Not My Party, But I Cried

Yesterday was my brother in law's birthday.  None of you really care about that and I'm not going to write a post about all the great things about him or anything.  Boring.

We threw an Avengers themed party for him because he'd never had an awesome party with decorations and we're weird.

There were a few presents, but the best came from this guy.

He is very open with his emotions.

So a few days ago Billy (that's my brother in law) dropped his iPhone and broke it.  Boo.

I made him try on clothes and ask his mom's opinion.  He hates shopping. 

And Gabe thought of a brilliant birthday present.  He gathered up all the money he'd gotten for losing a tooth and a few other things (about 24 dollars) and put it in an envelope.  And gave the whole thing to his daddy to replace his phone so he wouldn't be sad. 

Started football three weeks late and still the best on his team (not an exaggeration). 

I'm a sap and I had a few tears. Billy told him he was entrusting the money to the Bank of Gabe so they could go do a fun boy activity sometime. 

Yes, he is enjoying shark week. 

What a precious kid. 

Home

Hey, guys, I'm home.  I don't have a lot to update you on.  I'm busy spending my time with beautiful children, my new lab mix puppy (London), and perhaps most importantly, my momma.  And, of course, the Olympics.

Oh, and I've started selling cupcakes.  People are raving over them.  Right now I'm doing $15 a dozen and people aren't even blinking an eye.  To be fair, they are damn good cupcakes.  My most popular flavors are definitely my version of "Better Than Whatever" and Raspberry Lemonade (which have been tweaked since I made them in Utah).

I'm still jobless, but I remain hopeful.  I didn't get last year's job until the week school started.  In good news, my test scores seem to be good. (Virginia requires two additional tests in addition to the Praxis test I had to take to get licensed in Utah).  I needed a minimum of 470 (out of 600) on this test called the VCLA and I got 581.  Yeah, I'm bragging.  Booyah.

Look at my dog.

I Love This Picture, Alot

"Ok, look. I don't actually care about your political views (no really, I don't). But if you are a human being, you have to admit that this is adorable. That's the leader of the free world, people. Sitting on a pink giant bouncy ball."


(Quote not mine.)

Going Away Parties Are the Worst

I capitalized all the words in my title.  It's a title and a sentence so get over it.

Before you ask (even though you've already thought it) yeah, I'm in a bad mood right now.  I'm actually blogging because I had this blog thought before the day went to hell.  Not the point of this post, moving on.

Last night I had a going away shin-dig of sorts.  It wasn't big and it wasn't a huge deal, but I'm leaving my life here presumably forever and I kind of wanted to see some people before I went.  It was by no means a perfect party.  Like, there was the awkward beginning part when people showed up and I didn't even know their names and that was strange, but whatevs.  Then it got a little later and became the best part of the week.  People from my old ward showed up (and Preston hung around and he's one of the few people from this ward that I like to tolerate even a little).  I was reminded that people liked my personality sometimes.  It was cool.

Funny but unrelated picture to break up the monotony of text. 

And then an interesting thing happened.  Someone mentioned that I had disappeared.  That it had been about a year since I hung out with any of them or went to a movie night or whatever.  It's true.  Sure I left the ward, but this is Provo and I live three blocks away.  I started thinking and consciously realized how massively depressed I've been for almost a year.  It's not cool to talk about mental illness/issues in public, but I'm doing it.  I'm not saying nothing good happened to me over the past year or that I never had moments of gladness (my mom surprised me for my birthday, remember? And I loved my job so there's that.), but overall it's been kind of a shit-hole of a year.  Probably part of me realized that which is why I'm headed home to Virginia...but that's a different story.

More lulz.

I just wanted to take this time and moment to thank those people who still showed up at my going away party even though I have been horribly absent for a year.  It's not that I didn't like you, I just didn't like anyone or something.  I don't know how it works because I haven't worked it through all the way yet.  But I wasn't forgotten.  A year later, these people still thought enough of me to come spend a few hours and eat my food (I love when people eat my food.  It's my one talent) and laugh with me. Big fat sappy thanks to all of you.  Especially the few of you who made it extra hard to leave.  Which is where the title of this post comes from.  Now I remember that I love these people and still have to leave them anyway.  Dammit.

For Reasons

The other day my roommate Megan (who I love and is the bright spot in the aforementioned desperate loneliness) blogged about things she hated and why.  While I agree with some of the things she said (I think roses are overdone too) orange is one of my most favorite colors.  In fact, I have a bright orange t-shirt that I wear about once a week.  It's not that flashy neon orange that's all over Claire's and Forever 21 right now, just a solid bright traffic cone orange shirt. And I love it.

After reading Megan's post I thought about getting offended for approximately half a second, but then I didn't.  You see, Megan is a great human.  She's a nice, quirky girl with opinions and feelings just like everyone else.  Megan just happens to hate orange. And I love orange.  And I love that shirt.  But she wasn't directly attacking it.

Just like I'm not attacking her when I say I hate skinny jeans in all colors on every person no matter their body type or leg length or gender.  Just, no.  Skinny jeans are SO awful in my opinion.  Megan loves skinny jeans.  To her, they are comfy and cute.

JUXTAPOSITION!!!

And that's what this friendship is.  I've been in friendships in the past (many) where I felt the need to like or dislike whatever my friends liked or disliked (I acknowledge this is mostly in my fault).  Oh, your favorite color is fuchsia?  Mine too.  You hate flip-flops?  Same with me. (Both of those are OBVIOUSLY hypothetical examples).  With Megan, though, it's ok that I like orange and she likes skinny jeans and she likes records and I like pop radio and she likes mustaches and I feel kind of pissed that the hipsters have made them so popular because what's the big deal with a hairy lip anyway.  We're insanely different, but we make it work.  And it's nice.

Heartbreak

You've perhaps noticed (and I'm sure it helped that I explicitly mentioned) the somber and subdued tone of my blog posts lately.  Admittedly, they're sometimes fiery and resentful, but none of that happy, silly, laughing stuff for the last few months.  I want to tell you why.  Mostly because I want to admit "out loud" to someone why.

My heart is broken.

Once upon a time I had a best friend for about five years.  I wasn't her best friend, but she was mine.  We did many things together.  It was grand. I found actual moments of happiness which is something hard for me.  Many (but not all) of our interests and ideas matched with one another.  We were the same, but different.

Then something happened.  I honest to goodness don't know what it was, but something happened.  And now, that friendship is gone.  Past.  Over.  I just looked at my text message history yesterday.  There has been zero communication since April 30th.

I suspected and feared the end might have been coming since February 25th when I ate my first birthday cake in years all alone (excepting for my mom and Megan (who didn't even know me then) singing a feeble, but well-meaning wish of happiness) and sobbed for hours.  I was afraid the end was coming, but I clung to what I could in every way I could think to do it.

At times I resorted to drastic and impulsive measures that likely made things worse.

And now, here I sit.  After more than a month with no communication, after a much longer period of pure dread, all alone.

Lonely.

Truly heartbroken.

Lincoln

I don't like to apologize for not blogging, but I will apologize now that I have no funnies to blog lately.  This post is definitely not embarrassing like the previous few, but it's not funny.

Several weeks ago I gave an assignment to my students to explain what they thought the following quote from Abraham Lincoln meant, in their own words.

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."

Some of them did quite poorly on this assignment and didn't take it seriously at all.  I did, however, get a few that I thought were poignant and beautiful (all punctuation is theirs).

From Abbie: "What I think it means is that Americans are all ready free, but slaves live in America and are Americans and are not free.  So, if Americans all of them black and white are free, they give freedom to the real America"

From Courtney: "By giving freedom to one race, we are really giving freedom to all man kind, because we are all the same."

And my favorite, from Martin: "I think by giving freedom to the people who were slaves well for example if it was like this umm the slaves were like the ones working and the others were like inside the whole time and never did anything.  So the slaves got freedom and the people who were free had been free to go outside to do work that's is how the frees got way more free by working and not being lazy that is what I think."

Can we talk about this for a minute?  I definitely wasn't looking for this answer, but the concept is absolutely astounding.  To this kid, it's in work that we are made more free.  I'm going to leave you now to interpret as you will.