Less Than a Week, Yet . . .

I never thought I would ever miss Provo, so I was rather surprised at how badly I miss it now. I realized why. I've never felt this welcome in a group, ever, and so leaving it, even for a couple of weeks, is really rather painful.

People:

• Eric
• Hailey
• Tia
• James
• Griffin
• Kelsey
• Cody
• Victoria

Events:

• The campfire and Blues dancing (The Pagan Pit, we call it) at Eric's every Monday night.
• West Coast Swing at South Town Swing every Tuesday.
• Sammy's runs.
• The occasional Denny's run.
• Getting ready for Blues at Hailey's and Tia's house. 
• Blues dancing at Blue Tango every Thursday night.
• Random weekly outings with Eric.
• Hugs.
• Random phone calls and texts from Eric.
• Girls nights with Tia and Hailey.
• Late nights talking with roomies.
• Dinners with Cody and Kelsey.
• Teasing, and being teased by, Cody.
• The short, but great talks with Griffin.

I'm going to make sure I spend all the time I can with these guys when I get back in town. And boy, am I going to appreciate every moment.

Sometimes I Get Crafty

My Grandma Vickie taught me how to crochet when I was seven.  Just the basic stitches--it's hard to teach a seven year old much more without losing her attention.  I got into it for awhile, then forgot about it.  When my Grandma Penny bought me a "learn to crochet" book for Christmas when I was about twelve, I relearned and started again.  Soon, however, the novelty wore off, since I didn't have the patience to learn how to do the harder patterns in the book.

Nearly a decade later, I started up again.  When I was in Monterey without Nik I had a lot of time on my hands.  I spent most of it on homework, playing video games, taking walks in the mists of Monterey, eating Chinese food (or, when I wasn't in the mood for that, making something cheap at home) while watching movies and playing on facebook.  However, this routine became slightly boring, as one can only imagine after weeks of it.  So, I remembered my old hobby, and also remembered all the yarn that my mom bought me for an afghan sitting in my craft/game room.  I took up the book I had bought in college (during that time I also had a brief crochet spurt, and bought a new beginner's book), and started in on the afghan.  It took me months to do.  I watched every episode of the original Star Trek series while doing it, and still had a third of the afghan to go.

The activity kept me from going insane.  After the fiasco that led to my leaving, in an effort to try and keep myself together/put myself back together, I continued work on the afghan.  I wasn't going to let it go unfinished because of where I started it.  I did get it finished, and it now sits in my family's cabin up at Bear Lake.  I don't have any pictures of it, but if I remember and you guys want to see it, I'll take a picture this summer and put it up for you all.

While in Monterey, I had bought yarn for several new projects.  I finished a baby blanket, a couple of burp cloths, and a play rug for my mom to take home with her (she and my Grandma Alice came out to visit) while I was in Monterey, but I had a couple more projects sitting in boxes that I hadn't begun.  I decided to start one of these projects right before I came to Provo.  I finished it today.

Don't mind the printer and backpack in the background.  I didn't have a ton of room to properly showcase my work.

This afghan didn't take me near as long to make.  I've become a more seasoned crocheter.  The pictures don't really due the beauty of the afghan justice.  If you're ever over to my house, you want to see it, and I have it with me, then you can truly admire how much work it takes to make something like this look good.  Since I'm already bragging, I guess I'll end with saying how proud I am that I actually finished this.  Lately I haven't been so great at finishing things I start, so I this is a big deal for me.

Levels

I start school in three days.  So I should start packing up all the stuff I'm going to take from home to my apartment in Provo.  There's only one problem: I'm way too lazy to do anything but watch the Jazz game.  I think I feel a spurt of energy to do something, and then I get up, and it's gone.

There's levels of lazy.  There's the level where you aren't actually being lazy, but are just busy with stuff that isn't what you are supposed to be busy with.  One can say that they accomplished much in a day, but not the important stuff, ergo they were lazy.  Next comes the "I did two things today" kind of lazy.  You get one or two small things done, and then just lounge.  Finally, there's the extremely lazy.  You just relax all day and when you realize you need to do things so you won't be stressed the next day you simply don't care.  I'm in the don't care stage.

Also, I've been contemplating what level of failure in life is acceptable.  There's group failure, which can be collaborative; each person could fail in a small way, which brings the failure level up higher for the group.  Of course, there's always that time when one person in the group utterly fails to do what they have been assigned, and that just makes the group failure level soar.

Singular failure levels vary depending on what each person considers failure.  Some would consider stay at home moms failures because they didn't have successful careers in the world; most stay at home moms would disagree and say that those who don't have families and only focus on careers are failing in life.  It's all very subjective to individual beliefs, goals, and values.

Then there's my personal failure level.  How much of it can one squeeze by with?  How many classes can I withdraw from without disappointing my dad?  I have this calculus class that I'm retaking online; I passed it the first time, but just barely, and I was hoping for a better grade.  The textbook was all that I had to pull money out of my account for, but it was near 200 dollars for the textbook with the online mymathlab software.  I've already withdrawn from two other classes: one was paid for by the government, and the other my dad paid for.  Given, I've passed three other government paid for classes, so it all works out in the wash when it comes to my dad paying for one class.  I'm really not out any money there.

However, not withdrawing and stressing myself to finish this four credit hour class could destroy my ability to perform well this next semester.  Not withdrawing from the class would put me at 22 credit hours; the maximum amount of credit hours allowed by BYU is 18.  I would still have my English 292 class online if I withdrew, making my credit hour total 18.  Then I would be within limits for BYU and be better able to manage my schedule to do well in all of my classes.  That's most likely what I'll end up doing, but it'll definitely eat at me for the entire semester for not functioning those three months while I was getting my marriage annulled.  Complete failure to function; you can add that to my list.  The consequences of not being able to do so in a time of emotional trauma aren't very nice.  I guess it's only money.

Early To Bed, But Not Early To Sleep

I'm pretty ridiculous.  The last time I was on campus for winter semester, I had a hard time making it to my 9 AM class.  I know, it's pretty lame.  Even when I go to bed early I have problems waking up early, and who goes to bed early when they have roommates that stay up late?  Admit it, even if you do go to bed early, unless you are quite capable of ignoring loud screaming noises, you're not going to actually fall asleep until they shut up.  Which sometimes isn't until after one in the morning when the boys leave.

I admire people who have this ability.  My dad, for instance, gets up at 5 AM (he sets his alarm clock a half an hour fast) for work every day, and then on Wednesdays, he gets up at 4 AM to be able to go to the temple.  For me, getting up early to go to the temple with Savannah for an endowment session is getting up at 7 AM, her meeting me at my house at 7:30 AM so we can make the 8 AM session.

So, to solve this problem of sleeping in through classes that require participation to get a good grade, I decided that I would make all of my classes afternoon classes!  I start at eleven and end at three, and I don't have to go to school until five in the evening on Tuesdays, and not at all on Thursdays.  Yes, I did manage to have fifteen credit hours despite this.

Hour		Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
11:00a		ELANG223 - 4 11:00a - 11:50a 2004 JKB		ELANG223 - 4 11:00a - 11:50a 2004 JKB		ELANG223 - 4 11:00a - 11:50a 2004 JKB
12:00p		ENGL293 - 2 12:00p - 12:50p 373 MARB		ENGL293 - 2 12:00p - 12:50p 373 MARB		ENGL293 - 2 12:00p - 12:50p 373 MARB
1:00p		CL CV241 - 1 1:00p - 1:50p B104 JFSB		CL CV241 - 1 1:00p - 1:50p B104 JFSB		CL CV241 - 1 1:00p - 1:50p B104 JFSB
2:00p		HUM201 - 5 2:00p - 2:50p B042 JFSB		HUM201 - 5 2:00p - 2:50p B042 JFSB		HUM201 - 5 2:00p - 2:50p B042 JFSB
3:00p
4:00p
5:00p			ENGL218R - 9 5:10p - 7:40p 2009 JKB
6:00p
7:00p

Right there, that's my schedule.  Pretty spiffy, huh?  I really left Thursdays blank in my schedule because I have an online class, British Literary History 2 (or ENGL 292, whichever you prefer), that I probably won't have finished by the end of fall semester.  I'm really hard pressed to finish retaking this calculus class and finish my religion class. I'll be taking my religion final next week, if all goes well, because I have to go back down to Provo to clean my room for inspection anyway.  And Tuesdays I would have left blank as well, but I couldn't find a creative writing class to fit my schedule any other time.  Also, all the ballroom dance classes were taken, so I couldn't push back my creative writing class to next term/semester (I haven't decided if I'm taking Spring term yet.).

The CL CV is Greek and Roman Mythology (honors section), the ENGL 293 is American Literary History, the ELANG 223 is An Intro to the English Language, HUM 201 is an Ancient Civilizations class (honors section) and then ENGL 218R is Creative Writing.  That will be my life, as of January 4th, 2011.