I Have News!

It's been a long time, and I have a ton of news. Lots of news.

The last time you heard from me was Spring Break. Darling Dearest was in rehab, I was concerned with make up work and finals, and I wanted to write some. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to write. I spent most of Spring Break reading the last two books of the Twilight Saga because of Darling Dearests urgings. I didn't work on my make-up papers (which I should have) and then I returned to school.

A couple of weeks later--April 1st--I turned 21. It wasn't a big deal. I've never really cared about drinking one way or the other. I had never had a drink up until that point (except for an accidental sip when I was little and thought it was Peach Nectar and not a peach wine cooler), so I didn't rush out and celebrate with a giant bash. As a matter of fact, I stayed in all evening and frantically worked on my make up work.

The next day, however, was much more eventful. Darling Dearest got out of rehab! Thankfully, it was before the 10th of April, which is our anniversary of the day that we started dating. We had a lot of fun, and then the big day came. April 10th, 2010. One year from the day we started dating. 1 year of ups and downs, comedies and tragedies. And it happened. We got married. It was a very small ceremony at my grandparents. She looked beautiful in her little white dress we got.

The same day we got married, we moved into our new apartment. We are now completely on our own.

We've been married for a little over a month, and it's been amazing. I never thought I could love someone so much.

I don't want to get too mushy and such, so I'll just say that this was literally the best decision I have ever made.

Darling Dearest still has a few problems--she walks with a limp, her left hand isn't QUITE as steady as the other, and she can't really raise her left foot up. However, she's come SO FAR in such a short time that I can hardly complain. Also, she's been playing Guitar Hero to help her coordination in her left hand, and we're going to the gym at our apartment complex to build strength and help her work on her walking more. In addition, we're looking into some outpatient rehab.
So...that's how things are. You are now up to speed. Thankfully, I managed to make it out of the semester alive...although not without a few problems involving my scholarship. But that is all going stuff that we'll deal with as we can. I'm so glad to have the summer to spend with my new wife.

Goodbye 2009!

Well, 2009 is drawing to a close. And I gotta say, this year, I'm glad to see it go. It's hard to classify this year. On the one hand, I want to say the year was a success. After all, I met the girl i want to spend the rest of my life with--something I never thought that I would do, but especially not so young. And yet, I have, and it's fantastic.

With that said, in the same year that I met my beloved, I almost lost her. Twice. I met her at the beginning of the year--one year ago today, as a matter of fact--and I almost lost her in April. A tornado hit and destroyed a good portion of my hometown. Several months later, I was in a horrific car crash that my girl and I are still recovering from.

So where does 2009 lie? Is it a draw? Or should it be packed up and shipped out with a "good riddance" to follow it out the door. These are questions I don't have the answer to.

So I talked about the bad things--a tornado, a car wreck, various drama's a college involving regime changes, major drama in the summer from my fiance's crazy family--now I need to talk about good things.

I met my beloved. We began flirting, and the first several months of dating-but-not was awesome. We talked on the phone for hours. It was amazing. We started dating, which was even more amazing. We had tons of fun over the summer, despite drama, and our relationship grew. We went to college, where things were nearly perfect. I was fortunate enough to come into a bit of money so that I could some things I've always wanted and a new car. I got engaged. I began planning the rest of my life with my girl. My fiance has made a dramatic recovery from the wreck. The doctor's said she's 3 months ahead of schedule. She's doing amazing, proving, once again, how awesome she is.

I think if there were a theme to 2009, the theme would be change. So much has changed this year. My brother is in his senior year, I got engaged, we both got new cars, friends moved across the country, others drifted away, some drift back and forth. I got a bit of money to start planning a life with. I walk with a cane. My town has been rebuilding itself. Hundreds lost their homes, and yet, I've heard some say that the tornado saved a drowning town--now many of the companies that had no work have work to do again.

Whether they're good or bad changes, they were changes nonetheless.

So, goodbye 2009. I really won't miss you that much. You gave me some tough love, and I'm not sure I've forgiven you for everything you've done. But you brought me some really good things, too. I extend a firm, curt handshake to you. Welcome 2010. I hope you bring twice the fortune, with none of the tragedy.

News, Good and Random

French the llama, is it only 4 (almost only 3) days until Christmas!!!??!!!??!?!?!

(For an explanation about the "french the llama" thing, visit this video. It's nothing bad, I promise.)

Okay, so, some good news.

Darling Dearest is doing great. She's gained significant movement back in her left side since last I saw her. She has a slight case of "word salad", which, in case you don't know, means that sometimes she gets the words she means confused with a different word. However, it's much better than it was when she first woke up.

On the down side, she's very, very angry, but that's also understandable. She hates relying on other people, so I totally expected her to be pissed off at the nurses and such when she can't do what she wants.

They're going to start physical therapy with her soon, and she'll probably really like that. She's been trying to crawl out of the bed for a while anyway.

I'm doing good, myself. I've upgraded from crutches to a walker, and hopefully I'll be upgraded to a cane before I head back to college. It'll be hard to get to room on the second floor with a walker.

My Christmas shopping is done, I believe. I just got the last thing today. It's a great present for my mom.

Also, I've been very interested at cryptograms. They're very interesting and fun...but I'm rubbish at them. So...hopefully I'll improve. Also, I'm trying my hand at crossword puzzles. I'm rubbish at those too.

I've found myself not writing like I should be. I'll want to, I'll get on the computer...and then start surfing the net instead. I've been trying to make myself. Gotta get that discipline ready for next year.

I participated in an amazingly awesome project a few days ago. John Green, YA author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, is also known for his video-blog project The Vlogbrothers, which he does with his environmentalist/musician brother Hank Green. They're both very funny, and both promote ideals that I hold very dear myself, including green technology, reducing your carbon footprint, and promoting to charities.

Every year the brothers Green head up a project -- which they have dubbed the Project for Awesome. It's a great project where all of their viewers (dubbed "nerdfighters") get together to take over YouTube. You make a video promoting a charity that you really like. Then everyone spams the crap out of the comment sections, rates the videos, and favorites them, so that most popular, most discussed, and most viewed pages are all Project for Awesome videos. This is meant to raise awareness about charities to the average YouTube viewer, instead of them watching videos about water-skiing squirrels.

I participated in it--a 48 hour event--and I am proud to say that not only were all but two of the videos on the most discussed page Project for Awesome videos, but on Twitter, Project for Awesome trended above everything, including the movie Avatar, which made it's debut during the project for Awesome. John Green's goal was to trump Avatar, because it cost $250,000,000 to make, and, as John said, the Project for Awesome is free.

Anyway, so that's what I did with my weekend. It was fantastic. I was very proud to do it. John also auctioned off a pair of what he called his "nerd glasses"--the proceeds went to charity. In addition he's donating $1000 to his favorite charity from the list.

On a tiny sidenote, should you want to help with a charity, but have no money to do so, go to freerice.com. There's a vocab quiz there, and for every question you get right, they donate rice to starving nations. Totally free, and totally helpful in "decreasing world-suck," as the Brothers Green put it.

Anyway, that's all I've got for right now. Tomorrow my brother will be putting up Christmas lights and our tree. I'll be there for moral support mostly. And then we're going to see Darling Dearest before coming back for Christmas Eve with mi familia. Then it's back up to the hospital the next day to spend Christmas with Darling Dearest--because we will have our first Christmas together, dammit!

I hope you and yours are having a very Merry Christmas, a very happy Hanuka, a very happy Kwanza, or whatever it is you celebrate. As long as you're a live and you've got people to celebrate with, then you've got the world.

Happy Holidays all and Best Wishes!

A Little News on Goings-On and Musings on Plans for the Future

So, over the past few weeks, I've been procrastinating. I have (or rather, had) three essays to write (two now). One for Mythology, one for British Literature, and one for Women in Chinese History (due the day before yesterday). I did get the Chinese one in, but I have yet to start on the other two. This procrastination can be blamed on two things (besides laziness, which should be obvious).

Number the first: I have had an absurd amount of drama at my dorm. My girlfriend and I ran an amazing campaign for such short notice -- we were only told two days before the election that the election was coming up. Usually, we have two or three weeks, this time, we had only just signed up to run when it was already time for the election.

After some amazing campaign posters done by yours truly, and some good promises, which we intended to keep, we sat back and waited. I got the position I wanted -- Vice President. However, my girlfriend did not win President. Then, we discovered a series of fishy circumstances where ballot boxes may have been stuffed and the Resident Director may have rigged the results to put one of his friends in office instead. Regardless, we decided to stick it out. Until we saw the rest of the results of the election...or rather..the consequences.

The entire government was outrageously one-sided, with virtually every position filled by one of my Resident Director's friends. No matter what any of my fellow government members decided to do, it was vetoed instantly if my RD didn't like it. Beyond that, he began lying to us, making threats if we didn't do what he wanted, and doing things that were way beyond what power his position as RD is capable of.

I have taken steps to report him to the people in charge of all of the dorms, and I would like to start an anonymous letter writing campaign of complaints, but as of yesterday, I have also resigned my position. I refused to be berated by someone who was my equal in power and an underclassman and had no idea how the dorm community worked.

Number the Second: I might have stumbled upon one of the greatest things in the history of my entire life. A video blog on YouTube known as Brotherhood 2.0. They're known as the Vlogbrothers now, and they're fans are...Nerd Fighters. How cool is that?

I decided, one day, to start watching from the beginning up to now. I'm only about a quarter of the way through, I've already experienced so much with them -- new jobs, new books being published, having to move, the drama of your house almost being sold out from under you, and through it all, they greet these challenges with a great sense of humor.

Beyond that, though, they do more. They realized, after a few posts, how popular they were becoming, and not only set up a "scholarship to decrease world suck" which went to help one of their friends' family who died of cancer, but they also began donating money to help people in poverty stricken nations start up small businesses. They share many of the same causes I do, but they also differ from eachother enough to have actual, and interesting, discussions.

The thing that has me hooked the most? One of them is a literary aclaimed YA author. John Green, author of Paper Towns, An Abundance of Catherines, and Looking for Alaska.

The other, his brother, Hank Green, is a computer programmer, and a writer for magazines like Mental Floss.

It's so amazing, because to see they interact with the world, their jobs, their wives, life...it makes me think about how I'm going to be when I'm they're age.

I will turn 21 in April, and then I really will be a man. I will have earned every right that you can earn in this country with the exception of lower car insurance, which won't kick in until I turn 25. Anyway, I digress. I'm in my Junior year of college. I've taken the Praxis I already. I aced it. I'm that much closer to becoming a teacher. I'll be graduating in a couple of years, and it scared the bejeezers out of me.

I haven't told my mother this yet, because we're a very, very close family, but I'm thinking about moving out this summer as well. I've been looking at apartments. I've been calculating my budget, based on what I'll earn over the summer, my refund check when I return that fall for school, and other things. I've also been looking at where I want to settle down and spend my life. I would like to move to Chicago and experience the Big City Life for a couple of years. I'd like to get an apartment and a teaching job and just teach for a couple of years, and then move to a 'burb somewhere and get started on the rest of my life. I want to go to England sometime before I settle down so I can say I've been to Europe at least once, and I'd like to get married somewhere in there too.

It's very interesting, but I feel like I'm staring at my own mortality. Planning out these steps for what will begin the real beginning of my life -- and not the safe "Real Life" that college creates, but the real Real Life that comes when you've achieved your goal of having a career and now you're stuck with it for the rest of your life.

I think part of the reason this has been on my mind is because those guys, specifically John Green, are how I want to be when I "grow up." He's a full time writer, he's married, he has a few odd hobbies that keeps him busy, and he's also very worldly, intelligent, well-read, etc. His life is pretty much the goals I've been setting for myself since I was in high school. And seeing someone living the dream -- my dream -- has sort of re-focused me on my dream.

Yesterday, I was looking up cities I might want to think about moving to either after I leave Chicago or if Chicago doesn't work out. I found it. It's amazing. It's everything I want in my future town -- MUCH bigger than my home town, and actually even bigger than my college town. It's cold, it'll get lots of snow, it's not too big, either. It'll be a good break from the city life. It's also really close to some cities that will keep me entertained on the weekends. It's basically my dream place.

And between shopping for apartments for the near future and looking at houses for the somewhat more distant future, I've been so excited I can't sit still. I've also been so scared I've had a hard time going to sleep. It's what I want to do with my life, and really look forward to it, but leaving my family and striking out on my own is...mind-boggling, terrifying, and foreign.

Anyway, enough rambling. I just had stuff I needed to muse on for a bit.

Sore, Sick, and Satisfied

Being home for the summer opens up a lot of problems. I don't have as much money, if any is left, and so it eventually becomes needed that I get a job. Unfortunately, my experience with jobs has been pretty poor. Fast food restaurants are really terrible places, and I couldn't bring myself to work at another. I was desperate to find a job other than a fast food restaurant.

However, as I mentioned before, my town was hit by a tornado a few months ago. Jobs have become scarce, since many of the places that you could have worked are now piles of rubble. Just because the jobs are gone, doesn't mean the bills stop coming, though, and I had a nasty sized car insurance bill coming my way. My mom was very insistent that I find a job since I didn't have any leftovers from my refund check this time -- I spent down to the wire, mostly on emergencies that kept popping up.

As my flexing room got smaller and smaller, and the ideal places to work -- where I can score a more desirable, and cleaner, job as a cashier or stockboy -- hiring fewer people, I could practically see the fast food employers rubbing their knobby hands together and getting the human parchment contract ready. (For those who don't know, I claim to this day that the last fast food place I went to work made me sign a human skin contract in my own blood.)

Just when things started getting desperate, my family reunion rolled around. These things always mean two things: 1) A whole bunch of people will pack into one very hot place, and 2) There will be much smiling and greeting and idle chatter until they eventually cluster off into little cliques like some kind of bizarre high school. I'm always hesitant to go to these things because I only know a handful of people really well, the rest are just acquaintances I see every year. To make matters worse, I was talked into doing a skit for them this year. God bless my girlfriend, she spent the whole hour before I was supposed to go on doing her best to pump up my ego enough to get me on stage -- I think mostly it was so she could laugh at me.

Anyway, I digress. I did the skit, and then I started talking to my aunt. She's an awesome lady who I love dearly. I mentioned that I was getting desperate for a job, and she mentioned needing help at the daycare she's running at her church. Of course, I'm thrilled to find this out. True, kids are a handful, but it's so much less stressful than a fast food place. I was ecstatic. I love kids, my girlfriend says I'm nothing but an oversized kid anyway, so I couldn't wait to get started.

Now I'm sore all over. I haven't been this tired in a long time. And to top it all off, it's only a week in, and I already caught a cold from one of the little...darlings...despite all this, I'm amazed at how smart these kids are, and at how creative they are, and as long as they have someone to mediate things, how well they get along.

Needless to say, I'm very pleased with how things turned out.

Fear

Fear. Writers try to ensnare it in words all the time. It's our job to try to find those words that will make readers' hearts race, their palms sweat, and their hairs stick up on the back of their necks. An entire genre was created for those who couldn't get enough of the heeby jeebies, and even if you don't read horror, every writer uses the tool of fear at some point or another because every character has fears, desires, goals, and the like.

I thought I knew fear. I've experienced some terrifying things before. When I was six, I fell into the adult deep end of a very large hotel swimming pool. I was terrified that I was going to die, and if one of my family hadn't seen me fall in and dove in to get me, I may have.

When I was 12 or 13 I was hiking with my dad one day and fell off the trail and off the mountain. The only things that stopped me from rolling and crashing to the bottom was a patch of briars that I bounced into.

A couple of years later, when I was hiking with my step brother on a camping trip, we became surrounded by coyotes.

However, I never really knew fear until a few months ago. I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone. We weren't quite dating yet -- we were in that awkward "basically dating, but still not official" stage, when suddenly she told me that she was watching the news, and some pretty big storms were brewing. I was at college, so I was more concerned with her, but she was more concerned about the ones brewing near me. As I spoke to her, I was slightly concerned, but nothing more than the typical, "Man, I hope the storms don't get too bad."

Well, is the storm progressed, she was placed under a severe storm warning, and then a tornado watch. I became a little more apprehensive, but tried not to let it get to me. My dad died about a year ago from tornadoes, so I have a new found respect for their power. I know what they can do -- I saw his solid oak and stone log house. It was gone except the foundation.

As I continued to talk to her, the "watch" progressed into a "warning." Then, she told the sirens went off. My heart leaped into my chest. She had to go into their shop so that she could be away from windows. She lived in a mobile home...this could end badly.

I had two things come to my mind. I had to talk to her, because she was crying and hysterical and her mom was rocking back and forth in the floor praying and frantic, but I also worried for my family, because my mom and brother were in the same town. However, my mom could console my brother, and my girlfriend had no one, so I talked to her.

Now, I've been terrified, before, but I knew nothing of real terror until this moment. Nothing has ever made my heart stop more suddenly, or my blood run colder than these words: "I can see it."

In those four words, I felt my entire life go away. More than that, I felt my sanity break down. My mind shattered. I stopped breathing, my legs gave out, and the only thing holding me up was the fact that I was leaning against my bed. I was silent, speechless, and in complete and total shock. I finally came back to my senses when my girlfriend said in a fragil, tiny voice, "If you could say something to talk me through this, that would be great, because I'm kinda scared right now."

I was instantly talking. I told her everything would be alright, I told her that nothing was going to happen, she would be fine. I told her all these things, but I didn't believe a word of it. I had an empty feeling in my soul. I could feel a blackness hanging around me, and I felt hopeless as I was witness to everything I loved being torn from me.

After a few minutes of talking, it was over, and my girlfriend got in her mom's car, and her and her mom went to go check on a few things. She heard word from her mom, who was on her cellphone, that the tornado hit the court house, which is just a few blocks from my family's house.

I immediately began calling my family. I couldn't get a hold of anyone. My mom's line was dead, my grandmother's line was dead, and when I tried to call back my girlfriend, I couldn't get through to her either. I was completely and utterly cut off from everyone I loved.

As the minutes dragged on, each second counting off a thousand years, I became convinced that everyone I loved was dead. My stomach twisted into knots, I doubled over, and I cried. I cried with everything I had. As tears streamed down my face, I looked up at the sky and begged God to let everyone be okay.

For 30 minutes, the longest 30 minutes of my life, I called the same 5 numbers over and over again: my mom's cellphone, my house phone, my grandparents house phone, my brother's cellphone, and my girlfriend's cellphone.

Finally, I got a hold of my girlfriend, and while I was relieved, I wasn't consoled. I still hadn't heard from my family.

Just when I was about to go into a full hysteria, with my girlfriend doing her best to console me, I heard my phone beep. My mom's cell. Like a flash, I switched lines, ecstatic to hear from them. Not only were they okay, but there was no damage done to our house. The tornado hit, literally, 2 blocks away, and went in the other direction.

I missed my college classes that day and went home for the weekend early. My town was decimated. Hundreds lost their houses, and a good portion of the town was just gone. It will never be the same again. I could see signs of the damage a couple of miles before I even got there.

The first place I went was to my girlfriend's house. It was then and there that I told her it was ridiculous of us to try to fight it, that I cared about her more than I've cared about anybody in a long time, and that I wanted her to be my girlfriend. Obviously, she accepted.

Next, I went to my grandparents house, because all the roads leading to my house were damaged or covered with debris so badly that no one could get through. I met up with my grandparents, and then found a tiny back road that I used to sneak past the cops and the National Guard and went home, and hugged my mom and my brother, and then we went to go see how my aunt fared the storm, all the while, my girlfriend and I called friends to make sure they were okay.

I'm so glad that everyone I cared about not only is totally okay, but none of them suffered any damage to their homes.I've never really understood fear, but after that night, I know it. I've seen it's face. I almost lost everything I love. I'll never take my family for granted again.