Christmas Mix 08

Invest in these songs, kids:

May your days be Merry and Bright...
1. Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer - Jack Johnson
2. Winter Wonderland - Kate Havnevik
3. I Saw Three Ships - Sufjan Stevens
4. Frosty the Snowman - Fiona Apple
5. Winter Song - Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson
6. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Sufjan Stevens
7. Bring Me Love - Marie Digby
8. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLachlan
9. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear - Sixpence None The Richer
10. Do You Hear What I Hear? - Copeland
11. Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley
12. The Most Wonderful Day of the Year - The Island of Misfit Toys
13. Feliz Navidad - David Crowder Band
14. Carol of the Bells - The Bird And The Bee
15. Snow Miser - On!Air!Library!
16. Heat Miser - Lushy
17. All That I Want - The Weepies
18. Don't Shoot Me Santa - The Killers
19. Maybe This Christmas - Ron Sexsmith
20. A Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives
21. Joy To The World - Sufjan Stevens
22. Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy - Bing Crosby & David Bowie
...And may all your Christmases be white.

Get me away from here, I'm dying

I need out of Ohio.
I don't know how long.
I don't know where.
I don't know with who.
All I know is I'm suffocating. I'm not myself and I don't know what's missing.

(I don't want to look back years from now and realize that I missed out, that's all.)

I want to go:


Here. Or-



Here. Or-



Here. Really, anywhere that isn't here would be nice...
As horrible as it is to admit, all I can realistically say now is: Someday.

You know it's November....

When you just saw a Christmas commercial. (Actually, I saw one in mid-October too...)
The weather was in the low 30s the last week of October and now it's a balmy 70 degrees. (Yay Ohio weather)
You have a sudden and intense craving for mashed potatoes. (Oh wait, this happens to me all the time...)
No one has mentioned Thanksgiving yet, but are stressing out about Christmas shopping.

Yeeeeep.

Spanglish

I've come to realize that Spanish is everywhere. My roommate is taking a Spanish course this quarter, a friend of mine just moved to Spain, a little boy I worked with the other day spoke primarily Spanish, I just watched Fools Rush In... Of course I remember nothing from the Spanish I took two years ago and I doubt that I could order anything from Chipotle in the employees native language. No bueno.

I think I'm just not a language person. I'm taking a Linguistics course this quarter and I can already tell it's not going to be a fun course or one that I'll be good at naturally, and it's mostly English. My teacher has very little (if any) sense of humor, but I have hope. She did crack a smile during our class introductions when, after half of my peers introduced themselves as Japanese, German, Russian, etc. majors that I spoke limited Spanlish and Sign Language. Oh Spanglish. Donde esta my cell phone...? I miss my gato. Enrique Englesias? BAILAMOS!



Heheheheh.

Adios boys and girls.

"I lost the power!"

Due to slight winds that have traveled thosands of miles to arrive here in Ohio, I have now lost about a third of my favorite tree in the whole world.
On the bright side: It missed hitting my car by about six inches when it came down.
One the dark side: The power went out Sunday evening and has yet to come back on.
On the bright side: I have had an interesting strand of thoughts following the event of losing power.
On the dark side: These thoughts have helped me get to know a little bit more of what kinds of people I know.
On the bright side: I know some pretty cool people.
On the dark side: My little sister complains. A lot.

Here's the thought I came up with... What kind of person are you when the power goes out? Are you the same person without your electronic devices? Or do you become angry, easily upset, frustrated, annoyed, depressed, etc. if you are not constantly plugged into your laptop/TV/ipod/phone and so on? Are you still the person you are without these extra accessories, or does the lack of those things change you? Are you the kind of person that whines and complains and doesn't know what to do with yourself until the power comes back on, or are you the kind of person that says "YEAH! Let's go all Little House On The Prairie on this situation!"

Who, me? I embraced the lack of glowing screens and plunged backwards a few decades. I have been doing nothing but visiting friends, biking, knitting and reading for the past three days... And I still had power one of those days. Ha.

My family doesn't agree with my attitude so much. I am now located in a wonderful house with power and everything anyone would ever need. Thus the computer. Thus this post. At least now I don't have to listen to my sister groan and pout.

Cabin Fever

I really need school to start soon. I am suffering from a serious case of cabin fever. Don't get me wrong, it's really nice to get to relax, but I love being around people more than... once or twice a day. I'm getting tons done though!

On the flip side, whenever I do something productive, I feel like I squander an equal amount of time.
Example A: Discovering things like this on YouTube:
Maybe I should take up painting?

Hahahahahahahahah.

Is your life out of control?

I'm not really sure how to interpret this message my dad left for me:

I left my lunchbox on the dining room table in my parents house. When I went to put it away, there's a book on tape called "Boundraries: When to say YES, When to say NO, To take control of your life" and a portable mace key chain.

So I guess my parents think I'm letting people take advantage of me and I have trouble setting boundaries and I feel guilty if I do. My parents are usually right about things. Crap.

Or it's coincidence and my dad just left it on top of my lunchbox by accident. Totally possible as well, haha!

Summer of resurrection

I can't believe this summer is just about over. Wow.

...I suppose I could do one of two things. I can either try and recap all the highlights of the past months that I have failed to record in this blog, or write about something completely unrelated. I think I'm going to go with the latter.

I've decided to resurrect a few things:
Hand-written letters
Reading books
Hand-made gifts
Long walks with no set destination
Bike rides
Home-made food from scratch
Line-drying my laundry
Sewing (machine, not by hand, I'm not that patient!)
Sketching
Candles
Gardening
Picnics


So, with the exception of bike rides, basically I'm aiming to be Amish. I'm starting to get sick of virtual relationships, everything that's held together through Facebook, texting and screens. Obviously this entire post is a bit ironic considering it's an online blog, but you can deal with it because you're reading this, right?

Really though, all other things aside, I'm really impressed with myself this week. I've torn through two novels already and I'm halfway through my third. I've knit a hat, a pair of glittens and a fingerless glove and started on its pair. (Also all are meant to be gifts, meaning they're hand-made gifts!) I've been on at least two long walks with no set destination. I sewed fifteen little penguin dolls to donate. To top all of this off, I wrote two letters by hand, each of them being at least five pages!

So I'll just start asking people to call me Elizabeth, learn to milk a cow and marry a man named Jebediah and I'm completely set to leave for the farm any day now. My only concern is I'm not sure how well my ipod would hold up at a farm...

Take a sad song and make it better

I am so sick of people telling me that my sensitivity is a weakness. Do you think I chose to be this way? I would really love to just not care at times, but I'm not capable, it's not how I was designed. You were very incorrect when you said I was fragile.

Matthew 6:15