Growing Up

I found this day. Wow, has life changed. Right now I'm home with my almost 4-month-old son, Phoenix. He's the most beautiful part of my life, and the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm engaged to a wonderful man who has stuck by my side through every obstacle an unexpected pregnancy brings.

This blog is called The Playground. It's a place to still feel like an insecure kid who just wants to be liked, make friends, and have a good time. You can make mistakes, even really stupid ones, and learn from them. You can do what you want, when you want. It's a place where you don't have to take yourself so seriously.

But the thing is... I don't feel like I need that.

Growing up, taking on responsibility... It shows you who you really are. You don't focus on yourself, you don't focus on little things that bother you. You are constantly working towards a better future for your family. You don't feel like it's a choice to be where you are, you just HAVE to be there. But you love it. You love the way your family needs you, because you need them just as much. It becomes the place you want to be even when you feel like you could use a break. It's your support. Your everything. There is no wondering or questioning... There's just knowing. Living. Loving.

I'm excited to see what else comes my way once I graduate school and once Jordan and I are married. I'm excited to have a career and to have a second child. I'm excited to spend the rest of my life being happy with my family.

I don't need The Playground anymore.

"Red rover red rover, send Dardick two over!"

I roared those words to the drizzling sky, and on my cue, the thirty odd men and women of my floor rushed across the field, hand in hand, each with their own cry. Order soon broke down as one by one they tumbled and slid across the muddy field. Seconds later, we were all sprawled on the melange of grass and mud that was our playground.

Dardick two was going mud sliding.

Our floor had spent the last couple hours of the night in button downs and dresses, looking for a party and a good time, at the frats and drinking watered down vodka. It was inexplicably dull, people standing around in a stuffy room, hoping that their shot glasses had the elixir of fun that would let them ignore the slovenly guys and slurred gals. The only life in the party we had brought with us.

We dipped, a phrase that still has one of the guys on our floor confused. We walked, and it started to pour, completely drenching us. Then the collective realization hit: we were a troupe of freshmen, dressed up and soaked with nowhere to go. Well fuck you too thunderstorm, we're gonna have fun. The idea came up, and we spent the next hour in swimsuits tearing up the fields, ignoring friction, if only for a little while, getting absolutely filthy, and realizing that these people aren't so different from me after all, once their shells are down.

Let's talk about college, shall we? Yes we shall.

Well this is interesting. Finally on my own, away from the parents, the one thing that I've been saying I can't wait for for I don't know how long, and now it's finally here.

It's meh.

Don't get me wrong. Amazing opportunities, center of learning, chance to meet new people, a recently renovated South 40 residential area that has the upperclassmen bitter because the freshmen and sophomores are living in a "Disney theme park" as one of them put it. It's good.

I miss my friends, I miss her.

The people here are strange. We're all geeks, every one of us. But that fact means that people just fall back into the normal categories, we've got bros, we've got the preppy overenthusiastic blonde girls, we've got hypergeeks (since the normal kind aren't very obvious here). I'm still looking for my people. They've got to be around here somewhere.

Closing note: work hard play hard is not a motto here, it's a way of life.

Butterflies.

My heart feels uneasy. I have these butterflies in my tummy that feel like nerves, but they keep trying to flutter to my heart. I am trying to block them the best I can but it's becoming increasingly difficult.

Okay, I need to be honest with myself and watch these words solidify on the screen. I'm scared. Not just a little frightened, I'm fucking terrified. I don't want to meet new people... at least the stubborn, nervous girl that I am doesn't want to. I don't want my friend to meet new people, at least, that same part of me doesn't. What if they forget about me? What if I forget about them? I don't like either of those options.

I've already decided my next tattoo, next piercing, and next hair change for while I'm at school. What if I lose myself? What if I go to college and end up not doing anything I have planned? What if I never finish another story again? What if I decided.. hey.. I should be a.. gym teacher. Or a nutritionist. Or a principal. Or an actress. Or an underwater basket weaver. I don't know if I'm prepared to face the fact that... my future is completely undecided. I'm not prepared because this is when I'm supposed to begin taking the steps to decide it. That's a lot of pressure.

I hope all my friends have a great new adventure at the schools they are going to. I hope we all remember each other. I hope we all still have love for each other, and a place for at least what we did have, if not what we still have, in our hearts.

The Wonderful World of Walt Disney pt. 2

really, really big rice crispies of the mouse couple's heads. in retrospect, it seems kind of odd.

disney lollipops, of course. found in the sticky grasp of every child between the ages of three and nine.

dinosaur chicken nuggets at the t-rex restaurant!

curiously thin fries at the animal kingdom.

the perfect cure to an unbearably, swelteringly hot day at the animal kingdom-- pineapple popsicle :D