the neighbors’ Pomerianian barking “and then she said” and my lab chortling in response “oh no she didn’t!!”
My father is meanwhile putting around the house like a sea farer attending to every loose line and unfurled sail with the military precision of a navy captian who has long since reired.

And I am.. just being introspective and enjoying the weather. It is a beautiful 92 degrees, and I couldn’t ask for more in my life. Perhaps I could ask for god to nolonger blight us with misquitos but that is a different story. Everything is very still and calmn in my life right now, next week is my last week of full time work during the week and the last week at the church.

Then I move out and the adventure starts. I am more nervous about orientation weekend than I am about school actually starting. There have already been many times on campus where I have been forced to partake in awkward team building ice breaker style excerises which is always painful to be involved in.

Anyways other than avoiding the inevitable ice breakers, I am just relaxing , hoping to see my lovely ladies before they go off on their own adventures and hoping for J to buy me some greek food! The Olympics start tonight, he should take me to Zobras!!

Love to you all,
Miss Amanda Jones

Really now?

I have been in the oddest of moods lately. I have been having career bi polarity. It seems that one part of me wants nothing more than to be a successful buiness woman and the other wants aboslutly nothing more than to be married to J and stay home and take care of him. This is so funny because i have a repuation for being a femmenist with a capital F. But lately I have been feeling domestic with a capital D. I am so looking forwatd to starting my life, complete with all the naive hopes and expectations and I couldn't be more happy.
Either way, excuetive or stay at home mom, it is important to remember life is and can always be beautiful. What ever path I choose I go done with the support of a man who loves me unconditionally, a family which couldn't be more supportive and friends who I realish every day with.

Summer Checklist

Here are the things I want to do before the summer is over
1) go on a trip somewhere
2) blow a pay check on something I want but don't need
3) get in as much girl time as possible
4) throw some sort of ridculous theme party
5) get in really good shape
6) get a tan
7) have a really nice date with J somewhere fabulous.
This is all I have right now but there will be more I am sure, what are your plans for the summer?

Isn't it ironic?

For anyone who knows me I am a big organizer. When I am stressed I make lists, I become the queen of task management, I dissect tasks and problems in to tiny subatomic pieces.
What is funny about that is that most of the time things work themselves out and my lists become unneeded. This week I have been making my self-ugly with stress by worrying about yesterday’s show which started 30 minutes after I got off work. At the end of the day God took care of me and my workload was half as heavy as it usually was and I got off 15 minutes early and was the first one to get to the stage. Ironic, considering I had 3 back up plans if I was late to my own show.

That was yesterday, Today is going to be almost annoyingly mellow. It is Memorial Day and after that I have two days of school left then the weekend. And Finally on Monday I start my day job. Scary isn’t it that I have a real job? It scares me how fast we have all grown up this year. It seems just yesterday W was making penis jokes (oh wait was..) One of my friends from middle school I kind of lost contact with has recently gotten engaged. It seems so strange that this is really happening but at the same time I am so excited for the future. I cannot wait to start university, I cannot wait to rush, I cannot wait to meet all the new amazing people and I cannot wait to share all of this with all of my old friends. I kind of wonder what will happen to all of us. I know deep in my heart it will only be good things.

Ready Set Wait

I am not afraid of the future anymore, I will not be Intimidated by what I can not possibly for see. It seems like everybody I meet is only interested in where I am going, what I am doing next year which seems funny to me because I can not possibly know who or where I'll be next year, yes I know what college I am going to but that is not the rubber stamp of experiences.

So what I have been telling people is I don't know but I am ready.
Anything more would be a lie.

I do know I have met some of the most amazing people in high school and had some of the most wonderful experiences. I have friends who I truly consider my family, I know some friends and I will be saying good bye and going our different ways which is hard but I am ready to see what is in store for me these next four years. I am ready to face the new challenges in store for me while still trying to maintain those relationships I've made. Yes I am very insecure but still.

(Random Aside: I just realized I am 18 years older than my baby cousin Evelyn, when she is my age I will almost be 40. I've never felt so old before)

I Just Need To Tell Someone.

I am so deeply unhappy all the time because of the drama at school. I can't handle being around people who are fighting. Even people in Wal-mart bickering makes me uncomfortable.

This is a cruel form of torture. My school family is being ripped apart. Every time I think about it I feel like I am about to vomit. I could never handle things like this, it has to do with stuff that happened along time ago but now I feel almost PTSD when this happens. I can't breathe, I can't stand up on my own, I try to be strong and I sound like an idiot.

I want so badly to go back to my flower-child ways, doing as I please just enjoying life. But I can't knowing so many people I care about are hurting, which makes me hurt inside. Then it hurts more when I realize there is nothing I can do because I just can't think about this with out having a nervous break down, which causes me to feel like an awful friend which makes it worse so all this stress in manifested upon me hating myself, and other issues i have which makes me irate which makes me snap at Justin the only person who even slightly understands how the void of my mind works. Which makes me even more depressed.

College college, come take me away! The good life ain't so good any more.
Maybe we will all become yuppies in a few years, do yoga and drink caffeine free herbal tea and this will all be a distant night mare of the past.

Six AM Revelation

Last night as I lay comfortably in my bed sleeping, instead of allowing my mind to sleep and wander about mystical far away dream places my body shot up in protest. At five in the morning, my body refused to let me sleep anymore reducing me to laying wide awake at its whim.

What is there to do at five am? Even my most night owl of night owl friends would have been asleep by then, even stumbling to bed around four were asleep! I've read all my books and the only thing on tv was rock of love season two, thanks I'll pass. No my body woke me up at the stragetically most boring hour of the night, so i could think. Sit there in the absolute darkness and think.

Around six when my mind has exhausted all the usual topics, college, the future, the war, ex-boyfriends, global warming, my term paper; I came to the topic i think i was ment to come to, body image.

My entire live I have had a war going against who i saw in the mirror. There are so many things i wanted to change about my self, my nose, my but, my hips, my thighs, even my chin. I hated how I looked which is hard for any one,but it is espically hard for a dancer who spends five hours a week in front of a mirror in tights and a leotard. I've been comparing my self to six foot, 90 pound girls for so long I forgot that doing so was unhealthy. All the unhealthy things I've done to be thin!

But tonight my body rejected me. It said " You sit here and think about what you are doing to me." And i came to the conclusion, I am not my jean size. I am sick of hating my self for being a size four and not a size zero, i will never fit my hips in to a size zero. I am sick of skipping meals and feeling hungry, I am sick of seeing thin girls and feeling like i failed myself. I am sick of calorie counting, I am sick of defining my self as +3 -2 +1 -4.
Say it with me ladies, I AM NOT MY JEAN SIZE!!! Yell it, let all the people who told you have to be like this know, I AM NOT MY JEAN SIZE!!

I am short, I am curvy, I have a big but, wide hips and small boobs,I am not a super model nor do i want to be one. DEAL WITH IT!! I am not having crackers as a meal any more. I will not run on the tread mill on till I pass out because I had the nachos! I have one life, why destroy it on a quest to be a size zero? I don't want this.

From now on I will feel good about myself. I will eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. I am throwing away my scale. I will not listen to anorexic ballerinas as a source of wisdom as too how i should be!
My name is Amanda, I am not my jean size.